Search

This history of Ladin literature provides for the first time a comprehensive overview of 230 Dolomite-Ladin authors from the beginnings of Ladin literature (17th century) up to contemporary Ladin writing (2012). Each article on the authors contains a detailed biography, a complete catalog of works and a review of the oeuvre based on a representative sample of original texts, also translated into German. This new standard reference of Rhaeto-Romance Studies is completed by introductory chapters on the beginnings and the development of Ladin literature, its genres and themes, the history of research, the presence of Ladin literature in the Ladin-speaking media, the presence of Ladinia in German and Italian literature as well as a name index with as many as 3,000 entries., Diese Geschichte der ladinischen Literatur liefert erstmals einen umfassenden Überblick über 230 dolomitenladinische Autoren von den Anfängen des ladinischen Schrifttums (17. Jh.) bis zum zeitgenössischen Literaturschaffen (2012). Die Artikel zu den einzelnen Autoren enthalten jeweils eine ausführliche Biografie, ein vollständiges Werkverzeichnis und eine Besprechung des OEuvres anhand einer möglichst repräsentativen Auswahl von Originaltexten mit deutscher Übersetzung. Vervollständigt wird dieses neue Standardwerk der Rätoromanistik durch die einleitenden Kapitel zu den Anfängen und der Entwicklung der ladinischen Literatur, zu ihren Gattungen und Themen, zur Forschungsgeschichte, zum Vorkommen der ladinischen Literatur in den ladinischsprachigen Medien, zur Präsenz Ladiniens in der deutschen und italienischen Literatur sowie durch den abschließenden Namensindex mit knapp 3.000 Einträgen.

If it intends to enhance awareness and to stimulate intellectual and cultural maturity, literature cannot ignore – and when it survives over time does not ignore – the great conquests of philosophical thought and the fundamental stages marked by the progress of scientific knowledge. A scientific result and a poetic result both represent an internally-ordered fragment of reality which moves and stirs us by the intrinsic beauty of the image that it evokes and its significance at the level of meaning. Both scientific and literary languages, each in its own way, tend to the decodification and representation of the external world. Imagination, intuition and rationality come together in creativity, in the construction of scientific models and of literary styles.

From a tender age Giuseppe Dessí was in the habit of entrusting to private writings the unquiet story of his formation, recording against the background of significant vital abodes the events of his life, his reading and his encounters … Franca Linari, who has for some time been studying the relations between the writing of diaries and narrative composition, after the critical edition of the Diaries 1926 –1931 and 1931–1948 (Roma, Jouvence, 1993 and 1999), is now proposing this new collection, philologically impeccable and attentively annotated, which makes it possible to reappraise years subjectively rich in changes and in artistic creation (in the form of stories, work for the theatre, collaboration with important journals), in the cultural and political climate of post-war Italy.

Faulkner and Hemingway can probably be considered the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. In the mid 1960s, Fabbri entrusted the task of addressing their work and style to the militant critic Ruggero Jacobbi, who had shortly returned to Europe after a period of voluntary exile in Brazil. The two resulting volumes became pendant pieces in a unified meditation on the motives and movements of true poetry. Having become practically impossible to get hold of, Firenze University Press is now republishing them in the same format, preceded by an introduction by Nicola Turi. Thus the critical opus of Jacobbi is enriched with another bibliographical entry, made available once more through a painstaking operation of retrieval promoted by Anna Dolfi and furthered through the kind assistance of Ruggero's wife Mara Jacobbi. The portrait that emerges continues to be that of an intellectual gifted with extraordinary versatility, capable of delivering unforgettable critical insights on every page.

