httpsworldpoetrybooks.combooksdocument Document.

by Amelia Rosselli, Deborah Woodard (Translator), Roberta Antognini (Translator)

"Document" (1966-1973) paraît aux éditions Garzanti, à Milan, en 1976. Précédé des "Variations de guerre" (1964) et de la "Série hospitalière" (1969), l’un et l’autre encore marqués par le désir de clôture d’une œuvre autour d’une certaine unité, "Document" reste ouvert, sans autre ordre que celui qu’offre la chronologie. En un flux plus libre, les poèmes se donnent à lire tel un bout à bout de « scènes » où l’intimité exclue s’inclut, se confronte à l’Histoire (celle de son temps), au politique et au religieux, l’un et l’autre (l’un dans l’autre) se présentant comme des événements investis de la même « illumination ». Saisons intérieures, extérieurement perceptibles quand il neige, suscitant, là encore, la série, selon le montage qui mêle ou bien disjoint les ensembles par lesquels se distinguent des périodes. Par son ampleur (175 poèmes écrit entre août 1966 et mai 1973), sa variété, sa position médiane, "Document" est sans doute le recueil majeur d’Amelia Rosselli.

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Amelia Rosselli (Paris, 28 March 1930 – Rome, 11 February 1996) was an italian poet, organist ed etnomusicologist.

Daughter of the antifascist activist Carlo Rosselli, exiled in Paris, and of Marion Catherine Cave, activist of the British Labourist Party. In 1940, after the murder of her father and his uncle ordered by Mussolini, she lived in exile with her family; this experience had a heavy influence on her poetical works.

Amelia Rosselli lived in Svitzerland and later in USA. She studied literature, philosophy and music in England. In the 40's and 50's she wrote numerous musical and ethnomusical studies and became in touch with the roman intellectual circle and the future members of the avant-garde movement Gruppo 63.

In the 60's she entered in the Italian Communist Party and wrote on several reviews getting the attention of Andrea Zanzotto, Giovanni Raboni and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

In 1964 she published her first book of poems, Variazioni belliche, by Garzanti, and in 1969 Serie ospedaliera, with her famous poem La Libellula. In 1981 she published Impromptu, a long poem after a long period of writer's block. She also wrote poems in french and in english (as her next book, Sleep.

She lived in Rome sharing a house with the poet Dario Bellezza, she died on 11 February 1996 by suicide, the same day of her great ispiration, Sylvia Plath.

Reviews

[Claudia]

Di chi la colpa: di questo pulcino che nascondendosi dietro due parafrasi saltò piedi in aria cercando un obolo, una maniera di sopravvivere.
Non ve n’è: soltanto uno smercio di giocattoli.

[Carlotta]

Poesia chiusa, monotòna nella cupezza - che parli della vita, dell'amore o della storia.

[H]

Vaccination, my writing/ given I couldn’t speak to your face (47)
“Stagnant waters revolutionize my heart” (49)
“I saw the sky gloat: it was purple/ then gradually cleared and I/ cleared with it: I couldn’t/ be it!” (57)
The sky went back to being that/ coarse engine of our city (57)
My/ beating heart doesn’t want peace only oblivion/ on the highest branch of the sky (63)
Lust for wisdom (71)
Administration of doubts (71)
Biblical backwater (85)
When innocence/worn out from pleasures, sat on damp grass” (87)
“Rosy tubes, eroded by the busy rain/ shaking the vigor of the world” (97)
Today I’m ancient / the rain is sterile (101)
“With earth seeming to tremble from coincidences/ I lack breath to shout my indifference” (107)
“Reality always escaped from a profound analysis/ realizing it had always been a profound reality” (121)
“In a tired and blue encounter/ due to the effusion of newspapers/ I still wanted/ to paint them all/ and myself by force” (137)
“The world wants me to defend/ the microscopic vein of your womb” (143)
“It’s not often that the earth moves from its unscathed wheels” (151)
“A thunderbolt in the sky preparing/ your every childhood” (159)
"revolutionary tents in my heart/ secretly nurturing small manias" (163)
"strong willed she wrinkled unscathed inside/ the pink apartment" (167)
"visible in view a continuous stream of/ skyscrapers" (173)
"even your eyes have evil lights/ and one hint of shyness or love from you/ does nothing but delay the horror/ of a day" (181)
"the red cigarette lighter,/ this is an inner vision/ lacking in understanding/ but saved by these colors" (189)
"my heart darkens carefully/ contracting and forgiving itself with a custom-made/ slap" (201)
"dies octoberish/ the candor of your enlightened words" (211)
"how to get rid of reality/ abolishing every reservation for it's/ only the lost soul describing itself" (221)
"virtue hidden and sweet/for those who write of indescribable things" (225)
"wet sky/ false statues/ in the gardens" (227)
"with me you're/ nothing but yourself: which/ you don't want to be" (235)
"Indeed the primary stars answered/ I recognize that void/ is what I never wanted or supposed/ of myself" (241)
"My angel, I never knew which angel/ you were, or for which crooked ways I loved you/ or worshipped you" (243)
"I lost peace/ pleading with the void" (279)
"(Things themselves/ sow my heart with light)" (313)
"So much sauce and so much courage!" (319)
"In the Nordic/ palm grove of deconsecrated churches,/ forced laughter/ the city in the palm/ charred life" (381)