In questo stesso blog è stata pubblicata la sintesi in lingua italiana, tratta da quella più articolata, in lingua inglese, della silloge poetica IT'S STARLIGHT, THOUGH di Roberto Vittorio Di Pietro, solo che era visibile in fotografia, e non molto leggibile. Qui presento la versione originale in lingua inglese e la sintesi, in lingua italiana, realizzata in forma volantino dalla casa editrice L'ARMATTAN.
Vi rimando ai precedenti articoli:
As modern
things grow old,
old things
will come into fashion again.
(Leo Longanesi)
F O R E W
O R D
While most
of the poems included in this selection were previously conceived, written, and
published in the Italian language, they in no way reflect a simple translation
exercise. If anything, they may perhaps be described as “imitations” of
themselves, in the sense that Robert Lowell attached to this word. In each
single case, as I attempted to recapture the spiritual mood and creative
stimuli which had prompted the original version, I increasingly realised -- or
rather found corroboration to one of my firm beliefs -- that the very use of a
different language opens up unpredictable vistas in terms of “re-experiencing”
one’s thoughts and conveying related emotions. This, I think, proves especially
true with multilingual speakers/writers who have also developed sufficient
familiarity with the specific cultural heritage underlying the bare structural patterns (grammar, syntax,
vocabulary, idioms...) in any of the various languages they may otherwise have
mastered; and the additional awareness of such extra-linguistic discrepancies
is of course all the more relevant when the alternative communication vehicle
is poetry – which, to a considerable degree, does qualify as “rhythmic
creation of beauty”, in the charming definition
offered by Edgar A. Poe.
Metrical
rhythm is indeed a factor which I had basically favoured in the Italian
original; and this again (appropriately readjusted, not seldom as a function of
new correlative ideas and imagery) will be found to constitute a pivot in the
English poems collected in this book. A
deliberate choice, in either case; and, if I may say, a provocative one as
well, current art trends being what they are, and generally alike on an
international scale. Even though my personal approach to poetry is anything but
idly aesthetic – i.e., the appreciation or pursuit of “fine
tinkling rhyme...with now and then some sense”, to quote Ben Jonson’s debatable if possibly tongue-in-cheek remark, in
the same way that it was not for poets and critics such as T. S. Eliot, for
instance, who, to my mind, most rightly re-affirmed the value of pithy contents
as opposed to pleasing but often weightless words -- I am still inclined to
believe that our advanced postmodern artistic efforts should not too flippantly
neglect some of the peculiarities of sound and rhythm that made poetry
identifiable as such from time immemorial, and perceptibly distinguishable from
otherwise well-turned “imaginative” prose. “Words
without thoughts never to heaven go”: quite true,
I must say on the one hand; but still, on the other hand, much as proverbs are
aimed at propounding pieces of practical wisdom in a type of phrasing which can
be the more easily memorised by virtue of its sheer ring, I feel that poetry –
even in its higher aspirations and accomplishments – should have a fairly
similar appeal if it is to prove comparably effective with readers at large.
And, oddly enough, I am thinking of today’s poetry readers in the lower age
bracket -- “the younger generation of slogan-and-jingle enthusiasts”, as
present-day sociologists occasionally choose to describe them, hopefully with
matter-of-fact professional insight and none of those undesirable judgmental
implications which I entirely disclaim. Who could, in fact, deny that
traditional nursery rhymes, or Edward Lear’s captivating “Book of nonsense”, or
the catchy tunefulness characterising the so-called “Songs” from Shakespeare’s
plays, normally would cast a quite similar spell over the more sensitive
English-speaking children and musically inclined teenagers until perhaps only a
few decades ago? Human nature no doubt carries inborn aesthetic needs,
instinctive and unchangeable even though taste may continually vary in the way
such needs are best fulfilled.