Soviet society has always been characterised by a marked institutional censorship which, in the face of the power of the written word, has set in motion a series of highly repressive institutions. However, censorship does not necessarily exert its power through forms of coercion; there are also approaches that are implemented through a complex network of cultural institutions that can "produce" society, expunging concepts and attitudes that are a threat to the system and at the same time masterminding a series of organisms designed to forge orthodox behaviour and mindframes, to the extent that the role of the external censor often becomes almost superfluous, being replaced by the "censor of the soul". This book seeks to bring to the fore this second type of censorship, albeit without neglecting the complex repressive machinery set in motion by Soviet power. Press Review: Il Giornale, L'INTERVISTA - MARIA ZALAMBANI: «Così Breznev censurò persino Sartre» a cura di Giuseppe Ghini, 19/04/2010

Girolamo Borsieri (Como 1588-1629), a versatile intellectual of ranging interests, was greatly appreciated by his contemporaries for the breadth of his literary, artistic and historical knowledge and for his witty and laconic style. Among his admirers were Federico Borromeo and Giovan Battista Marino. In the twentieth century his intellectual standing was acknowledged in works of art history criticism, which were followed by other contributions of literary, linguistic and musicological interest. Despite this, even now many of his works appear to have been somewhat neglected. Starting from the writer's own reflections and the suggestions offered by the critics, the present work proposes a key to the reading of Borsieri as a man, an intellectual and a theorist. It is a monograph on Girolamo Borsieri, constructed largely upon first-hand manuscript and autograph materials that make it possible to sketch his biographical profile and the why and how of his participation in the cultural and religious renewal of Lombard society in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Borsieri's writings are presented, and their critical reception traced. His sacred madrigals – Il Salterio Affetti Spirituali – are also published here for the first time, from the autograph.

Despite being recognised as an exponent of Slovenian culture, the polymath Johann Weichard Valvasor has to date been undervalued in terms of his direct contribution to the aesthetic and literary consciousness of his homeland. He has been considered above all as a source of material for the works of others, while studies of broader scope underlining his original contribution in the sphere of Carniolan narrative, albeit in German, are still lacking. The present study, based on an attentive reading of the four volumes that compose his principal work, Die Ehre dess Hertzogthums Crain, seeks to identify all the passages that can be considered narrative units, numbering them progressively, cataloguing them by type and providing a brief summary of each. The corpus thus obtained – recorded in the appendix – has been described and appraised. Finally, individual narrative units have been compared with stories or popular songs of analogous content. The work is concluded by an evaluation of Valvasor's narrative gifts, setting the writer in a new light within the cultural and literary history of Slovenia.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man presents a non-linear compositional progression, characterised by continual fractures, bifurcations and revisions; the genetic dossier includes pre-compositional notes and works that were never published, such as Epiphanies, A Portrait of the Artist and Stephen Hero. The genetic analysis of this long process of writing, the documentation of which covers a period of around fourteen years, reveals not only how the Portrait was conceived and composed, but also Joyce's evolution as a writer from the very first evidence of his literary activity. This new perspective on Joyce's mode of composition opens the way to a range of potential interpretations of the individual texts, as well as methodological and theoretical insights regarding genetic criticism.

Twenty years ago a unique figure in the history of our country returned dramatically to the world of the "drowned", one of the spectral "saved" who had found the strength to testify the dramas of the twentieth century: Primo Levi. On the twentieth anniversary of his death, Firenze University Press has decided to revive his lesson with a tribute that is not intended as a celebration, but rather as a pause for refection in which we can listen again to the words of this great writer, dissected and scrutinised the world over, generating germs of memory hopefully as universal as the mathematical and geometrical signs and the chemical formulas he so loved. Voci dal mondo per Primo Levi. In memoria, per la memoria edited by Luigi Dei, a lecturer in physical chemistry at the University of Florence, consists of fifteen short essays contributed by a polyhedric group of writers from various parts of the world and of different educational and professional backgrounds. Review: La Rassegna Mensile di Israel Interview with Ustation.it

Kiev has always revealed a surprising capacity for assimilation, giving rise over time to multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-cultural contexts of various types. Thinking of the "Kiev text" leads inevitably to consideration of the other emblematic text of the Ukrainian identity, the no less composite reality of Lviv. This publication contains the contributions presented at a Conference (Milan, February 2007) addressed to the "cultural text" of Kiev and Lviv. The authors are specialists with different cultural profiles, and the book is of a deliberately inter-disciplinary character. In view of the richness and variety of the information it is offered, within the Italian and international context, as a useful source even for the non-specialist public, and is one of a very small number of books dedicated to Ukraine available in Italian. Clearly, the arguments addressed represent only a tiny part of the vast spectrum of issues and questions inherent to the specificity and plurality of Kiev and Lviv. The hope is that the seed sewn here will grow into further fruitful interest.

