A fluid and happy writing characterizes the polymetric poem in free verses by Roberto Mosi, Orfeo in Fonte Santa, whether the poet touches accents of exquisite lyricism, or introduces narrative elements into the verses. Both, in fact, perfectly agglutinated, weave a classically posed framework, despite the modernity of the conception that supports it and of the medium-high tone language, clearly communicative.
The Holy Source (which is found, as we read in the introduction, in a happy corner of the hills surrounding the city of Florence) constitutes the inspirational center around which the matter of song unravels; lemma, the latter, recurrent and used in the manner of the great epic authors of classicism, and linked to another that etymologically contains it, enchantment, meaning that poetry possesses a magical force that overcomes the flow of time, creating a parallel dimension in which everything not only saves itself, but reappropriates ontological integrity by discovering the links between high and low, visible and invisible.
Historical characters and angels are flanked, as well as bloody events and mental visions, concreteness of things and ecstatic lightness, in the belief that Poetry coincides with the Whole, if the Whole becomes inner space.
So the myth, so abundantly present in Mosi's poem, and the narration of episodes related to the literature of the seventeenth century and to the second world war and to the struggle of the partisans (Orfeo in Fonte Santa is dedicated, in fact, to one of them, David Daviddi) , and to episodes of current news, coexist with the same force, and confront each other with the essential themes: life, death, time, eternity, beauty, goodness, cruelty, joy, pain.
The same myth of Orpheus is accompanied by all these elements: Orpheus who enchants with his voice the living creatures, Orpheus shocked by the death of Eurydice, Orpheus descending into the underworld, Orpheus torn apart by the Bacchantes, Orpheus, whose head together with his lyre land on the island of Lesbos.
There are many literary references, but certainly (the poet himself mentions it at the beginning of the book) the most important is Rainer Maria Rilke with his Sonetten an Orpheus, of which he makes the intuition of a Weltinnenraum his own, as an expression of a unique reality in which there is not an inside and an outside, a before and an after, but a whole without limits, as has already been said. With Rilke the author also shares (as can be seen in song III, p. 21) the coincidence between the becoming of Heraclitus and the being of Parmenides. In fact, he takes up the Rilkian verses; And if the world of oblivion has covered you, you can say to the immobile earth: I run. / And the rapid water replies: I am ", Mosi rewrites: The absence is turned upside down / in presence, activity and passivity / yes integrate, motionless figures / are overcome by images / in motion. "To the earth / immobile" I say: I run ", / to the rapid water: I am".
This recovery of the tradition operated by Mosi is a very important attitude, in times when poets seem to draw their inspiration from other sources, neglecting the lesson of the great. Just as interesting is the recourse to such a clear and resonant language, although the verses have not been changed.
In fact, among all the senses, it is that of hearing that is privileged: the second song is a real musical score: human voice, sound of water, breath of the wind, vibration of the leaves, golden flute enter into the ear, stun him, intoxicate him.
And next to the hearing there is, not less important, that of sight: the verses draw an abundance of strong, delicate, airy, sanguine images; nor can the presence of color photographic images inserted between one chapter and the other of the poem be overlooked: poems also made of the matter of light.
Moreover it is precisely light (or hope, joy) that triumphs; thus, in fact, the poem of Mosi ends: "It takes the path again / after the snow has melted./ Nature breathes, is reborn".
Franca Alaimo