Full Description
Alda Merini is one of Italy's most important, and most beloved, living poets. She has won many of the major national literary prizes and has twice been nominated for the Nobel Prize--by the French Academy in 1996 and by Italian PEN in 2001. In Love Lessons, the distinguished American poet Susan Stewart brings us the largest and most comprehensive selection of Merini's poetry to appear in English. Complete with the original Italian on facing pages, a critical introduction, and explanatory notes, this collection gathers lyrics, meditations, and aphorisms that span fifty years, from Merini's first books of the 1950s to an unpublished poem from 2001. These accessible and moving poems reflect the experiences of a writer who, after beginning her career at the center of Italian Modernist circles when she was a teenager, went silent in her twenties, spending much of the next two decades in mental hospitals, only to reemerge in the 1970s to a full renewal of her gifts, an outpouring of new work, and great renown.Whether she is working in the briefest, most incisive lyric mode or the complex time schemes of longer meditations, Merini's deep knowledge of classical and Christian myth gives her work a universal, philosophical resonance, revealing what is at heart her tragic sense of life. At the same time, her ironic wit, delight in nature, and affection for her native Milan underlie even her most harrowing poems of suffering. In Stewart's skillful translations readers will discover a true sibyl of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Contents
Acknowledgments, ix Translator's Introduction, 1 Acknowledgments, ix FLOWER from La presenza di Orfeo / The Presence of Orpheus (1953) La presenza di Orfeo/The Presence of Orpheus, 18 Saro sola?/Will I Be Alone?, 24 from Paura di Dio/Fear of God (1955) Solo una mano d'angelo/Only an Angel's Hand, 26 Maria Egiziaca (Tintoretto)/Mary of Egypt (Tintoretto), 28 Pax/Peace, 30 from Nozze romane/Roman Wedding (1955) Nozze romane/Roman Wedding, 34 La Pieta/The Pieta, 36 La Sibilla Cumana/The Cumaean Sibyl, 38 Quando l'angoscia/When the Anguish, 40 from Tu sei Pietro/You Are Pietro (1961) from Parte prima/The First Part Missione di Pietro/Peter's Mission , 42 from Parte seconda/The Second Part Sogno/Dream, 44 Lirica antica/Antique Lyric, 46 E piu facile ancora/And It Would Be Even Easier, 48 from La Terra Santa/The Holy Land (1984) Io ero un uccello/As for me, I used to be a bird, 50 Tangenziale dell'ovest/Western Ring Road, 52 La luna s'apre nei giardini del manicomio/The moon unveils itself in the madhouse gardens, 54 Il mio primo trafugamento di madre/My first mothertheft, 56 from Per Michele Pierri/For Michele Pierri (unpublished until 1991) Il canto dello sposo/The Song of the Groom, 58 Elegia/Elegy, 60 from La gazza ladra. Venti ritratti/The Thieving Magpie: Twenty Portraits (unpublished until 1991) Saffo/Sappho, 62 Emily Dickinson/Emily Dickinson, 64 Plath/Plath, 66 Alda Merini/Alda Merini, 68 Il pastrano/The Overcoat, 70 Il grembiule/The Apron, 72 L'ospite/The Guest, 74 from Le satire della Ripa/Ripa's Satires (1983) Cesare amo Cleopatra/Caesar loved Cleopatra, 76 from La palude di Manganelli o Il monarca del re/Manganelli's Quagmire or The King's Reign (1992) Otello/Othello, 78 from Titano amori interno/Colossal Inner Loves (1993) La sottoveste/The Slip, 80 from Ballate non pagate/Penniless ballads (1995) Tornai allora a quella neve chiara/Then I went back to that bright snow, 82 from La volpe e il sipario/The Fox and the Curtain (1997) Che insostenibile chiaroscuro/What unbearable chiaroscuro, 84 from Aforismi/Aphorisms (1997), un'albicocca/On the pit of an apricot, 92 La cosa piu superba e la notte/The most superb thing is the night, 94 La notte se non e rapida/Night, if it is not swift, 96 C'era una fontana che dava albe/There was a fountain that offered dawns, 98 Naviglio che soccorri la mia carne/Naviglio that succors my fl esh, 100 Ci sono i paradisi artifi ciali/There are artificial paradises, 102 Resti un ardente ulivo/Stay steady burning olive tree, 104 In morte di mia sorella/On the Death of My Sister, 106 O canto della neve chiuso dentro la fossa/Oh song of the snow stuck inside the ditch, 108 Guerra/War, 110 Il Corvo/The Raven, 112 Il grido della morte/The Cry of Death, 116 Unpublished (composed 2001) Nella terra di Scozia/In the land of Scotland, 122 Notes, 125
