POEM OF THE ROSES
Subtitle: LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONISM IN THE POETRY OF FRANCO FORTINI:
By: WITH A VERSION FROM LA POESIA DELLE ROSE
Edition: First
Series: TRANSFERENCE
Publisher: TROUBADOR
Published: 2004
Place of publication: UK
Language: eng
Number of pages: 84
First sentence: Poetics, like any living entity, undergoes change. Some changes are gradual, epochal processes, originating from conditions of stagnation in some or all spheres of a cultural tradition. Others arise abruptly out of the style and subject matter of individual artists or groups of artists, in connection with some crisis in their ideological, political, or emotional lives. This second type of transformation is enhanced by the tendency of artists to interrogate and exploit the contradictory relations inherent in their use of a given genre. The disquieting and yet formative experience of going through the sort of turmoil from which such changes originate always brings about new mediated forms and theoretical stand points. With this idea in mind, I question the widely held notion of the author’s ‘modern classicism’
Description: La poesia delle rose is Fortini’s first, composite treatment, in verse, of the vitality and strength of Italian literary traditions. In it he also explores the problems of representation, self-representation, and imitation within the twofold baroque and neo-classical connection. Poetry, by its very nature, cannot help but be a means of underlying meshes, and of cultural appropriation; La poesia delle rose affirms the continuity of literature, but it does so by recombining traditional strands of thought and styles into a new aesthetics in order to record the impact of past poetics on the poet’s consciousness. With a distinctive modern touch, Fortini refers in the poem to the work of various authors, such as Torquato Tasso and Jules Michelet. His presence in the text is simultaneously that of the author of a daringly innovative poem and that of a writer who confirms the traditional function and cause of poetry. This metacriticism is conveyed obliquely to the reader through the composite and even violent symbolism of the rose, which is taken to expressionistic extremes, as we shall see. At the infratextual level, Fortini refers also to his personal use of the rose, as in his 1944 poem ‘La rosa sepolta’, included in Foglio di via (1946).