Neruda

"A questa persecuzione manca il terrore."

Raccontare la vita di Pablo Neruda senza cadere nella mera agiografia, rendere omaggio al Poeta e alla sua opera senza soffermarsi soltanto sulla sua produzione più sensuale e sanguigna, universalmente conosciuta anche alle orecchie di chi è meno avvezzo alla poesia, bensì affidandosi alla più scatenata sperimentazione: un semplice biopic non sarebbe stato sufficiente per contenere l'ambiziosa visione di Pablo Larrain, regista cileno determinato a esaltare il legame fra l'anima del suo Paese e quella del suo cittadino più illustre e amato in una contaminatio di generi che passa per il noir e la detective story con un tocco di romanzo picaresco, per generare con cuore e intelligenza non solo un  sentito omaggio a Neruda e all'incanto della sua Patria disgraziata, ma anche alla capacità dell'essere umano di liberare il potere del racconto oltre il mezzo che vorrebbe limitarlo, trascendendo la parola scritta e persino la duttilità del mezzo cinematografico per salvarci dal tedio di una quotidianità che rischia di divorarci e distruggerci da dentro.

Poet's Corner No. 29

When weary with the long day's care,

And earthly change from pain to pain,

And lost, and ready to despair,

Thy kind voice calls me back again:

Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,

While then canst speak with such a tone!

So hopeless is the world without;

The world within I doubly prize;

Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,

And cold suspicion never rise;

Where thou, and I, and Liberty,

Have undisputed sovereignty.

What matters it, that all around

Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,

If but within our bosom's bound

We hold a bright, untroubled sky,

Warm with ten thousand mingled rays

Of suns that know no winter days?

Reason, indeed, may oft complain

For Nature's sad reality,

And tell the suffering heart how vain

Its cherished dreams must always be;

And Truth may rudely trample down

The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:

But thou art ever there, to bring

The hovering vision back, and breathe

New glories o'er the blighted spring,

And call a lovelier Life from Death.

And whisper, with a voice divine,

Of real worlds, as bright as thine.

I trust not to thy phantom bliss,

Yet, still, in evening's quiet hour,

With never-failing thankfulness,

I welcome thee, Benignant Power;

Sure solacer of human cares,

And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!

To Imagination

Emily Brontë

Poet's Corner No. 28

Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé

Deux formes ont tout à l'heure passé.

Leurs yeux sont morts et leurs lèvres sont molles,

Et l'on entend à peine leurs paroles.

Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé

Deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.

- Te souvient-il de notre extase ancienne ?

- Pourquoi voulez-vous donc qu'il m'en souvienne ?

- Ton coeur bat-il toujours à mon seul nom ?

Toujours vois-tu mon âme en rêve? - Non.

Ah ! les beaux jours de bonheur indicible

Où nous joignions nos bouches ! - C'est possible.

- Qu'il était bleu, le ciel, et grand, l'espoir !

- L'espoir a fui, vaincu, vers le ciel noir.

Tels ils marchaient dans les avoines folles,

Et la nuit seule entendit leurs paroles.

§§§

Nel vecchio parco solitario e ghiacciato

due figure poco fa sono passate.

Spenti hanno gli occhi, le labbra senza lena

e le loro parole s'odono appena.

Nel vecchio parco solitario e ghiacciato

due fantasmi hanno evocato il passato.

- Ricordi la nostra estasi d'un tempo?

- Perché mai volete che mi torni in mente?

- Ti batte ancora il cuore al solo mio nome?

Vedi ancora in sogno la mia anima? - No.

Ah! i bei giorni di felicità indicibile

che univamo le nostre bocche! - È possibile.

- Che cielo azzurro, che speranza infinita!

- Sconfitta, verso il cielo nero è fuggita.

Così andavano per le avene incolte,

le loro parole udì solo la notte.

