The Tolki talk a lot, but nothing is known about their appearance; they are flesh and blood (“Olin, I’ll pay you… look / if by chance your arm has flourished / and how simple your head is”), yet their somatic features remain obscure. They have exotic names (Usov, Olin, Attè, Inna, to name a few), sonorous, orally captivating. What are they talking about? Of everything: of the land they work (“The man with the hoe sang with his head bowed”), of the tools that serve the purpose (“To the wall the spade, the rake”), of the daily gestures (“The spoon goes under the napkin, the glass / should be placed in front of it”, “Katrin, always there with that comb in her hand”), of the world around (“the hand got lost in the snow / so much snow”, “The sky was black, it was a bucket on the head”, “the sun rose from the book of the dead”, “The green rose on the glittering hedges”). Which world? Tà is the place: here too, a sound, an onomatopoeia, the first beat on the drum, the first infantile syllable pronounced. And the child is a recurring figure (“-hurry up, wake up the child!”, “the little girl jumps sadly”, “I call the snow like a child, / the snow is a child with a red head”). All this saying of the voice that narrates and that over and over again criticizes and almost scolds, why?…
The Il Saggiatore publishing house collects the eight books that make up Tolki’s epic and epic works in a single volume. Epic and epic but not of heroic deeds, since the Tolki have no mythical ambitions, even if the echo of the Greek world comes loudly: we find the first actor and the chorus, even if silent: it is always a narrator who speaks to the others, to one or more and who, like the hero, speaks in the first person. Another recoverable feature is the concept of home. For the Greeks Oikos (Oἶkoς), the house, in fact, was the nucleus, the founding structure of the society at the center of which was the woman and the Tolki women have the reins of the house and of daily life which are the background, background and fulcrum of all the unfolding: it is the women who they speak, they resume, which they silence if necessary. It is not a feminist claim, it has to do with language, with its birth, because it is in the relationship with the mother that language develops. Travi writes about it Poetics of the continuous bass – Writing, voice, images (Moretti & Vitali): “Spoken language is a flow of sound, made up of stammering and nonsense. It is a body/language, extended outside the mind, it is formed directly in the mouth.” The stammering is translated into the poems through numerous repetitions, almost a benign echolalia which the Tolki make extensive use of. A body/language. This is where the term Lacanian comes into play speakcrasis of the French verb will speak and of être (to be as a verb and noun), therefore an individual who defines himself by speaking, who exists because he speaks, speaks a language which becomes matter, therefore body (a I say ergo sum, paraphrasing Descartes). Basically what is known about the Tolki? The language in agreement, their name which reminds us, in consonance, of the English verb to talk (speak), the work of the land, the house, but what era are we in? In all and in none, I would say. It could be yesterday, maybe today, or maybe tomorrow: “I wanted the relationship with time to incorporate the Tolki into a dimension that was perpetually out, there I saw them existing in a space separated from time” writes Travi in the introduction. And are the Tolki a rational and reasoned invention? Be careful, here we are dealing with poetry, which, it is true, is nourished by readings, images, suggestions therefore (and here we can insert the Greek echo which perhaps can be considered an intertextuality, the result of the backround of the poet who is also theorist and essayist) but the mystery, the non-place, the unexplainable where poetry is born or appears remains strong. Again from the introduction: “These beings had crowded into my mind for no reason whatsoever: suddenly they came to me like silhouetted figures, remnants of a thousand-year-old family, relatives to come, or antediluvians.” Embarking on the journey into Tolki’s world, whatever it may be, presupposes abandoning oneself to the power of the word, undressing oneself. This must be taken into account.