First-priority
status for contents, then; but with an eye to other equally decisive values, in my opinion. For
purposes of this argument, let me cite as a case in point the results achieved
by William Butler Yeats, who unquestionably remains for twentieth-century
English poetry the great alternative to the influence of Eliot. Yeats
admittedly revealed a dual nature in his poetic personality. Whereas he
championed and pursued visionary art, and of the greatest magnitude, at the
same time he certainly did display a strong streak of realism and a sense for
the mundane “here and now” as a likewise rich source of philosophic
investigation. But, whether he grappled with rarefied esoteric symbolism or
more down-to-earth speculation, or, intriguingly, a subtle juxtaposition of
both, his most memorable lines invariably show him to be quite conscious of the
fact that verse hardly proves worthy of such a name unless Poe’s “romantic”
idea of poetry, as quoted above, to some extent is also brought into play.
And, with a
backward leap in time and space, I daresay that the masterpieces of Dante or
Shakespeare, notably and justly viewed by T. S. Eliot as unsurpassed -- or of
the English so-called “metaphysical poets”, whom he likewise commended and held
up as models, for that matter – are only pearls of the first water in an
otherwise genuine and valuable international golden treasury through which we
could still randomly verify in what measure the most profound “music
of ideas” can be sought without the
qualifying traits of poetic diction having to be necessarily sacrificed, let
alone jettisoned as a superseded, cumbersome appendage, as far and wide they
now unfortunately tend to be regarded. Moreover, with this specific purpose in
mind, should one wish to consult even an anthology of Eliot’s own production,
would his innovative “non-romantic” type of verse after all not reveal a
perfect chemistry combining inner music with some of the otherwise distinctive surface
rhythms of traditional poetry? As one
example out of many, the very structure of “Preludes” (which displays carefully arranged sequences of iambic
tetrameters, one would observe) surely provides pertinent evidence and
interesting food for thought.
This leads
me to some considerations on the fortune of the iambic
pentameter in particular. Correctly enough, as several literary authorities have
tended to remark, this ever-favourite in English and Anglo-American literature
may have somewhat overreached itself since becoming the cloying stock-in-trade
of some of the less inspired Victorian versifiers in particular. However,
despite such possible mishaps, it should still be remembered that this measure,
alternatively with its cognate blank verse (or unrhymed heroic, first introduced in England in the early
sixteenth century through the translation of Virgil’s Aeneid by Henry Howard,
earl of Surrey), has long stood as the regular one in English lyrical,
dramatic, and epic poetry -- just as its approximate Italian equivalent, more
usually ending with an amphibrachic foot (endecasillabo
rimato/sciolto), gloriously held its own for
centuries. For this reason, too, in line with my taste for constructively
unconventional undertakings, I have rather single-mindedly, though not
exclusively, revived this “old-timer” in my more recent Italian – and now
English – experiments with “antiquated” prosody, on the whole as intentionally
outdated as my bold use of punctuation throughout.
The
rejection of traditional discipline in poetry writing may or may not be
entirely traceable to Arthur Rimbaud’s subversive appeal for a “raisonné
dérèglement de tous les sens” (1871). In France
at least, the poèmes en prose of both Louis Bertrand (Aloysius) and Charles Baudelaire are sometimes
indicated as earlier transgressive steps, although comparatively mild ones, in
the same direction. One less controversial fact remains and is worth reviewing.