Paul Verlaine

Colloque sentimental

Poet's corner No. 27

'Tis " the witching time of night", 

Orbed is the moon and bright, 

And the stars they glisten, glisten, 

Seeming with bright eyes to listen — 

For what listen they? 

For a song and for a charm, 

See they glisten in alarm, 

And the moon is waxing warm 

To hear what I shall say. 

Moon! keep wide thy golden ears — 

Hearken, stars! and hearken, spheres! 

Hearken, thou eternal sky! 

I sing an infant's lullaby, 

A pretty lullaby. 

Listen, listen, listen, listen, 

Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, 

And hear my lullaby! 

Though the rushes that will make 

Its cradle still are in the lake; 

Though the linen then that will be 

Its swathe, is on the cotton tree; 

Though the woollen that will keep 

It warm is on the silly sheep — 

Listen, stars' light, listen, listen, 

Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, 

And hear my lullaby! 

Child, I see thee! Child, I've found thee 

Midst of the quiet all around thee! 

Child, I see thee! Child, I spy thee! 

And thy mother sweet is nigh thee! 

Child, I know thee! Child no more, 

But a Poet evermore! 

See, see, the lyre, the lyre, 

In a flame of fire, 

Upon the little cradle's top 

Flaring, flaring, flaring, 

Past the eyesight's bearing. 

Awake it from its sleep, 

And see if it can keep 

Its eyes upon the blaze — 

Amaze, amaze! 

It stares, it stares, it stares, 

It dares what no one dares! 

It lifts its little hand into the flame 

Unharmed, and on the strings 

Paddles a little tune, and sings, 

With dumb endeavour sweetly — 

Bard art thou completely! 

Little child 

O' th' western wild, 

Bard art thou completely! 

Sweetly with dumb endeavour, 

A Poet now or never, 

Little child 

O' the western wild, 

A Poet now or never!

John Keats 

'Tis the Witching Time of Night

Poet's corner No. 26

Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit.

                                     RACINE

There is a panther stalks me down:

One day I'll have my death of him;

His greed has set the woods aflame,

He prowls more lordly than the sun.

Most soft, most suavely glides that step,

Advancing always at my back;

From gaunt hemlock, rooks croak havoc:

The hunt is on, and sprung the trap.

Flayed by thorns I trek the rocks,

Haggard through the hot white noon.

Along red network of his veins

What fires run, what craving wakes?

Insatiate, he ransacks the land

Condemned by our ancestral fault,

Crying:  blood, let blood be spilt;

Meat must glut his mouth's raw wound.

Keen the rending teeth and sweet

The singeing fury of his fur;

His kisses parch, each paw's a briar,

Doom consummates that appetite.

In the wake of this fierce cat,

Kindled like torches for his joy,

Charred and ravened women lie,

Become his starving body's bait.

Now hills hatch menace, spawning shade;

Midnight cloaks the sultry grove;

The black marauder, hauled by love

On fluent haunches, keeps my speed.

Behind snarled thickets of my eyes

Lurks the lithe one; in dreams' ambush

Bright those claws that mar the flesh

And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.

His ardor snares me, lights the trees,

And I run flaring in my skin;

What lull, what cool can lap me in

When burns and brands that yellow gaze?

I hurl my heart to halt his pace,

To quench his thirst I squander blook;

He eats, and still his need seeks food,

Compels a total sacrifice.

His voice waylays me, spells a trance,

The gutted forest falls to ash;

Appalled by secret want, I rush

From such assault of radiance.

Entering the tower of my fears,

I shut my doors on that dark guilt,

I bolt the door, each door I bolt.

Blood quickens, gonging in my ears:

The panther's tread is on the stairs,

Coming up and up the stairs.

Sylvia Plath

Pursuit

Poet's corner No. 25

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;

the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.

