Poetry
Variable Star
Stella variabile
Vittorio Sereni · 1981
Synopsis
Forty-six poems divided into five untitled sections. The poet takes up the motifs of his previous collection, friendship, the role of poetry, post-economic-miracle Italy, war and captivity, and adds silence, illness, death and emptiness, in a tense dialogue with the dead. Familiar places, Milan, Luino, Bocca di Magra, stand alongside Toronto, Rome or Venice, in a deliberately dissonant language, ranging from irony to anger.
Context
The collection first appeared in 1980, in a limited edition not for sale, of one hundred and thirty copies, illustrated with lithographs by Ruggero Savinio, then from Garzanti, dated 1981, enlarged from thirty to forty-six poems and reorganised. It was the author's last book of verse. Philippe Renard and Bernard Simeone translated it into French, in a bilingual edition, published by Verdier in 1987, with a preface by Franco Fortini; Luigi Bonaffini translated it into English under the title “Variable Star”.
Who it is for
A short collection, to be read slowly, section by section, in a dense and elliptical language.
Prizes and reception
According to Franco Fortini, quoted by Le Monde, the author's poetry measures life and death in their everyday forms.
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