Recent years have seen the publication of a great deal of the work of Ruggero Jacobbi, a legendary figure of Italian twentieth-century culture, thanks to a praiseworthy retrieval of unpublished material conserved in the «A. Bonsanti» contemporary archive of the Gabinetto «G.P. Vieusseux». However, despite so many new pages of poetry and translation, what was still lacking was the writer's voice. The voice which, thanks to the painstaking work of Eleonora Pancani, we can now read (if not hear), as with characteristic dexterity it intermingles verses and music, literature and theatre, politics and entertainment. Ruggero Jacobbi alla radio presents the transcription of several radio programmes of the 70s featuring the genial culture of this multi-faceted intellectual. Jacobbi entertains his audience, discorsing on literary history, the figurative arts and opera, quoting poetry, discussing plays, mingling observations on Goldoni, Pirandello, Bontempelli, Savinio, Pessoa and García Lorca in an engaging anecdotal style that involves the cinema, the theatre and literature, while the great figures of tradition and recent history are interwoven with reminiscences of private life.

The book collects the interventions at the seminar "Images of Italy and Europe in literature and travel documentation in the 18th and 19th centuries", held at the Department of Historical and Geographical Studies of the University of Florence in 1999-2001. It addresses the problem of the creation of borders (political, administrative, linguistic, religious) in Europe and in Brazil from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century, with particular regard to the period between the 17th and 18th centuries. The theme of the constitution of borders is a classic of the relationship between history and geography and involves the entire range of human sciences, enabling the comparison with international research results.

This book offers a portrait of Leningrad in the 1960s, of its cultural life in those years permeated by a great hope for change. Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, is the heir and witness of the rise and fall of the 'Soviet hope' for an authentic change, its evolution and its inevitable decline. Through an analysis of the poems of Iosif Brodskij, Stefania Pavan maps out the process that led the intelligencija of Leningrad to disclose their claims, to give shape to the intellectual conscience of the city, and that subsequently constrained them to adopt the opposite approach, concealing – in a semi-visible space and in the myriad modes of the 'samizdat' – the values, names and images of the hope of change. Through an analysis of the linguistic peculiarities of The dregs , one of the 'classic' short stories of Boris Ivanov, Simonetta Signorini proposes a micro-history of the Russian language in the 60s, to which the study carried out by Ljudmila Zubova on the poems of Viktor Sosnora makes a useful contribution. The essay by Irina Dvizova highlights an aspect of the culture of Leningrad that can be considered extremely topical, in terms both of argument and as a method of reading literary history: the relation between the city and the Dostoevskij museum., Il volume propone un ritratto di Leningrado degli anni Sessanta, della sua vita culturale nell'Unione Sovietica, in quegli anni attraversata da una forte speranza di cambiamento. Leningrado, oggi San Pietroburgo, è erede e testimone della parabola della 'speranza sovietica' di un mutamento autentico, del suo evolversi e inevitabile esaurirsi. Stefania Pavan, attraverso l'analisi dei versi di Iosif Brodskij, disegna il percorso che ha condotto l'intelligencija di Leningrado nel 'disvelare' le proprie istanze, nel dare forma alla coscienza intellettuale della Città, e che l'ha vista costretta ad adottare successivamente la via inversa, a 'celare' in uno spazio semivisibile e tramite infinite modalità del 'samizdat', i valori, i nomi e le immagini della speranza del cambiamento. Con l'analisi delle particolarità linguistiche di La feccia, uno dei racconti 'classici' di Boris Ivanov, Simonetta Signorini propone una micro-storia della lingua russa negli anni Sessanta, alla quale lo studio di Ljudmila Zubova condotto sui versi di Viktor Sosnora dà un utile contributo. Il saggio di Irina Dvizova mette in evidenza un aspetto della cultura di Leningrado che è da considerare molto attuale sia come argomento che come metodo di lettura della storia letteraria: il rapporto fra la città e il Museo Dostoevskij.