Rimbaud’s personal option can hardly be stigmatised as arbitrary, or his
official move as inconsiderate in his days. Why so? Even in his rebellious
attitude as a born maverick, the French poet quite lucidly set out to confront
a specific aesthetic issue which then revolved around the following fundamental
questions: “Can poetic diction not be vested with an ulterior sense lying
beyond the plain traditional meaning of words? Can a poetic text not be
conceived wherein the ‘logical’ priority of word meaning as the mainstay of
significant verbal communication is bypassed or disrupted?” Whether or not
these theoretical queries actually met with an adequate solution in his poetic
achievements in the last analysis is of no concern for our purposes here; what
needs to be emphasised, instead, is that they did represent a genuine problem
to the author’s conscience. Also, much like the painter Pablo Picasso in his
own field, Rimbaud had indeed previously supplied unmistakable proof of his
skills as a consummate artist well-versed in classical versification
(particularly after the fashion of Victor Hugo and the Parnassian School) -- which in itself vouches for his fundamental
good faith in choosing to depart from contemporary standards. On the other
hand, his well-reasoned manifesto (“raisonné” had been an appropriate adjective to define it), besides
being the formalised public avowal of inner dictates which, as suggested, we
have no cause to believe insincere, was after all no undesirable endeavour
towards stirring up sluggish waters in the particular phase of European
literary history when it was launched. That revolutionary manifold innovative
project was soon to attract extensive supranational attention; but another
noteworthy fact is that a tidal wave of enthusiasm for unrestrained
‘deregulation’ has been spreading infectiously, with a vengeance, ever since.
To what extent is this ongoing phenomenon still as legitimate now as it once
may have been?
As a rule,
mass imitation in any sector entails a gradual corruption of the ideal
prototype; and, what is worse, a progressive misunderstanding and final
betrayal of the non-superficial reasons why, sometimes, the original model was
no casual luck-of-the-draw business in its author’s mind, but simply had to be
designed that way in the first place.
More than a century later, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a deterioration
of that nature has meanwhile set in. A few gnawing doubts are inevitable – as
they will be, whenever normally cyclical fashions somehow take too long to wear
off, and whenever art works no longer appear to reflect their authors’
compelling and cogent individual motivations, but rather look like the product
of some newly formed orthodoxy – or a new type of “fashionable” conformity the
other way round, if you will. As this seems to be largely the case now (with
signal exceptions confirming the rule, of course), a set of logical chain
questions may result. How far – one wonders – does the current desire for ever
greater emancipation stand as the truly creative postmodern artist’s rightful claim to freedom?
And can this ongoing ‘deregulation’, based on a wild “anything-goes
theory” at this juncture, be considered evidence of out-and-out freedom if it in fact hinges – paradoxically – on a rather authoritarian one-way tenet substantially upholding anti-traditional forms of expression as the
only ones entitled to serious consideration
or recognition by current aesthetic criteria?
And what if, in itself, this peculiar unilateral tenet ultimately
supporting a “trigger-happy, shell-shocked” type of style (to put it
graphically) had by now possibly become a slick excuse, as it were, a fairly
convenient blind for inherent technical/professional shortcomings otherwise too
conspicuous? And can this disturbing assumption be dismissed as totally
groundless? From my personal experience I can say perhaps not, even allowing
for today’s incommensurate external pressures brought to bear on an artist’s
behaviour -- e.g., a by now dutiful allegiance to hyper-naturalism in the arts,
for one (chaos to be the most perfect picture of chaos?), along with other
concomitant factors no doubt of equal relevance in twenty-first-century
globalised culture, here being necessarily left in parentheses at the risk of
shallowness. I insist perhaps not, should one stop to evaluate, if only in terms of common
psychology, the possible significance of so many peevish, uncompromising,
irrationally excessive and therefore typically suspicious reactions one too
often comes up against when serenely inquiring of the “self-confident
knowledgeable practitioners” (so to qualify them) a good enough reason why they
must feel so obdurately opposed to even
the bare fundamentals of traditional poetry – i.e., the minimum ingredients
which, like it or not, have always made poetry an altogether different thing
from fancy prose style in the end. The
most blatant paradox we seem to be faced with nowadays is that, by common
standards of criticism world-wide, the once endearing rules of that serious and
noble “game” called poetry can in fact be scornfully pooh-poohed as “not only a
ludicrous white elephant, but -- well, can’t you see it, my dear fellow? – intrinsically unpoetical.” Into the bargain!
Adding insult to injury, as I feel it.
