In the Dark Body of Metamorphosis: & Other Poems

by Mario Luzi

Mario Luzi is the foremost Italian poet of his generation. He ranks first as an interpreter of life. He owes much to ancestral ties and to the Tuscan landscape of his youth and middle years. He is at home with such rational philosophers as Bertrand Russell and Adorno (Theodor Wiesengrund). Essentially, he is an apolitical humanist. Here are presented his classic "In the Dark Body of Metamorphosis," along with a selection of other of his poems, translated into English by I. L. Salomon.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Mario Luzi was an Italian poet. His first book, La barca, was published in 1935 and in 1938 he started to teach in high schools in the cities of Parma, San Miniato and Rome. In 1940, he published Avvento notturno; in 1945 he went back to Florence and there he taught at the liceo scientifico. He won the Aristeion Prize in 1991 for his work Frasi e Incisi di un Canto Salutare; in the same year he was proposed for the first time by the Accademia dei Lincei for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ultimately never awarded, when asked for his thoughts by one reporter on his fellow countryman Dario Fo's 1997 success he slammed the phone down: "I'll say only this. I've just about had it up to here!" In October 2004, he was appointed to the Italian Senate as a senator-for-life by President of the Republic Ciampi.

Reviews

[Zachary Lacan · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's rare to find poetry which opens up so many emotions, and lends itself so much to exegesis. the poems leap from the pages, which is cliche but the following point is not, the meaning reinvents in lines crafted to give form not just to Mario Luzi to the vision of the people. The poet speaks with an authority conferred by fate and providence human and divine.

[ernest (Ellen) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The titular poem is exactly as it promises: a metamorphosis of life and eternal mutability, a ballad of consonant noises streaming by like "thoughts drawn on the string / of endless questioning".

He speaks about the endless torment of the past and memory (the "dark body of metamorphosis"). Yet spring comes, the ardor of unconditional love alights our eyes, the soul blossoms, and suddenly like a caterpillar undergoing metamorphosis we are freed from our past. The narrator is the sleepwalker(watcher), realizing that his insomnia, that semi-conscious state of being, has been shaken by the image of something so alive. He, too, has been freed. How is it possible that we can destroy every fiber of our being, every cell in our body, and still emerge as the same being?

We are the mutable and the eternal. We are constantly changing yet irreplaceable. We must drown in the sky of our collapsing entities, and appear a covey flocking from the winter to another spring.

[Philippe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to Luzi via the Earthly and Heavenly Journey of Simone Martini. This tightly edited collection of translated poems offers an ambitious cross-section of his work. The earliest poem included dates from 1932 and the collection is bookended by the piercing sections from the early 70s The Whirlpool of Sickness and Health.







Birth and death, swift truths ...

[Mills College Library]

851.912 L979i 1975