How far or how close from me are you? Tell me, so that I know whether you’ll close your eyes, when I kiss you now.
Friday, 17 February 2012 @07:41
"How far or how close from me are you, Ingeborg? Tell me, so that I know whether you’ll close your eyes, when I kiss you now".
(Paul Celan)
This is why I just close my eyes, each time your name blinks on my phone. Your words: a whisper, a caress, the lightest of kisses.
Thanks to Thamara, who loves letters, postcards, words on paper, words that travel long, before reaching you; thanks to her, here I am, reading Celan’s words from 1949. Words to Ingeborg Bachmann, the woman he wrote to for 19 years. Words of poets. But read how strong, how powerful his words are in German, the language of their correspondence:
"Wie weit oder wie nah bist Du, Ingeborg? Sag es mir, damit ich weiß, ob Du die Augen schließt, wenn ich Dich jetzt küsse".
You never left me, I know. You’ve only set up home inside my dreams.
Friday, 10 February 2012 @09:50
"Where do people go when they die?
Somewhere down below or in the sky?
I can’t be sure, said Grandad, but it seems
They simply set up home inside our dreams"
(Jeanne Willis)
And you never left me, I know. You've only set up home inside my dreams.
Jeanne Willis writes stories for children. But these verses are taken from a poetry anthology for grown ups: "Staying alive", Bloodaxe Books.
Life is being kidnapped by reality.
Friday, 3 February 2012 @09:51
"Life is being kidnapped by reality".
(Olaf Nicolai)
And I hope that my hijacker it's you.
Today I stole my Buongiorno from a friend, Olaf Nicolai, an artist: one of the big names of conceptual art in the world. I normally don't understand much of what he's doing (conceptual art is not my cup of tea, hèlas), but he has just surprised me with a beautiful, poetical work in Roma. It's a show in the Giorgio de Chirico house, right in piazza di Spagna, almost frozen in time (he died in 1978): his books, his furniture, his paintings, even his bottle of Punt e Mes, his favourite drink. A young art curator has invited artists from all over the world to interact with de Chirico and his work. And Olaf Nicolai, well, he invites us to write: he put an old Olivetti 22 in de Chirico's studio. And the installation is you: you sit at de Chirico's table, you write a letter (if you're still able to type, that is) on the old Olivetti, on monogrammed paper, and de Chirico (the foundation) sends the letter for you. Very, very metaphysical, as he was.... But very poetical too.
The show is called "D'après Giorgio" and is open till the end of 2012:
http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/it/
If you're in Roma, go and write a letter. More metaphysical, nowadays, than an sms.
Letters and handbags.
Friday, 27 January 2012 @07:14
"My mother’s old leather handbag,
crowded with letters she carried
all through the war. The smell
of my mother’s handbag: mints
and lipstick and Coty powder.
The look of those letters, softened
and worn at the edges, opened,
read, and refolded so often.
Letters from my father. Odour
of leather and powder, which ever
since has meant womanliness,
and love, and anguish, and war."
(Ruth Fainlight)
And I wonder what my handbag tells of me.
Today’s poetry is by Ruth Fainlight, born in 1931 in New York; from the anthology "Staying alive", Bloodaxe Books.
But you knew there would always be the spring.
Friday, 20 January 2012 @11:01
"But you knew there would always be the spring".
(Hemingway)
The promise of spring. A promise I believe in.
(In the depth of winter, I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer. Hmmm…. No, ok, that’s Camus. To be more precise, it goes: "'Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été". And to be even more precise, I’ve never read Hemingway’s books. But I loved the way this sentence came to me: a reader of my blog, Ursenna, wrote that years ago, in Ravenna, she found an old copy of Moveable Feast in her hotel room, and there was only this sentence underlined: "But you knew there would always be the spring". Like a message of hope, a wishful thinking; a smile from a stranger that changes our day. What we all need. A promise of happiness and spring).
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Yes, I write. Yes, I believe in the magic of words. That’s why you’ll find me here, every Friday, adventurously translating my column – the same that appears every day on City, an Italian free press newspaper – in english. Or maybe “globish”? May Jane Austen and Elizabeth von Arnim, my favourite writers, protect me!
I write about fashion, books, design, but only in Italian and for the Italian press. If you’re brave enough to dabble in a language other than English, I’d rather you’d buy my books (the first one translated into German, the second in Slovenian).
I believe Piazza Unità in Trieste, where I was born, is the most romantic square in the world. (And yes, it’s in Italy, proudly facing the sea: check it on a map). I love roses in every form (even if they come as Valentino bags or Caovilla flats). And, of course, I do love my blog, expecially now that I can carry it around on my iPhone.