In any walk
of life, updating the past does not amount to turning back the clock
indiscriminately; it involves the delicate and difficult task of ascertaining
which of the elements previously discarded may still be viable, and in what
measure so, as against those which are instead fit to he shelved for good. When
addressing postmodern poetry in particular, would this prove a hopeless
enterprise? Or one still worth a try? Maybe not foredoomed to failure, if
undertaken with an iota of good will and with all due humility, needless to
say. I believe a boost to one’s undermined morale can constantly be derived
from the following significant “statement of intents” by the famous Italian
poet Umberto Saba (1883-1957), which I am here attempting to render into
English verse as faithfully as possible (the italics are mine):
I cared for trite words no one dared to use;
I was enamoured with the rhyme
true/blue --
the oldest in the world, the hardest
yet.
Truth I did love, which
lies at the deep bottom
much like some long-forgotten dream
or other,
through sorrow re-discovered as a
friend.
Presenting
himself as a “shockingly anachronistic rhymester” in his days, Saba was in fact
labelled as such and, to his dismay, unremittingly snubbed for many a long year
in à la page literary
circles. Nonetheless, whole-heartedly committed as he was to a quest for that
elusive “truth” lying beneath the
surface, he stood his ground
– until he eventually came to be acknowledged as one of the foremost Italian poets of the past century.
His fundamental devotion to that timeless “long-forgotten
dream” to be re-explored in the face of
more or less “fashionable” style, may well be considered a major theoretical
lesson for postmodern artists in general. In practice, however, it could also
be a perilous invitation if blindly taken up by dabblers with “trite
words” who should fail to realise how much
more is required to make a respectable, full-blooded poet in any case; and a
challenge no doubt awesome for those who, like myself, are not quixotically
unaware of their precarious condition as both truth-seekers and
“non-conventional” postmodern versifiers.
It is a
pity that writers should feel compelled to justify their views. It would be so much easier and less risky not
to do so; but there it is. I am sure I
have lamentably oversimplified a very complex issue on the whole – and,
paradoxes being in question, undue simplification in a verbose manner (an
oxymoron, good grief!) looks like a booby-trap I have most unforgivably fallen
into. May at least the sincere emotional
drive behind it all prove convincing enough to stimulate further in-depth investigation
by literary theorists, as well as concrete counter-efforts at the hands of any
present-day artists – tomorrow’s prospective white hopes? – whose natural
poetic inclinations more or less disagree with aesthetic biases now so rife in
this all-too-complacent age.
Roberto Di
Pietro
SINTESI (SOTTO FORMA DI INSERTO/VOLANTINO)
USATA DALLA CASA EDITRICE
“L’HARMATTAN”
PER
ACCOMPAGNARE LA SILLOGE “IT’S STARLIGHT, THOUGH”
Se come utile riferimento
cronologico volessimo assumere la datazione (1871) della “lettera del veggente”
in cui il poeta francese Arthur Rimbaud notoriamente inneggiava alla necessità
di un sovversivo “dérèglement de tous les sens” da parte dell’artista “moderno” -- e lo facessimo
non solo per la vasta risonanza immediata di quello che doveva configurarsi
come un manifesto letterario a tutti gli effetti, ma soprattutto in
considerazione dei perduranti influssi a ben vedere sostanzialmente rintracciabili nella
prevalente concezione dell’ars poetica contemporanea -- dovremmo
concludere che l’affrancamento da qualsiasi vincolo formale nel “fare poesia
moderna”, pur nella molteplicità delle successive correnti letterarie e degli
esiti specifici che le contraddistinsero, alla fin fine sussiste come percorso
estetico pressoché obbligato da ormai più di un secolo a questa parte. In
rapporto alle leggi naturali della ciclicità, un fenomeno di straordinaria
durata; per giunta, allo stato attuale sempre più esasperato e straripante ben
oltre gli argini del professionismo vero e proprio: una lezione, si direbbe,
ormai ritenuta di scontato valore e comunemente sottoscritta anche dall’uomo
della strada in qualche misura interessato alla poesia, o magari anche alla
pratica della scrittura poetica in prima persona. Un fenomeno “di massa”,
oggi si tenderebbe a definirlo; anche
come tale, quindi, forse non immeritevole di alcune verifiche critiche a più
livelli.