In the critical literature on Georg Büchner this monograph represents the first organic work devoted to the subject of the body – a pivotal issue for an understanding of his writings. The book investigates the significance assumed by the human body in three spheres of analysis: the political, the erotic and the scientific-philosophical. In the latter area the analysis hinges on the relations between Büchner's work and the writings of the three principal French materialist philosophers of the eighteenth century: La Mettrie, d'Holbach and Helvétius. The appraisal of this relation illustrates not only Büchner's appropriation of the legacy of ideas of French materialism, but also moments in which he satirises, sarcastically criticises or outrightly rejects certain central aspects of this vision of man and nature. From this analysis and the study of the political significance of the body and the erotic aspect, it emerges that the body, understood as Leib – human body, lived and living, the hub of subjective perception and experience – not only has a crucial function in the figurative layout of the literary works, but is also the focal point of Büchner's view of man, thus assuming a central importance both in the three areas examined and in the more strictly aesthetic sphere. This book won the Premio Associazione Sigismondo Malatesta "Opera Critica" - Letteratura, Teatro e Arti dello spettacolo - Edizione 2009., Nella letteratura critica su Georg Büchner questa monografia rappresenta il primo lavoro organico dedicato alla tematica del corpo – tematica centrale per la comprensione degli scritti büchneriani. Il volume indaga la valenza assunta dal corpo umano in tre ambiti di analisi: quello politico, quello erotico e quello scientifico-filosofico. In quest'ultimo ambito, l'analisi verte sul rapporto tra l'opera büchneriana e gli scritti dei tre principali filosofi materialisti del Settecento francese: La Mettrie, d'Holbach e Helvétius. L'indagine di tale rapporto evidenzia non solo momenti di appropriazione del patrimonio di idee del materialismo francese, da parte di Büchner, ma anche momenti di satira, critica sarcastica o aperto rifiuto di alcuni aspetti centrali di quella visione dell'uomo e della natura. Da tale analisi e dallo studio della valenza politica del corpo e della tematica erotica emerge come il corpo, inteso come Leib – corpo umano, vissuto e vivente, centro di percezione ed esperienza soggettiva – non abbia solo una funzione centrale nell'impianto figurativo delle opere letterarie, ma costituisca anche il punto focale dello sguardo büchneriano sull'uomo, assumendo così un'importanza centrale sia nei tre ambiti esaminati che in quello prettamente estetico. Questo volume ha vinto il Premio Associazione Sigismondo Malatesta "Opera Critica" - Letteratura, Teatro e Arti dello spettacolo - Edizione 2009.

Go Southwest, Old Man, a sort of personal remake of 'Go West, Young Man', the founding episteme of the American nineteenth century, conciliates these two souls (well, not to be pretentious, let's simply say two sides) that have actually always lived in harmony. This is a book generated by a quarter of a century spent wandering around the canyons and deserts of Arizona, Colorado, Utah and, above all New Mexico, with a view to penetrating the by now universal legend of the West, approaching the cultures (English, Hispanic and native American), and mastering the literature. The slant is composite: melding the scholarly with the informative and the travel journal, and the writing is composite too, because the book speaks English and Italian. It talks about cinema (lots of John Ford) and about detective stories, the most popular genre here, about visual arts and Latino folklore, about the legend of the West, the so-called 'Soul of the Southwest', and the kitsch style of Santa Fe. And it talks about (and with) some of the greatest writers that the Southwest has spawned: Rudolfo Anaya, Stanley Crawford, John Nichols and Hillerman. So what we have is a first-hand experience of the Southwest; where the ego is not entrenched within a precise disciplinary role but opens up – and exposes itself – to the thrilling risk of the discovery that can renew it., Go Southwest, Old Man, sorta di remake personale di 'Go West, Young Man', l'episteme fondante dell'Ottocento americano, concilia queste due anime (parola grossa: diciamo, queste due facce) che poi hanno sempre vissuto bene insieme. È un libro che nasce da un quarto di secolo passato a girare per i canyon e i deserti di Arizona, Colorado, Utah, e soprattutto New Mexico: per entrare nella mitologia ormai universale del West, avvicinarmi a quelle culture (la anglo, l'ispanica, quelle nativo americane), e far propria quella letteratura. Il taglio è composito: accademico, divulgativo, da libro di viaggio; e composita la scrittura, perché il libro parla in inglese e in italiano. Parla di cinema (molto John Ford) e di giallistica, il genere qui più frequentato; di arti visive, di folklore latino, del mito del West, della cosiddetta 'Soul of the Southwest', del kitsch stile Santa Fe. E parla di (e con) alcuni dei maggiori scrittori del Southwest: Rudolfo Anaya, Stanley Crawford, John Nichols, Hillerman. Dunque un Southwest vissuto in prima persona: dove l'io non si trincera in un preciso ruolo disciplinare ma si apre – si espone – al rischio inebriante della scoperta che lo rinnova.

