Raymond Petrillo 595 GIOVANNI CECCHETTI VOCI DI POESIA: SAGGI DI STRUTTURA POETICA DA DANTE A CAMPANA CON UNO STUDIO SULLA TRADUZIONE Salerno: Pietro Laveglia Editore, 1997. 204 pp. In memory of Giovanni Cecchetti Internationally known as a critic and translator, Giovanni Cecchetti is a poet in his own right; and it is no exaggeration to state that his scholarly output was conceived and written with at least the same care usually reserved for works of literature. One can only agree with Gregory Lucente who once noted that Cecchetti's responses to literature were "remarkable for their scope, their critical insight," as well as for the "staunchness of the positions held" (Michigan Romance Studies XVI [1996], v). This steadfastness is as evident in the critical arguments of the Voci di poesia: Saggi di struttura poetica da Dante a Campana con uno studio sulla traduzione as it is in the style of writing, or rather, in the author's fidelity to language itself. We immediately note the suggestive twofold title, the initial term of which, "voci di poesia," serves as a near synonym for its explicative counterpart, "struttura poetica." By following the implications and nuances of this binary title throughout the chapters of the volume, one sees that the "voices" of poetry understood as the dynamic interaction of phonic elements and visual images are indeed related to the substance of language structure. In other words, meaning is created by a unique combination of carefully shaped elements (rhythm, pauses, alliteration, assonance, dissonance, perhaps above all, recurrent words) that achieve resonance and form at the very instant they conjure up visual images in the reader's imagination. Thus, as Cecchetti is fond of saying, "noi vediamo cogli orecchi" (23). An example from one of his own short stories is entirely appropriate: "Come quando uno grida nella stanza accanto, e tu lo vedi rosso a bocca spalancata, col collo di
Raymond Petrillo 596 tacchino" (from "La macchina dell'aria," 1985). We see the man shouting, mouth wide open, his neck as red and tense as a turkey's: it is as though we were hearing red a sensorial association rhythmically articulated in the hard "c" sounds of "bocca spalancata, col collo di tacchino." And we understand that Cecchetti, as artist and as critic (the two are truly inseparable), is intent on breaking down some of the barriers traditionally associated with poetic discourse. Thoughtfully organized into ten chapters (each previously published in some form, the earliest dating back to 1965: it is important to note that the stylist in Cecchetti is still willing to ponder and revise some of his most memorable scholarly pieces), Voci di poesia opens with a provocative study of the poetry of the past versus that of the present; then moves on to detailed analyses of specific problems in individual authors (Dante, Leopardi, Verga-as-poet, D'Annunzio, Campana); and concludes with a meticulously researched essay on the theory and practice of literary translation. Though the scope of the volume is broad, its moto spiritale is everywhere apparent in that each chapter seems to issue from the mind of the critic as something self-evident, with such clarity and conviction as to readily become intellectual exchange and interaction. Suffice it to examine the critical nucleus of the chapter dedicated to Dino Campana's hallucinatory style: Nel primo Novecento Dino Campana è fra coloro che hanno portato più avanti il procedimento associativo della poesia. È riuscito a raggiungere il punto estremo della comunicazione, ο della noncomunicazione, quando il senso della parola sfugge anche a chi la scrive, perché non esiste più, perché la parola stessa viene riassorbita dal suo etimo di "parabola," di immagine, di tensione significante, che suscita un'altra tensione, finché si ha quasi uno sfavillio di colori e di luci e di tenebre, come un gioco di riflessi che si succedono richiamandosi l'un l'altro e creando successivi strati scorrenti finché non svaniscono (154). The above-mentioned process of association which in Campana happens to resonate through a network of feverish tensions flowing in and out of each other until everything seems to dissolve into everything else, leaving behind a silence that shrieks is by no means unique only to the poetry of Dino Campana. It is a process that, in Cecchetti's view, is basic to the very stuff of poetry; for that reason it is recurrent, in appropriately varying degrees, throughout the textual journey described
