Cesare Pavese: the poetic work. Published and unpublished texts, translations

Cesare Pavese: the poetic work. Published and unpublished texts, translations. This is the title of the book presented in the premises of the Feltrinelli bookshop in Catania, in a room packed with spectators, and defined in the introduction as “a classic of contemporary literature”.

The presentation saw the participation of the two curators, the teachers Antonio Sichera of contemporary Italian literature and Antonio di Silvestro of Philology of Italian Literature of the Department of Humanistic Sciences of the University of Catania.

The teachers talk to them Alberto Giovanni Biuso of Theoretical Philosophy and Andrea Schembari of Contemporary Italian Literature of the Disum of the University of Catania. Both, thanks to the careful analysis of the volume and the many information reported, soon transformed the presentation into a ‘congress’, as Professor Sichera jokingly stated and pointed out.

The publication of the book is part of the Prin PAVES-e project aimed at reconstructing the poetic path of Cesare Pavese and to create a digital archive accessible to all, as the events manager Feltrinelli explained at the beginning, Ludovica Fava.

After the initial greetings it was Prof. Andrea Schembari to intervene, highlighting some fundamental aspects of Pavese’s work.

In fact, the teacher recalled the continuous dedication and daily life of the writer to his literary work, typical of someone who, as Pavese himself wrote in a letter to his friend Tullio Pinelli, «thinks with books, feels with books, loves with books, sleeps, always eats with books».

A moment of the professor’s speech. Antonio Sichera

Borrowing the words of Calvin, Schembari also underlined how the protagonist of Pavese’s poems is the closed man who looks at the margins, who does not know how to face history, who observes and contemplates the fate of those around him; it’s exactly the destiny one of the central aspects of the author’s poetics, on which the prof focused. Sichera.

«Pavese speaks to us because if you read his writings you realize the awareness of destiny, which reaches us and strikes us when we feel unprepared. His problems and his tensions are still ours, because they are those of men and women of all times”, explained the professor. Antonio Sichera.

The meeting was also an opportunity to put a fundamental form of expression at the center of the debate, namely literary and poetic word; in fact, as explained by the prof. Alberto GiovanniBiuso«as long as we still have the possibility of holding meetings dedicated to something that is of no use, which does not give money and power but gives the word and its resonance, its music, we will still be safe».

The teacher defined the volume as a book-oceanfor the quantity of pages it is composed of and for the power it emanates, but also a book necessary and friendbecause through its reading the strong bond shines through that exists between the curators and Pavese.

In the photo from left the teachers Alberto Giovanni Biuso, Antonio Di Silvestro, Antonio Sichera and Andrea Schembari

During the evening the importance of the teamwork in a society that is now too competitive: «It is thanks to the entire team that worked on the book that this publication was possible», specified Antonio Sichera, who took the opportunity to invite those interested in study day dedicated to the poet which will be held on April 19th at the Benedictine Monastery.

It was definitely a difficult job, as he pointed out Antonio Di Silvestrobut the aim was to explain Pavese with his own words, seeking its sacredness, which is the profound sense of philology.

This text, in fact, manages to fully restore “the music and the meaning of the variants that are fundamental in the poetic activity” of the author, who “hoards – as the teacher wrote in the introduction – that search for songability and musicality entrusted to the light semantics of the compositions written between ’28 and ’31”.

At the end of the presentation the curiosity to get to know Pavese better remained. Borrowing the words of Prof. Antonio Sichera: «What remains with the reader, after reading the volume, is the ambiguous, yet indubitable, charm of a melody».