W. B. Yeats e la cultura italiana examines the "Italianism" of William Butler Yeats and the popularity of the Irish poet in Italian poetry and criticism. Appraising the presence and evocative influence of "learned Italian things" on the work of the Irish poet, through the study of his letters and as illustrated by the library conserved by his daughter Anne, and with constant references to the texts themselves, the Italian influences most evidently present in the work of the Irish Nobel winner are analysed and discussed. This first section of the book presents in its entirety the largely unpublished correspondence between Years and the philosopher Mario Manlio Rossi. Subsequently, observing the influence and the fascination exerted by the work of Yeats on Italian poets such as Montale, Solmi and Giudici, who even translated some of Yeats' poems, and Lucio Piccolo, who also had a brief epistolary exchange with the Irish poet, this too still partially unpublished, we arrive at a critical examination of the Italian reception of Yeats' works. W. B. Yeats e la cultura italiana is rounded off by an annotated bibliography of the translations and works of criticism which represents an important overview of the penetration of Yeats' work in Italy (1905-2005)., W. B. Yeats e la cultura italiana prende in esame l''italianismo' di William Butler Yeats e la fortuna del poeta irlandese nella poesia e nella critica italiana. Verificando la presenza, l'influenza e la suggestione delle «learned Italian things» sull'opera del poeta irlandese, attraverso la ricognizione delle sue letture così come si evince dalla biblioteca custodita dalla figlia Anne, e grazie a un costante riferimento ai testi, vengono analizzati e discussi gli influssi italiani più marcatamente presenti nella produzione del Nobel irlandese. Questa prima parte del volume presenta, nella sua interezza, il carteggio in gran parte inedito tra Yeats e il filosofo Mario Manlio Rossi. Osservando successivamente l'influenza e la fascinazione esercitata dall'opera yeatsiana sui poeti italiani Montale, Solmi e Giudici, che di Yeats tradussero alcune poesie, e Lucio Piccolo, che con il poeta irlandese intrattenne un breve scambio epistolare, anch'esso ancora parzialmente inedito, si giunge ad una disamina critica della ricezione italiana dell'opera di Yeats. W. B. Yeats e la cultura italiana si chiude con una bibliografia ragionata delle traduzioni e dei contributi critici che costituisce un importante quadro di riferimento della penetrazione dell'opera di Yeats in Italia (1905-2005).

