Epitafi

by Giorgio Bassani, Josep Ballester (Translator)

En Giorgio Bassani (Bolonia,1916-Roma, 2000), un mismo mundo fantástico y unitario aparece expresado en los versos de las poesías y en las prosas de los relatos y las novelas. Bassani salió por primera vez a la escena literaria inmediatamente después de la guerra con las líricas de Storie dei poveri amanti (1945) y de Te lucis ante (1947): importantes sobre todo por haber representado una especie de depósito ideológico , al que el escritor, dedicado en exclusiva a partir de 1950 a la redacción de los diferentes libros de La novela de Ferrara (Dentro de los muros, Las gafas de oro, El jardín de los Finzi - Contini, Detrás de la puerta, La garza, El olor del heno), ha recurrido siempre. Veinticinco años después, vuelve Bassani a los versos con este nuevo volumen Epitafio. La forma de las sesenta y seis poesías acompasadas todas con un metrónomo que nunca falla es extraordinariamente personal. Son todas caligramas o lápidas , como indica el propio título de la colección. En cualquier caso, la cristalización formal epigráfica, objetiva como es de por si, y, aquí, siempre perfectamente cerrada , no engañaa. Estamos ante una confesión absoluta, baudelairianamente superreal y total. En otros términos, en este libro Bassani - pese a utilizar, de cuando en cuando, en tono burlón, términos del lenguaje periodístico o burocrático actual e incluso de la prosodia publicitaria - enlaza con la solemne incasticidad de los textos funerarios de la antigúedad clásica, pero también con el sentido de celebración y conmemoración inscrito en un plan de conjunto perfecto y con la vitalidad de la existencia, tan moderna. Ahora el yo que escribe se identifica in toto con el yo que vive. Ya no hay diafragmas. ni siquiera temporales, entre el poeta y su materia. Vuelve, es cierto, a aparecer de cuando en cuando la Ferrara del gran ciclo novelesco bassaniano, descubierta de nuevo en los inefables rostros de los supervivientes o en recuerdos remotos que vuelven a aflorar cercanísimos. Pero predominan. con gran diferencia, los lugares del centro y del sur de Italia. Roma, sobre todo, donde Bassani vive desde hace más de treinta años , frecuentados periódicamente por el actual e inquieto soñador entrecano de cincuenta y tantos años . Eso explica, entre otras cosas, la multiplicidad y la variedad de los contenidos. Se trata, en gran parte, de poesías amorosas. Pero también son numerosos los epigramas, sobre todo al algunos durísimos, en las cosas y en el léxico. No obstante, muchas son las líricas memorables, breves o largas,ásperas o dulces. Las leyes raciales , Carta . RolIs Royce ,de Historia familia , La Porta Rosa , Vals , Los mayores . por citar sólo algunas, empapadas como están todas de autoironía dolorosa y viril, resultan ya logros de una persuasividad vértices de una experiencia poética que se califica por su absoluta e irrepetible unicidad. Traducción Carlos Manzano. Edición bilingüe.

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Giorgio Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico (a doctor), brother Paolo, and sister Jenny. In 1934 he completed his studies at his secondary school, the liceo classico L. Ariosto in Ferrara. Music had been his first great passion and he considered a career as a pianist; however literature soon became the focus of his artistic interests.
In 1935 he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bologna. Commuting to lectures by train from Ferrara, he studied under the art historian Roberto Longhi. His ideal of the “free intellectual” was the Liberal historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce. Despite the anti-Semitic race laws which were introduced from 1938, he was able to graduate in 1939, writing a thesis on the nineteenth-century writer, journalist, radical and lexicographer Niccolò Tommaseo. As a Jew in 1939, however, work opportunities were now limited and he became a schoolteacher in the Jewish School of Ferrara in via Vignatagliata.
In 1940 his first book, Una città di pianura (“A City of the Plain”), was published under the pseudonym Giacomo Marchi in order to evade the race laws. During this period, along with friends he had made in Ferrara’s intellectual circle, he became a clandestine political activist. His activity in the anti-fascist resistance led to his arrest in May 1943; he was released on 26 July, the day after Benito Mussolini was ousted from power.
A little over a week later he married Valeria Sinigallia, whom he had met playing tennis. They moved to Florence for a brief period, living under assumed names, then at the end of the year, to Rome, where he would spend the rest of his life. His first volume of poems, Storie dei poveri amanti e altri versi, appeared in 1944; a second, Te lucis ante, followed in 1947. He edited the literary review Botteghe oscure for Princess Marguerite Caetani from its founding in 1948 until it halted publication in 1960.
In 1953 Passeggiata prima di cena appeared and in 1954 Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti. In the same year he became editor of Paragone, a journal founded by Longhi and his wife Anna Banti. Bassani’s writings reached a wider audience in 1956 with the publication of the Premio Strega-winning book of short stories, Cinque storie Ferraresi.
As an editorial director of Feltrinelli Bassani was responsible for the posthumous publication in 1958 of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo, a novel which had been rejected by Elio Vittorini at Mondadori, and also by Einaudi, but which became one of the great successes of post-war Italian literature. Bassani’s enthusiastic editing of the text, following instructions from Elena Croce (daughter of Benedetto) who had offered him the manuscript, later became controversial however; recent editions have been published which follow the manuscript more closely.
Also in 1958 Bassani’s novel Gli occhiali d’oro was published, an examination, in part, of the marginalisation of Jews and homosexuals. Together with stories from Cinque storie ferraresi (reworked and under the new title Dentro le mura (1973)) it was to be form part of a series of works known collectively as Il romanzo di Ferrara which explored the town, with its Christian and Jewish elements, its perspectives and its landscapes. The series also includes: Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1962, Premio Viareggio prizewiner); Dietro la porta (1964); L'airone (1968) and L'odore del fieno (1972). These works realistically document the Italian Jewish community under Fascism in a style that manifests the difficulties of searching for truth in the meanderings of memory and moral conscience. In 1960 one of his novels was adapted as the film Long Night in 1943.
Bassani died in 2000, and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ferrara. He was survived by his estranged wife Valeria and their two children.

Reviews

[Esmé Boom · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5
Eerste gedachte bij het lezen: GeCEnTreerDE gEdiCHTEn?!1??1!!

Tweede gedachte: al die details werken toch beter bij het proza van Bassani, hier is het haast te veel.

Derde gedachte: alle boosheid die in de romans weemoed is geworden, is hier gewoon bitter gebleven.

Vierde gedachte: ja, maar dít gedicht is wel mooi, die spreektaal, dit mag er wezen.

Vijfde gedachte: Aha, daar is de weemoed.

Zesde gedachte: ik wou dat ik Italiaans kon lezen, dan komen deze gedichten vast veel beter tot hun recht, de Nederlandse taal past toch wat minder bij dat bloemrijke van Bassani.

Eindoordeel: fijn om de thema's van Bassani eens heel anders verbeeld te zien, een mooie aanvulling op de rest van het werk. Op zichzelf staand minder aan te raden (maar ook dan is er genoeg moois te vinden)

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 3 out of 5]

☆ ☆ ☆ ½