Guest of the ilb 2007
Patrizia Cavalli was
born in Todi, Umbria. In 1968 she moved to Rome where she studied
philosophy, graduating with a dissertation on the aesthetics of music.
She was supported in her poetry, to which she applied herself only
occasionally and hesitantly, by Elsa Morante, one of the most important
figures in Italian post-war literature: »At a certain point in my life
a person that I trusted told me that I was a poet. And I believed her.«
Cavalli’s poetry is characterised by musicality and the artful intertwining of contrasts, alongside a manner of expression
that is both reserved and strongly subjective. In the opening poem of
her first volume which gives its name to the title »Le mie poesie non
cambieranno il mondo« (1974; t: My poems will not change the world) she
deals with her role as a poet in a way that is at once self-conscious,
defiant and ironic. The lyrical subject formulates inner perspectives
and worlds of feeling through clear language often with epigrammic
brevity, using intertextual references, classical poetic forms and
colloquial set phrases, which captivate by combining passion and
coolness. Stylistic devices such as rhyme, internal rhyme and
enjambement ensure a melodic quality achieved through sound and rhythm.
Cavalli’s first volume of poems was re-published with her next work »Il
cielo« (1981; t: The sky) and the collection »L’io singolare proprio mio« (t: The singular I just mine) in »Poesie 1974-1992« (1992; t: Poems 1974-1992). Giorgio Agamben writes in the preface to the Italian/French edition: »A prosody that is incredibly rich in caesuras and staccato effects, a resolutely hypotactical structuring of discourse is expressed
– one knows not how – in the most fluent, seamless and colloquial
language in Italian poetry of the 20th century. In Patrizia Cavalli’s
poetic language hymns and elegies merge with one another restlessly.«
Subsequent to »Sempre aperto teatro« (1999; t: Theatre always open), for which she was awarded the Premio Viareggio Repaci, one of the most prestigious Italian literary prizes,
»La Guardiana« (2005; t: The overseer) was published as well as, most
recently, »Pigre divinità e pigra sorte« (2006; t: Lazy gods and lazy
fate), for which Cavalli received the Premio Internazionale Pasolini.
This collection of poems deals, for the first time through greater
abstraction and distance, with the reasons and conditions that underlie
emotional states.
Apart from poetry, Cavalli has written two radio plays for national
radio (RAI) and has translated, among other works, Shakespeare’s »A
Midsummer Night’s Dream« and »The Tempest«, Wilde’s »Salome« and
Molière’s »Amphitryon«. The writer lives in Rome.
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