PRESENTATION OF THE ENTIRE WORK
After more than twenty years of study Giuliano Ladolfi presents in an organic essays published in the journal "Atelier" dedicated to Italian poetry from the twentieth century to the present day.
For the first time an attempt is made to give the titanic enterprise lines of understanding a phenomenon elusive because of the difficulty to be classified into categories. The author, in fact, a need that its interpretation is supported by two basic elements: a personal aesthetic concept and a vision that the development of civilization are lymph and motivations.
In the first volume, after the explanation of tools and methods, is plotted the framework of writing in verse over the period considered, which constitutes the backbone of the following works: the crisis of Western culture, come to consciousness in the Decadent causes the divorce between words and reality is revealed in the line, called Second Decadent or "nine hundred", which comes from Corrado Govoni to Zanotto (Volume II). The poets, who do not accept this separation and trying to plug the abyss, fall, despite the diversity of routes, under the name of "antinovecento" (Volume III). The fourth volume is devoted to four "masters" who have represented the deep crisis of Western culture and have shown the results. Last tome, which includes the authors of Postmodernism or Globalized Age, are included studies on a group of poets who published the Seventies until 2104, which, in overcoming the avant-garde and manners sperimentaliste, have tried and are trying new landings. Among them are several young men reported that lead to hope for a future thriving season of Italian poetry.
Faced with the current marginalization of contemporary poetry from school, universities, and the distribution of the circuit mass media, the work of Ladolfi comes as the first attempt to restore dignity to this art that was for four millennia tool culture and food of humanity.
FIRST TOMO
The first volume of the study, dedicated to Giuliano Ladolfi Italian poetry of the twentieth century and early twenty-first, is intended to provide the reader with the categories with which he worked. And, since, in his opinion, the Decadent is the historical moment in which Western civilization takes awareness of the crisis in which struggles for several centuries, he runs it in a robust way, starting from the classical culture and finds as this crisis has resulted in art in general and poetry in particular the greatest revolution of modernity that is the divorce between words and reality.
The student analyzes the consequences on poetry and, after clarifying their aesthetic concepts, sets the scene of the work that will be done in the following volumes, assuming that the Decadent, broadly interpreted as cultural-historical moment and not only phenomenon as literary and artistic avant-garde in the line continues in the twentieth century-from experimental Govoni comes up to Zanotto, through Hermeticism. In parallel is traced a line granting still trust in the word without being able to ricucirne the abyss with the world.
The company is delegated to some "masters" who dig the way to contemporary authors, who continue the hard work to announce the release of the crisis.
SECOND TOMO
The second volume is devoted to the authors, including under the name Second Decadent or "nine hundred". While Prime Decadent allowed escape from reality in a shelter looking for a "minimum of livability", the Second resigned in the face of realization that the crisis of Western culture is destroying any possibility of finding a meaning to existence and consequently to understand the real, so that the artist can only represent "what we are and what we do not want" (E. Montale) or play with words, with shapes and colors.
The feeling of instability and insecurity, which we find in most of the authors of this period, the explanation lies in the philosophy of Existentialism, according to which the individual feels thrown into a world that is foreign to him, he does not know the reasons, goals, mechanisms, and in front of which he suffers from being alienated. All the choices he has made are resolved in a failure, a failure that leads to a sense of anxiety, nausea and despair. The word is no longer able to "tell" the world and flees or nell'iperuranio, as happens Hermeticism, or in the autonomy of the signifier, as in the Vanguards.
While nell'irriducibilità individual poet to every generalization, the picture that goes from Govoni at Zanotto presents clear and consistent.
THIRD TOMO
In front of the divorce between words and reality, caused by the crisis of Western culture and come to awareness in Decadent, there is the line called "antinovecento" category in which are included poetic and very different writers who have tried to overcome the detachment or restore, albeit in a personal way, trust in a word that can "tell" the world.
Giuliano Ladolfi not fear, as in the case of Saba and Pavese, to unhinge "clichés" that passed from manual to manual have conditioned the entire literary criticism.
According to an original perspective are "re-read" the works of Rebora, Betocchi, Caproni, Scotellaro, Pasolini, Fortini, Penna and Bertolucci, flanked by the poets of the so-called "Lombard line" and "Roman line.
The work to weld the word with reality, however, does not come to fruition because we are limited to work on the style, ignoring the shocks the foundations of Western civilization.
FOURTH TOMO
The fourth volume is devoted to the "masters" in light and in shadow, those who were able to ferry the Italian poetry beyond the "twentieth century" by a dual work of the foundation and of prophecy.
The condition of the twentieth century is in Vittorio Sereni its most obvious representation as a "prisoner" of a political, economic and cultural.
Bartolo Cattafi, poet wrongly overlooked, after being down at the lowest point of Western civilization, announces the rebirth.
You can not ignore the poetic production of Pier Luigi Bacchini, which presages the formation of a new synthesis speculative able to envisage an interpretation of reality that can overcome the aporias dualistic thinking greek and Christian and to end the crisis of modernity .
But who has made the titanic gesture of deep weld word and reality was Mario Luzi, who managed in an enterprise, attempted in vain by many, because it has "reconstructed" a meaning for existence, for the world, for the story, for the problem of evil and pain, for nature, overcoming the fragmentation and "liquidity" postmodern.
FIFTH TOMO
The fifth volume is devoted to the poetry of Postmodernism or Globalized Age, with all the problems that every choice entails. For this reason Giuliano Ladolfi no way seeks to draw a canon, but to examine a series of poets as having a particular instance within the hard effort of Italian poetry to hook the word to reality.
After reviewing the path of those whose proposal is being implemented, the scholar considers a group of authors, including many young people, who in the rejection of the concept of self and playful poetry, in the rejection of skepticism, in the conception of poetry as an original interpretation of reality, in the awareness of the end of the "twentieth century" and in the relationship with the Masters of tradition, are making a real revolution through a series of collections of poems intended to hand down to posterity the face of our battered era.
Reviews
Review on Il Giornale March 21st 2015
