Poetry
The Bedroom
La camera da letto
Attilio Bertolucci · 1984
Synopsis
A long narrative poem, which the author presented as a family story in the old manner, traces the history of his own family, generation after generation, down to himself. It blends chronicle, biography, diary and the tone of epic, and attends to the days, weeks and seasons of an ordinary domestic life, raised without emphasis to the dignity of the poem.
Context
The poem appeared with Garzanti in two volumes, the first in 1984, the second in 1988, before being collected in a single volume, with a preface by Nicola Gardini. It earned the author another Viareggio prize. Pietro Citati wrote that no poet had yet dared to devote to his own family a poem as long as the Odyssey. In English, Luigi Bonaffini produced a bilingual edition under the title “The Bedroom”.
Who it is for
A very long poem in free verse, which reads like a long narrative, without seeking a plot: its subject is the passing of time in a family.
Prizes and reception
According to the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, the book won its author his second Viareggio Prize.
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