It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;

and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,

that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;

I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,

and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,

a ship of gold under a silver mast;

twelve towns with a market in all of them,

and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,

that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;

that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;

and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,

I sit down and I go through my trouble;

when I see the world and do not see my boy,

he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;

the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday

and myself on my knees reading the Passion;

and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother has said to me not to be talking with you today,

or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;

it was a bad time she took for telling me that;

it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,

or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;

or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;

it was you put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me;

you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;

you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;

and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

Donald Og

Lady Augusta Gregory

Poet's corner No. 24

Down the long white road we walked together

Down between the grey hills and the heather,

Where the tawny-crested

Plover cries.

You seemed all brown and soft, just like a linnet,

Your errant hair had shadowed sunbeams in it,

And there shone all April

In your eyes.

With your golden voice of tears and laughter

Softened into song ‘Does aught come after

Life,’ you asked ‘When life is

Laboured through?

What is God and all for which we’re striving?’

'Sweetest sceptic, we were born for living;

Life is Love, and Love is—

You, dear, you.’

Roland Leighton, 1914

Il giovane favoloso

"Dato che l’andamento e le usanze e gli avvenimenti e i luoghi di questa mia vita sono ancora infantili, io tengo afferrati con ambe le mani questi ultimi avanzi e queste ombre di quel benedetto e beato tempo, dov’io sperava e sognava la felicità, e sperando e sognando la godeva, ed è passato né tornerà mai più, certo mai più; vedendo con eccessivo terrore che insieme colla fanciullezza è finito il mondo e la vita per me e per tutti quelli che pensano e sentono; sicché non vivono fino alla morte se non quei molti che restano fanciulli tutta la vita."

La prima foto ufficiale de Il giovane favoloso, seconda fatica ottocentesca di Mario Martone dopo il tostissimo Noi Credevamo nonché prima pellicola interamente dedicata alla figura di Giacomo Leopardi, parla da sola: una sola immagine per raccontare la storia di un ragazzo, il capo dolcemente adagiato sulle carte che ama e odia con tutto sé stesso, la penna stretta ben salda nel pugno della mano, un sottile raggio di luce dentro uno sguardo già perso nell'altrove, là dove nessuna cattività domestica e fisica potrà mai raggiungerlo e imprigionarlo.

Questo è il Leopardi che Martone ha scelto di portare sul grande schermo, strappandolo al tedio delle parafrasi scolastiche e al rischio di una mera didattica divulgazione: un caleidoscopio di emozioni contrastanti, frutto dell'eccezionalità di una creatura straordinaria e della pura passione di un adolescente per un mondo ancora sconosciuto, tenuto lontano da una saluta precaria e dai blindati privilegi di una vita già scritta in nome di un'ubbidiente e castrante prudenza.

Poet's corner No. 23

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas

Poet's corner No. 22

O what can ail thee, knight at arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

O What can ail thee, knight at arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful, a fairy's child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

A fairy's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said—

I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dream'd—Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hill's side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death pale were they all;

They cried—"La belle dame sans merci

Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awoke and found me here

On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

John Keats

La Belle Dame Sans Merci 

Happy Birthday John.

Poet's corner No. 20

O FOR a voice like thunder, and a tongue

To drown the throat of war! When the senses

Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,

Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressèd

Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?       

When the whirlwind of fury comes from the

Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance

Drive the nations together, who can stand?

When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,

And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death;         

When souls are torn to everlasting fire,

And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain,

O who can stand? O who hath causèd this?

O who can answer at the throne of God?

The Kings and Nobles of the Land have done it!

Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it!

William Blake

Poetical Sketches

Prologue, intended for a Dramatic Piece of King Edward the Fourth

Poet's Corner No.19

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of Love,

         And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I

Live o'er again that happy hour,

When midway on the mount I lay,

         Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene

Had blended with the lights of eve;

And she was there, my hope, my joy,

         My own dear Genevieve!

She leant against the arm{'e}d man,

The statue of the arm{'e}d knight;

She stood and listened to my lay,

         Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,

My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!