Da Blake a Yeats. Sistemi simbolici e costruzioni poetiche is an investigation into the – from many aspects decisive – influence that the symbolic system and visionary poetry of the great English romantic William Blake had on the imagination of William Butler Yeats from his earliest youth. This authentic poetic and visionary apprenticeship in the work of Blake, which culminated in 1893 in the edition in three volumes accompanied by an exhaustive introduction and commentary: The Works of William Blake Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical, was decisive for the formation of the symbolic system that was to nourish all Yeats' poetry. Adopting an approach to the reading that unfurls from an initial analysis of Blake's poetic corpus, and hence from the mythical-symbolic pantheon that surfaces from this, the book then traces Yeats' initial particular hodos chameliontos, profoundly marked by magical and esoteric experiences, subsequently entering into the meanders of the aesthetic, philosophical and poetic interrelations between the symbolic system of William Blake and that of W. B. Yeats. Da Blake a Yeats illuminates how The Works of William Blake represents the first genuine formalisation of Blakeian and esoteric teachings within Yeats' system, while also representing, for Yeats himself, a keystone in his vision of Blake and an inexhaustible spring for the evolution of his symbolic system and his imagination., Da Blake a Yeats. Sistemi simbolici e costruzioni poetiche è una indagine sull'influsso, per molti aspetti determinante, che il sistema simbolico e la poesia visionaria del grande romantico inglese, William Blake, ebbero sull'immaginazione di William Butler Yeats fin dalla sua giovinezza. Decisivo ai fini della formazione del sistema simbolico yeatsiano che avrebbe nutrito tutta la sua poesia, fu per lui quel vero e proprio apprendistato poetico e visionario sull'opera di Blake, che si concluse nel 1893 con una edizione in tre volumi, riccamente introdotta e commentata: The Works of William Blake Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical. Adottando un percorso di lettura che si snoda a partire dall'analisi del corpus poetico blakiano e quindi dal pantheon mitico-simbolico che da esso affiora, per poi attraversare il primo particolare hodos chameliontos yeatsiano, profondamente segnato da esperienze magiche ed esoteriche, entrando quindi nei meandri del rapporto estetico, filosofico e poetico tra il sistema simbolico di William Blake e quello di W. B. Yeats, Da Blake a Yeats mette in luce come Works of William Blake costituisca la prima vera formalizzazione degli insegnamenti blakiani ed esoterici nel sistema yeatsiano; quanto costituisca, per Yeats stesso, una chiave di volta nella sua visione di Blake e una fonte inesauribile per lo sviluppo del suo sistema simbolico e della sua immaginazione in atto.

This volume consists of a collection of essays by five German scholars from various Italian universities – R. Calabrese, R. Caruzzi, M. Fancelli, L. Perrone Capano, R. Svandrlik (editor) – and N. Šlibar from the University of Lubiana, that meld formal research and musical pace and structure with the pitiless radicalism and the consistency of the issues addressed, first and foremost the oppression inherent to power relations. In the commitment to reveal the mechanisms of manipulation, from the most obvious to the most subtle, the author herself becomes a manipulator of language of exceptional creativity and daring, with the guiding thread of the gender perspective. The volume is completed by the translation of the speech made by the Austrian writer when she was awarded the Nobel prize in 2004, and by a bibliography (edited by Claudia Vitale), focused in particular on the reception in Italy and on the scarcity of Italian scientific studies., Elfriede Jelinek. Una prosa altra, un altro teatro è una raccolta di saggi, di cinque germaniste di varie università italiane, R. Calabrese, R. Caruzzi, M. Fancelli, L. Perrone Capano, R. Svandrlik (curatrice), e N. Šlibar dell'Università di Lubiana. Le autrici evidenziano come ricerca formale, struttura e andamento musicale si coniugano con la radicalità spietata e con la coerenza dei temi, in primo luogo con la denuncia della sopraffazione all'interno dei rapporti di potere. Nell'impegno a svelare i meccanismi manipolatori, da quelli più evidenti a quelli più sottili, l'autrice diventa essa stessa una manipolatrice di linguaggio dall'eccezionale creatività e audacia, con il filo conduttore del punto di vista di genere. Il volume si chiude con la traduzione del discorso che la scrittrice austriaca tenne in occasione del conferimento del Nobel nel 2004, e con una bibliografia (a cura di Claudia Vitale) che dà conto in particolare della ricezione in Italia e della scarsità di studi scientifici in ambito italiano.

"Saggi" brings together the results of the research activity carried out on the PhD course in English and American Studies (Department of Modern Philology, University of Florence). The contributions relate to the theatre, narrative, poetry, autobiographical writing and correspondence, and range from the Renaissance up to the present day. The heterogeneity of the material illustrates the free choice of the young academics who, in the climate of collaboration that was established, decided to address the technical and editorial aspects of the book as a team in the open access editorial workshop of the Department., "Saggi" raccoglie i risultati dell'attività di ricerca svolta all'interno del Dottorato di Anglistica e Americanistica (Dipartimento di Filologia Moderna, Università di Firenze). I contributi toccano il teatro, la narrativa, la poesia, la scrittura autobiografica e la corrispondenza, spaziano dal Rinascimento alla contemporaneità. L'eterogeneità del materiale testimonia la libera scelta dei giovani studiosi i quali, nel clima di collaborazione che si è creato, hanno deciso di curare l'aspetto tecnico redazionale del volume collettivamente, nel Laboratorio editoriale open access del Dipartimento.