Nella nota introduttiva a questa raccolta
di liriche in lingua inglese, -- pur non potendo dare spazio alle complesse
problematiche di ordine sociologico-filosofico-culturale di cui, specie in
questa nostra era di globalizzazione e di multimedialità, occorrerebbe tener
conto a scanso di deplorevoli giudizi sommari --, l’autore non esita ad
arrischiare, con studiata disinvoltura provocatoria, quanto meno alcuni maliziosi
interrogativi di natura genericamente estetica/etica, riservando all’altrui
migliore scrupolosità ogni eventuale approfondimento autonomo nelle sedi di
indagine più appropriate. Per quel che possano valere fuori contesto, eccone un
paio: quella svolta anticonformistica, a suo tempo legittimamente innovativa,
non sarebbe forse ormai approdata ad una sorta di paradossale conformismo
alla rovescia? E quanta parte di furbesco escamotage potrebbe di
fatto nascondersi dietro una simile sregolatezza sistematica paradossalmente
assunta come nuova norma inderogabile?
L’aspetto più concreto della provocazione consiste tuttavia
nell’aver voluto rinverdire, nei vari testi poetici qui selezionati, se non
altro alcune valenze metriche e fonosimboliche riconducibili alla tradizione
letteraria classica, in questo caso specificatamente anglosassone. Del resto in
modo analogo, con intenti altrettanto palesi in direzione “post-moderna”,
l’autore aveva già scelto di agire in buona parte delle sue opere poetiche
composte e pubblicate in italiano (cfr. in particolare la silloge “A testa
in giù”, comprensiva del poema Phantaasia
non Imaginaatio
vera – Ed. Il Leone
Verde, Torino, 2001-2), talora con palese ironia, tal’altra per assecondare una
sua intima necessità estetica oggigiorno controcorrente. In una “lettera aperta”, inserita ad uso del
lettore in appendice alla succitata pubblicazione, si possono forse trovare
esposte attraverso riferimenti più circostanziati le ragioni di questo suo
atteggiamento: il cui obiettivo essenziale sta, in definitiva, nel voler
suggerire, senza alcuna presunzione, l’eventualità di qualche spazio residuo
per un discorso poetico davvero innovativo – così nei contenuti, così nelle
potenzialità della forma in loro
funzione, sostanzialmente di carattere “post-moderno” – di per sé contrario alle intemperanze di
un’effimera originalità fine a se stessa, criticamente conscio delle secche in
cui, paradossalmente, tale genere di finto trasformismo creativo sembra da
ultimo destinato a fossilizzarsi.
Roberto Di Pietro: laureatosi magna cum laude presso
la Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere dell’Università Bocconi (Milano),
ha brillantemente conseguito svariati altri titoli di studio anche all’estero.
Saggista, già critico letterario presso la R.A.I, attualmente
risiede a Torino dove svolge, fra l’altro, attività di ricerca e di
insegnamento nel volontariato culturale. La sua silloge poetica di più recente
pubblicazione (“A testa in giù”, comprendente l’ampio poema teatrale “Phantaasia
non Imaginaatio
Vera”, edito a parte) è anche frutto di appassionato studio nel campo
dell’analisi metrico-strutturale del testo poetico in termini di ritmica e
fonosimbolismo. Le poesie in lingua
inglese contenute in questo volumetto, congiuntamente alle liriche già edite in
italiano cui in buona parte si ispirano, hanno appena ottenuto, fuori concorso,
il riconoscimento speciale della giuria nell’ambito del “Premio Letterario Internazionale, Marengo
d’Oro, 2003” (Liguria).
* * *