She loves me best, whene'er I sing

         The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air,

I sang an old and moving story—

An old rude song, that suited well

         That ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush,

With downcast eyes and modest grace;

For well she knew, I could not choose

         But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore

Upon his shield a burning brand;

And that for ten long years he wooed

         The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined: and ah!

The deep, the low, the pleading tone

With which I sang another's love,

         Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush,

With downcast eyes, and modest grace;

And she forgave me, that I gazed

         Too fondly on her face!

But when I told the cruel scorn

That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,

And that he crossed the mountain-woods,

         Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den,

And sometimes from the darksome shade,

And sometimes starting up at once

         In green and sunny glade,—

There came and looked him in the face

An angel beautiful and bright;

And that he knew it was a Fiend,

         This miserable Knight!

And that unknowing what he did,

He leaped amid a murderous band,

And saved from outrage worse than death

         The Lady of the Land!

And how she wept, and clasped his knees;

And how she tended him in vain—

And ever strove to expiate

         The scorn that crazed his brain;—

And that she nursed him in a cave;

And how his madness went away,

When on the yellow forest-leaves

         A dying man he lay;—

His dying words—but when I reached

That tenderest strain of all the ditty,

My faltering voice and pausing harp

         Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense

Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;

The music and the doleful tale,

         The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,

An undistinguishable throng,

And gentle wishes long subdued,

         Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight,

She blushed with love, and virgin-shame;

And like the murmur of a dream,

         I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved—she stepped aside,

As conscious of my look she stepped—

Then suddenly, with timorous eye

         She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,

She pressed me with a meek embrace;

And bending back her head, looked up,

         And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear,

And partly 'twas a bashful art,

That I might rather feel, than see,

         The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,

And told her love with virgin pride;

And so I won my Genevieve,

         My bright and beauteous Bride."

Love

 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Dear John

Dear John, 

at last, I went to see your house and you know, I left my heart in Hampstead...

(sorry for the blurry pictures, I have many talents but photography isn't one of them)

Poet's corner No.17

"There is a lady sweet and kind,

Was never face so pleas’d my mind;

I did but see her passing by,

And yet I love her till I die.

Her gesture, motion, and her smiles,

Her wit, her voice, my heart beguiles,

Beguiles my heart, I know not why,

And yet I love her till I die.

Her free behaviour, winning looks,

Will make a lawyer burn his books;

I touch’d her not, alas! not I,

And yet I love her till I die.

Had I her fast betwixt mine arms,

Judge you that think such sports were harms,

Were’t any harm? no, no, fie, fie,

For I will love her till I die.

Should I remain confined there

So long as Ph{oe}bus in his sphere,

I to request, she to deny,

Yet would I love her till I die.

Cupid is winged and doth range,

Her country so my love doth change:

But change she earth, or change she sky,

Yet will I love her till I die."

There is a Lady sweet and kind

Thomas Ford's Music of Sundry Kinds

Poet's corner No.16

"Physician Nature! let my spirit blood! 

O ease my heart of verse and let me rest; 

Throw me upon thy tripod, till the flood 

Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.

A theme! a theme! Great Nature! give a theme;

Let me begin my dream. 

I come—I see thee, as thou standest there, 

Beckon me out into the wintry air. 

Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears

And hopes and joys and panting miseries,— 

To-night, if I may guess, thy beauty wears

A smile of such delight, As brilliant and as bright, 

As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes, 

Lost in a soft amaze, I gaze, I gaze! 

Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast?

What stare outfaces now my silver moon! 

Ah! keep that hand unravished at the least; 

Let, let the amorous burn—

 But, prithee, do not turn

 The current of your heart from me so soon: 

O save, in charity, 

The quickest pulse for me. 

Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe 

Voluptuous visions into the warm air, 

Though swimming through the dance’s dangerous wreath, 

Be like an April day,

 Smiling and cold and gay,

 A temperate lily, temperate as fair; 

Then, heaven! there will be 

A warmer June for me. 