Ah, if only I were not so alive and so crowded with things, what a book I would write […] but there's so little time […]. There's lots of time to map them out, that's true, but it's not enough. This is the voice of the protagonist of Convalescenza, one of the stories in this book that – thanks to the painstaking editorial attention of Silvia Fantacci – presents the prose written by Ruggero Jacobbi starting from his precocious youth through to the Sixties. The nine sections, recording fragments of memories, vestiges of mystery and bitter solitude, meander between cinema and theatre, revoke the faces of the war, recall the figures of writers and friends, suggest new approaches to reading. The evocation of Brazil, where Jacobbi spent the most important fifteen years of his life, is not lacking: a country "so big as to drive you crazy" with its magical rites, its rhythm, its culture (the music of Villa-Lobos, Vinícius de Morais and Dorival Caymmi and the poetry of his friend Murilo Mendes). The meticulous notes and the appendix at the end of the book illustrate the history of each text and offer a reconstruction of the projects for novels and stories that were left unfinished and have now finally been transferred from the mind and desk of the writer into book form.

This book focuses upon an aspect which has been little investigated to date in the poetics of Iosif Brodskij: the rich intertextual network that links his verses to classical literature. Brodskij's intertext never appears as imitation but rather as mimesis, like an inescapable mediation - at times concealed by the presence of cultures diachronically closer, the Russian in the first place - strongly impregnated with meaning and teaching: "(As for creation, the pen has created very little). / But how much light it casts in the night, / the ink, merging with the darkness!". This book proposes moments of reflection on the intense and nuanced relation that connects Brodskij's poetics with the poetics of Aristotle, and the subtle but equally strong links of Brodskij's idea of democracy with that of the organisation of government in Plato's Republic. Pursuing an historic approach, the book delineates the characteristics of Brodskij as a reader of the classics and, at the same time, as a person intimately involved, at an individual and collective level, in the events of Russian culture. In Brodskij's dialogical approach, in particular in relation to ancient classical culture, the lineaments of the poet emerge clearly. Considered in their globality, these reveal inspiration, thought (profound, and strongly impregnated with philosophy), moral rigour (ironic and self-ironising), the renunciation of the display of feelings, and the tension towards an autobiographical writing that is universalised and externalised, a strong and constant link with the narration of myths and, in a manner that is increasingly marked over the time of his life and work, a progressive prevalence of the signs of the classical authors., Lezioni di poesia mette in luce un aspetto finora poco indagato nella poetica di Iosif Brodskij, la ricca rete intertestuale che lega i suoi versi alle letterature classiche. L'intertesto brodskiano mai appare come "imitazione", piuttosto come "mimesis", come una mediazione, talvolta celata dalla presenza di culture diacronicamente più vicine, in primis quella russa ineludibile, fortemente impregnata di senso e insegnamento: «(Creando, ben poco la penna ha creato). / Ma quanta luce dà nella notte, / con il buio fondendosi, l'inchiostro!». Lezioni di poesia propone momenti di riflessioni sull'intenso e sfumato rapporto che lega poetica brodskiana e poetica aristotelica, e sui sottili ma altrettanto forti nessi dell'idea di democrazia in Brodskij con quella dell'organizzazione di governo nella Repubblica di Platone. Tramite un percorso storico il volume delinea i tratti di Brodskij, lettore dei classici e, contemporaneamente, persona intimamente coinvolta, sul piano individuale e collettivo, nelle vicende della cultura russa. Nel "porsi dialogico" di Brodskij, in particolare nei confronti dell'antica cultura classica, si fanno emergere chiari i lineamenti del poeta, che nel loro insieme evocano ispirazione, pensiero (profondo e fortemente impregnato di filosofia), rigore morale (ironico e autoironico), rinuncia all'esibizione dei sentimenti, tensione a una scrittura autobiografica "universalizzata" e "estraniata", forte e costante legame con la narrazione dei miti e, in maniera sempre più rimarcabile nel tempo dell'esistenza e dell'opera, un progressivo prevalere dei "segni" degli autori classici.