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Andrea Zanzotto (1921-2011)
and his cat |
The Italian literary critic Andrea Cortelessa, in his important anthology of First World War Italian poets entitled Le notti chiare erano tutte un'alba (from a verse of Valmorbia by Eugenio Montale saying "The luminous nights were all a dawn"), first wrote about the "posthumous war", meaning the presence of the Great War in the poets who did not fight it. Andrea Zanzotto, probably the most important italian poet of the second half of the Twentieth century, was born in Pieve di Soligo in 1921, three years after the armistice. His village is located in a nice hill landscape on the left bank of the river Piave. It was an area of battles, occupied by the Austro-Hungarian army after the retreat of Caporetto, and is not far from the Montello, a wooded hill that together with the pivoting fulcrum of the whole front, the Monte Grappa, is saldly reknown for being a theatre of bloody battles. In his most meaningful and penetrating work of poetry, Il Galateo in Bosco, published sixty years after the end of the war, we experience the highest example of what Cortelessa meant with "posthumous war". This post is also a tribute to the poet who died only a few months ago, in October 2011, at the age of 90.
PASSARE ALLA MORSURA
Rivolgersi agli ossari. Non occorre biglietto.
Rivolgersi ai cippi. Con il più disperato rispetto.
Rivolgersi alle osterie. Dove elementi paradisiaci aspettano.
Rivolgersi alle case. Dove l’infinitudine del desìo
(vedila ad ogni chiusa finestra) sta in affitto.
E la radura ha accettato più d’un frondoso colloquio
ormai, dove, ahi,
si esibì la più varia mostra dei sangui
il più mistico circo dei sangui. Oh quanti numeri, e rancio speciale. Urrah.
Vorrei bucarmi di ogni chimica rovina
per accogliere tutti, in anteprima,
nello specchio medicato d’infinitudini e desii
di quel circo i fermenti gli enzimi
dentro i succhi più sublimi dell’alba, dell’azione, in piena diana. E si va.
E si va per ossari. Essi attendono
gremiti di mortalità lievi ormai, quai gemme di primavera,
gremiti di bravura e di paura. A ruota libera, e si va.
Buoni, ossari – tante morti fuori del qualitativo divario
onde si sale a sicurezze di cippo,
fuori del gran bidone (e la patria bidonista,
che promette casetta e campicello
e non li diede mai, qui santità mendica, acquista).
Hanno come un fervore di fabbrica gli ossari.
Vi si ricevono ordini, ordinazioni eterne. Vi si smista.
All’asilo, certi pazzi-di-guerra, ancora vivi
allevano maiali; traffici con gli ossari.
Mi avete investito, lordato tutto, eternizzato tutto, un fiotto di sangue.
Arteria aperta il Piave, né calmo né placido
ma soltanto gaiamente sollecito oltre i beni i mali e simili
e tutto solletichìo di argenti, nei suoi intenti, a dismisura.
Padre e madre, in quel nume forse uniti
tra quell’incoercibile sanguinare
ed il verde e l’argenteizzare altrettanto incoercibili,
in quel grandore dove tutti i silenzi sono possibili
voi mi combinaste, sotto quelle caterve di
os-ossa, ben catalogate, nemmeno geroglifici, ostie
rivomitate ma come in un più alto, in un aldilà d’erbe e d’enzimi
erbosi assunte,
in un fuori-luogo che su me s’inclina e domina
un poco creandomi, facendomi assurgere a
Così che suono a parlamento
per le balbuzie e le più ardue rime,
quelle si addestrano e rincorrono a vicenda,
io mi avvicendo, vado per ossari, e cari stinchi e teschi
mi trascino dietro dolcissimamente, senza o con flauto magico
Sempre più con essi, dolcissimamente, nella brughiera
io mi avvicendo a me, tra pezzi di guerra sporgenti da terra,
si avvicenda un fiore a un cielo
dentro le primavere delle ossa in sfacelo,
si avvicenda un sì a un no, ma di poco
differenziati, nel fioco
negli steli esili di questa pioggia, da circo, da gioco.
(The following translation is taken from Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto, Edited and Translated by Patrick Barron With Additional Translations by Ruth Feldman, Thomas J. Harrison, Brian Swann, John P. Welle, and Elizabeth A. Wilkins, 2009, University of Chicago Press.)
PASSING TO THE ETCHING
Apply to the ossuaries. No ticket is needed.
Apply to the headstones. With the most desperate respect.
Apply to the taverns. Where heavenly elements await.
Apply to the houses. Where the infinitude of desire
(see it at every closed window) is for rent.
And the glade has accepted more than one leafy talk
by now, where, ah,
there is offered the most varied show of bloods
the most mystical circus of bloods. Oh how many, and a special mess.
Hurrah.
I’d like to shoot up with every ruining chemical
so to receive them all, in preview,
in the medicated mirror of infinitudes and desires
of that circus the ferments the enzymes
inside the most sublime suckings of dawn, of the action, in full
reveille. And off we go.
And off we go to the ossuaries. They await
overcrowded with mortality, lightened by now, almost springtime
buds,
overcrowded with bravura and fear. Freewheeling, and off we go.
Calm, ossuaries – so many dead outside the qualitative difference
Whence one rises to headstone safeties,
outside the great swindle (and swindler nation,
that promises a humble home and garden
and never grants them, here holiness begs, acquires).
The ossuaries have a factory-like fervor.
There one receives orders, eternal ordinations. There one is sorted.
At the asylum, certain war-crazed veterans still alive
raise pigs; trafficking with the ossuaries.
You knocked me down, dirtied all, eternalized all, in a gush of blood.
The Piave an open artery, neither calm nor placid
but only gaily solicitous beyond the good the bad and similar
and all pricked with silvery glimmers, in its intents, out of
all proportions.
Father and mother, perhaps united in that numen
amidst that incoercible bleeding
the green and the glimmering equally incoercible,
in that grandeur where all silences are possible
you entangled me, under those heaps of
bo-bones, well catalogued, not even hieroglyphics, hosts
revomited but now in a higher-up, in an other-world of
assumed grasses
and grassy enzymes,
in an outer-place that leans over me and
dominates
a bit creating me, making me rise up
So that I summon words
for stuttering and the hardes rhymes,
which train and pursue one another,
I take turns with myself, I wander through ossuaries, and dear
shinbones and skulls
I drag myself along so gently, with or without magic flute
Always more with them, so gently, into the heath
I take turns with myself, amidst pieces of war protruding from the
earth,
a flower takes turns with a sky
inside the springtimes of the decomposing bones,
a yes takes turns with a no, but little
differenciated, in the faint
in the slender stems of this rain, of the circus, of the game.