Why this, you’ll say—my Fanny!—is not true;

 Put your soft hand upon your snowy side, 

Where the heart beats: confess—'tis nothing new - 

Must not a woman be

A feather on the sea, 

Swayed to and fro by every wind and tide? 

Of as uncertain speed As blow-ball from the mead?

I know it—and to know it is despair

To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny, 

Whose heart goes fluttering for you every where,

Nor when away you roam,

Dare keep its wretched home: 

Love, love alone, has pains severe and many; 

Then, loveliest! keep me free 

From torturing jealousy. 

Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above 

The poor, the fading, brief pride of an hour:

 Let none profane my Holy See of Love, 

Or with a rude hand break 

The sacramental cake: 

Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;

 If not—may my eyes close, 

Love, on their last repose!"

John Keats

To Fanny

Poet's corner No.15

 "Ample make this bed.

 Make this bed with awe;

 In it wait till judgment break

 Excellent and fair.

 Be its mattress straight,

 Be its pillow round;

 Let no sunrise' yellow noise

 Interrupt this ground."

Emily Dickinson

Ample Make This Bed

Poet's corner No.14

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

 Sylvia Plath

Mad Girl’s Love Song

Poet's corner n. 13

"Oh, happy time of youthful lovers, (thus 

The story might begin,) oh, balmy time, 

In which a love-knot, on a lady's brow, 

Is fairer than the fairest star in Heaven! 

To such inheritance of blessed fancy

          (Fancy that sports more desperately with minds

          Than ever fortune hath been known to do)

          The high-born Vaudracour was brought, by years

          Whose progress had a little overstepped

          His stripling prime. A town of small repute,                

          Among the vine-clad mountains of Auvergne,

          Was the Youth's birth-place. There he wooed a Maid

          Who heard the heart-felt music of his suit

          With answering vows. 

[...]And, in their happiest moments, not content,

 If more divided than a sportive pair

          Of sea-fowl, conscious both that they are hovering

          Within the eddy of a common blast,

          Or hidden only by the concave depth

          Of neighbouring billows from each other's sight.

            Thus, not without concurrence of an age                   

          Unknown to memory, was an earnest given

          By ready nature for a life of love,

          For endless constancy, and placid truth;

          But whatsoe'er of such rare treasure lay

          Reserved, had fate permitted, for support

          Of their maturer years, his present mind

          Was under fascination;--he beheld

          A vision, and adored the thing he saw.

          Arabian fiction never filled the world

          With half the wonders that were wrought for him.            

          Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring;

          Life turned the meanest of her implements,

          Before his eyes, to price above all gold;

          The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine;

          Her chamber-window did surpass in glory

          The portals of the dawn; all paradise

          Could, by the simple opening of a door,

          Let itself in upon him:--pathways, walks,

          Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirit sank,

          Surcharged, within him, overblest to move                   

          Beneath a sun that wakes a weary world

          To its dull round of ordinary cares;

          A man too happy for mortality!"

William Wordsworth

Vandracour and Julia

Poet's corner No.12

I cry your mercy—pity—love!—aye, love!

   Merciful love that tantalizes not,

One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,

   Unmasked, and being seen—without a blot!

O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine!

   That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest

Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine,

   That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,

Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,

   Withhold no atom’s atom or I die

Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,

   Forget, in the mist of idle misery,

Life’s purposes,—the palate of my mind

   Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

John Keats

I cry your mercy—pity—love!—aye, love!

Poet's corner No.11

"[...]They watched the landscape, sitting side by side

—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,

And someone running up to bowl—and none

Thought of the others they would never meet

Or how their lives would all contain this hour.

I thought of London spread out in the sun,

Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across

Bright knots of rail

Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss

Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail

Travelling coincidence; and what it held

Stood ready to be loosed with all the power

That being changed can give. We slowed again,

And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled

A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower

Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain."

Philip Larkin 

The Whitsun Weddings