Raymond Petrillo 597 in the volume. The introductory chapter, "Dalla poesia del passato alla poesia del presente," presents the paradigms necessary to steer the reader through those journeys. Rather than discuss literary "trends," or the "relationship" between a given text and the cultural humus from which it sprang, the author chooses to approach the thorniest problem of all: the literariness of poetic discourse. Why, he asks, is it essential to address the arduous question of style over and above the conventional one of content? "La risposta," he asserts, "è ovvia: da molto tempo ormai [that is, after Croce, through the efforts of stylistic critics like De Robertis and Contini] ci siamo accorti che l'espressione è il contenuto; che quelli che si definiscono contenuti sono fondamentalmente sempre gli stessi; è il modo di presentarli che li fa apparire diversi, che li rinnova" (6). It follows, then, that the critic's responsibility is to the deepest part of the poet's humanity: not only to the personalized "linguaggio" that brings new life to age-old contents, but to the essence of it as articulated in the very "suoni che appartengono al suo mondo interiore e a quello di nessun altro" (6). This rich interior universe is identified with the life of the psyche, specifically, with those "associazioni preconscie ο subconscie" (8) that, in many cases, constitute the substance of poetic discourse. Again, an example from Cecchetti's own creative writing will facilitate our understanding of his theoretical speculation (from "La doppia avventura," 1997): Musica, mia breve avventura adolescente. Mi spinse a raccogliere voci dai boschi, tra pini e castagni suoni zampillanti facce orlate di ghirlande evanescenti. An early interest in music helped the writer put together the "voices" of nature, in this case, "surging sounds faces / framed in vanishing garlands": two freestanding images, the one phonic and the other visual, placed side by side with no punctuation, with no apparent logical linkage; the former, however, surging and the latter fading, so that they do interrelate as a sort of twofold identity, or rather, in Cecchettian terms, as an instantaneous pre-rational association. This associative form suggests a focus of attention which is neither sight, nor hearing, nor any other single sense. It is rather a perception "heard/seen" that points beyond itself, i.e., from the concreteness of the text back to the psychic
Raymond Petrillo 598 vitality of the writer. It is this special, difficult to describe, but essential relationship between the nuances of the text and the innermost resources of its creator that Voci di poesia is all about; a relationship that Cecchetti elucidates through meticulous scholarship, knowledge, and above all, formal analyses not only of the target-text but of others as well (of Virgil's Aeneid, for example, when clarifying the concept of Dante-astranslator within the framework of the Commedia itself [164-6]; or of Ovid's Metamorphoses when interpreting D'Annunzio's essentially phonic vision of nature in "La pioggia nel pineto" [141-4], etc. etc.); analyses, as it turns out, involving hundreds of pages in both the modern and classical literatures. For that reason alone, Voci di poesia is almost impossible to summarize, at least systematically from chapter to chapter toward a specific set of conclusions. The originality of the volume, however, is not difficult to grasp and is perhaps best exemplified by Cecchetti's division of the history of literature into two distinct, unequal, yet occasionally overlapping phases: a) the poetry of the past from Homer through the nineteenth century; and b) the poetry of modern times, roughly from Pascoli to Montale. By reflecting on diverse literary itineraries across a variety of linguistic boundaries, Cecchetti argues that the poet of the past clearly linked to the recognizable social network that he is addressing and of whom he is, in fact, the voice necessarily filters his associative processes rationally and logically, thereby rejecting the immediacy of direct psychic transferrals in favor of greater ease of communicability. Thus, the traditional poet does not convey his vision in its entirety, i.e., as it pours forth from his psyche in the primordial language of the psyche. On the other hand, today's poet no longer capable of finding in his own environment some semblance of reciprocity, let alone human solidarity feels compelled to instinctively translate external data into subconscious forms, thereby adopting linguistic and extra-linguistic patterns that are more associative, less logical, but more spontaneous. Whether poetry finds its center in expressive patterns rationally tailored to fit the needs of an intended audience, or whether its expressive patterns are the result of pre-conscious processes of association, Cecchetti is firm in his conviction that all poets past and present strive for the same goal: "auspicano un ritorno all'infanzia dell'umanità, ad Orfeo che col canto ammansisce le belve e illumina il buio eterno; ossia la riconquista della psiche primordiale e perenne" (29).
Raymond Petrillo 599 In a word, Voci di poesia is the self-avowed "consuntivo" (5) of a professor/poet who believes that poets are not only perceptive literary critics, but empowered as critics because they know what poetry is from the inside. If that is your cup of tea, Cecchetti's latest opus is a book to be cherished, and read and re-read; but even if that is not the case, we would all do well to read it anyway. Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas RAYMOND PETRILLO