MONDAY 27 SEPTEMBER
HOUSE
ANDREA CORTELLESSA
&
ANDREA ZANZOTTO
Abitare, Zanzotto. A verbal edifice of this magnitude cannot simply be "read". Either you stay out or you decide to enter. All hope is given up, then, of never really getting out of it. Each text, according to Zanzotto, is a place. Even if dedicated to the plein air of the landscape, that is, each text is a circumscribed space, a hallucination of the outside, a paradisiacal strip. An Elysium that swallows, an amnion that envelops, an embrace that embalms. Pomerius who feeds us, and at the same time suffocates us. Premises to the house, wrote the poet when he broke up from the family and the house of origin, and conceived those left a decade ago. Collapse and pomerius, he later wrote in Fosfeni. Flashes in closed eyes, in the deepest hollows. One day he stumbles into love believed to be lost and picked up like spit, between auriculas and illuminations. And it collapses back into the infinite pomerius. And we go back to live, Zanzotto.
andrea cortellessa
Literary critic
Andrea Cortellessa (Rome, 1968) critic and essayist. He teaches Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Roma Tre; in 2018 he held the «De Sanctis chair» at the ETH Zurich. He has published essays, edited texts and made radio and television broadcasts, theatrical and musical performances. His latest book is Andrea Zanzotto. The song in the earth (Laterza 2021). He is in the editorial office of «verri» and collaborates with «Alias», «Il Sole 24 ore», «Tuttolibri», «Doppiozero», «Le parole e le cose2» and other publications.
ANDREW
ZANZOTTO
Poet
Andrea Zanzotto was born on 10 October 1921 and died on 18 October 2011 in Pieve di Soligo, in the province of Treviso. After a small group of texts published in Milan in 1938, and the traumatic involvement in the civil war (militating in the Mazzini Brigades following the "non-violent partisan" Toni Adami), his editorial debut dates back to 1951 with the collection Behind the landscape published from Mondadori: who will remain his publisher until the last book, Conglomerati, published in 2009. His works are collected in the "Meridiano" of selected Poems and Prose, published in 1999, and in the "Oscars" of Writings on literature (2001 ) and All poems (2011); on the occasion of the centenary of the birth Mondadori publishes the scattered poems of Erratici and a notebook of Translations transplantation imitations; while Premesse all'abitazione and other prospecting is the title of the "cornerstone" dedicated to him by Aragno, edited by Andrea Cortellessa. For a long time a teacher and principal in the schools of the Heimat, he also worked as a translator and editorial consultant: working continuously, especially in recent years, in defense of the environment threatened by pollution and building speculation. He is among the greatest poets of his time.