Alberto Bertoni swears that this, the fourth, is the last edition of «Memories of Alzheimer’s», a poem of passages that tell of his father’s illness. It is a fixed point, placed in 2023 in Warsaw, where «(…) you relax, / the anxiety has finally calmed down / which has long gripped / every movement of your body / and gives you no respite, making / almost impossible every after / between yourself and the mind.” Bertoni, professor of contemporary Italian literature and twentieth-century poetry at the Alma Mater, presents his «Book of anxiety» (Book editions, 240 pages, 20 euros) today, Friday 27 June, at 6pm in Salaborsa with Massimo Scrinòli, in the exhibition «The voices of books». His painful and vital relationship with his elderly parent is completed by a feat, the translation of “The Age of Anxiety” by Wystan H. Auden, a poem that looks at the baroque eclogue in times of tanks and bombs. It tells of an alcoholic night in 1944 between three men and a woman in a Manhattan bar, with the influence of a famous painting by Edward Hopper, “The Nighthawks” (in the original “The Nighthawks”).
Professor Bertoni, let’s start with the title «Alzheimer’s Memories»: what can Alzheimer’s remember?
«It’s an obvious oxymoron. This is the latest edition of a work that I began in the late 1990s and which narrates, in verse, my father’s illness. In the name of anxiety is linked to Auden’s poem.”
Why do you read various inserts in Modena dialect?
«My father spoke dialect. He worked for 40 years at Ferrari and the official language there was Modenese. He spoke dialect at work and with friends but at home and with me he had to use Italian: my mother was a teacher and she forbade dialect. Yet when he got sick he started talking to me too: he didn’t recognize me as a son, he thought he was turning to a friend.”
Why are the various fragments in his poem never closed by a full stop?
«I trained in Bologna in the 70s, with masters like Guglielmi and Niva Lorenzini, and I assimilated the stylistic features of the neo-avant-garde».
Is this poem a dialogue with the dead?
«It is a dialogue with those who place themselves outside of normal rationality. We didn’t speak to my father until he was healthy, we didn’t know each other. We only shared a passion for volleyball and football, but I, perhaps out of rebellion, was in favor of Inter and he was in favor of Juventus, I was in favor of horse racing and he was in favor of motor racing. Alzheimer’s triggered it and I followed it on an endless journey that began in 1997-98.”
How did the translation of Auden’s poem come about?
«I started during the long days of lockdown and worked there for 4 years. There was only one Italian version of the text, and it didn’t convince me. I don’t know English well enough, but I followed Giovanni Giudici’s advice: the important thing is to engage in the target poetic language.”
It is a poem with prose inserts, poems, songs.
«Mine is a free adaptation, ultimately quite faithful. It is a difficult poem, which talks about destinies, about the age of the human being, about what is happening after a catastrophic war. The ending, if it were not dated 1944, could be believed to have been written today, referring to current conflicts.”
Why is it a baroque eclogue?
«Auden wanted to link himself to an ancient genre. The four characters play at being shepherds. There are many cultural references: from Tasso’s «Aminta» to Shakespeare, to the «Bible», to Christian theology, to Judaism, to Eastern religions».
You are also a critic and historian of poetry. What is the state of health of this art?
«If I had to list the significant Italian prose writers I would perhaps reach 5. For male and female poets I struggle to stay in the 100».
Yet poetry is less read…
«Because it requires total immersion in the text, in the era, in the place. It’s vertical. And we know that reading in general, with the attention it requires, is already in crisis today. Imagine such an exercise in descending into the depths.”
