La dimensione politica del cecchino nella narrativa di Pavel Hak e Nicolai Lilin

Thanks to the studies by Martha Nussbaum, Political Science can include emotional facts among cognitive tools. Furthermore, aesthetic turn makes possible to  integrate literature to political analysis. In other words, it is nowadays possible to state that literary representation of war can produce ethical response in readers. Nonetheless all depends on rhetoric choices. Both novels – Sniper (France 2001) and Caduta libera (Italy, 2009) - tells about a sniper experience narrated in first person. But narrative choices are different in Lilin – who describes a historical set of new wars (Chechnya) – and Hak – presenting a sketchy landscape, compatible with Chechen war as well as the Balkan ones. The main difference, in facts, is the narrating voice: the main character in Caduta libera matches the author’s war experience and wants the reader to believe the story as true; Pavel Hak emphasizes, instead, the fictional level of narration. This analysis aims to demonstrate that literary choices in Hak are more conductive to an ethical response by the reader.Se, da una parte, grazie soprattutto al lavoro di Martha Nussbaum (2001, 2004), le scienze politiche hanno recentemente integrato la dimensione emotiva come  fattore di conoscenza, dall’altra, la svolta estetica di cui ha scritto R. Bleiker nel 2001 (The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory) ha reso possibile l’acquisizione del letterario nel dominio dell’analisi politica. In particolare, è possibile oggi affermare che la rappresentazione di eventi bellici attraverso il filtro di media artistici (narrativa, fotografia, cinema), con il corredo di ferocia e crudeltà che tale rappresentazione comporta, può indurre nel lettore una risposta emotiva ed etica. Se è vero che “il linguaggio letterario utilizza espedienti irrazionali per stimolare il pensiero razionale” (cfr. S. Chan, 2009), la specificità retorica delle tecniche adottate in un romanzo può produrre però effetti diversi sul lettore. Nel caso di Sniper (Francia, 2001) e di Caduta libera (Italia, 2009) Pavel Hak e Nicolai Lilin ci presentano la vicenda di un cecchino, narrata in prima persona. Fin dallo sfondo bellico, però, le scelte descrittive divergono nei due autori, da una parte verso una precisa individuazione storica (la Cecenia), dall’altra verso un indistinto teatro dello scontro, compatibile nella sua indeterminatezza, sia con le guerre balcaniche che col citato conflitto ceceno.  Ma a fare la differenza tra le due narrazioni è principalmente la posizione assunta dall’autore rispetto alla materia del racconto. Tra la veridizione “dell’io c’ero” che presiede ad ogni operazione editoriale di Lilin e la deliberata “finzionalità” delle scelte narrative di Hak, è la seconda opzione a comportare, con la responsabilità del gesto letterario, il maggiore potenziale politico. 

Esperienza e sentimento del confine nell’opera di Gëzim Hajdari

To what extent the notion of boundary moulds the production of “migrant writers” in Italy? Is it possible to make boundary a reading key to some of these writers? To verify a possible sentiment of the boundary aside from the congruity of biographical events, into the living texts, could set an alternative procedure to the detection of the category of “migrant” within the critics. As to Gëzim Hajdari verses, Italian writer in Italian of Albanian origins (Poesie scelte, 2009), the literary analysis will intersect “border studies”. The reference to the limes in fact  is at the bases of a recent offshoot of those studies which have in last years proceeded with a material reconstitution of the concept against the previous tendency to its metaphorical extension. The boundary, then, will be analyzed in terms of influence on the structure of the text, such as metric peculiarities, genre dynamics and bilingualism.Some authors who experiment the trespass even since the linguistic option draw our attention to the materiality of boundaries. Besides some poetical statements in fact, a close-up analysis of the most recent production stresses re-emergences of the identitarian theme and indubitable signals of the seismic activity in the substratum of the mother tongue. It is then possible to trace back the definition of “migrant” from the extratextual dimension of biography to (and within) the natural boundaries of the literary fact.To what extent the notion of boundary moulds the production of “migrant writers” in Italy? Is it possible to make boundary a reading key to some of these writers? To verify a possible sentiment of the boundary aside from the congruity of biographical events, into the living texts, could set an alternative procedure to the detection of the category of “migrant” within the critics. As to Gëzim Hajdari verses, Italian writer in Italian of Albanian origins (Poesie scelte, 2009), the literary analysis will intersect “border studies”. The reference to the limes in fact  is at the bases of a recent offshoot of those studies which have in last years proceeded with a material reconstitution of the concept against the previous tendency to its metaphorical extension. The boundary, then, will be analyzed in terms of influence on the structure of the text, such as metric peculiarities, genre dynamics and bilingualism. Some authors who experiment the trespass even since the linguistic option draw our attention to the materiality of boundaries. Besides some poetical statements in fact, a close-up analysis of the most recent production stresses re-emergences of the identitarian theme and indubitable signals of the seismic activity in the substratum of the mother tongue. It is then possible to trace back the definition of “migrant” from the extratextual dimension of biography to (and within) the natural boundaries of the literary fact

Tra odierno e primordiale

Emilio Villa (1914-2003) was a poet, translator and art critic. He placed the theme of Origins at the center of his work, always considering it in relation with the concept of Èskhaton (the End of Times) and often observing it as an etymologist. After translating a fragment of the Enūma eliš (1939) - the Babylonian creation myth -, as well as the book of Genesis and the entire Odyssey, Villa applied his cosmogonic talent to contemporary art, in favor of the pictorial movement of Informalism. A trace of its peculiar idea of Origins is also found in John Huston’s film The Bible: in the Beginning…, of which he contributed to as a biblical scholar

Strategie di affrancamento. Scrivere oltre la migrazione

Il saggio è diviso in due sezioni. Nella prima si delineano le pratiche letterarie, messe in campo dagli scrittori migranti in Italia, volte a forzare il canone nazionale per ottenere ospitalità ed integrazione culturale. Nella seconda parte ci si chiede in quale misura la nozione di confine informi la produzione dei nostri “migrant writers. È possibile fare del confine una chiave di lettura per alcuni di questi scrittori? Verificare un eventuale sentimento del confine, a prescindere dalla congruità della vicenda biografica, nel vivo dei testi, potrebbe costituire procedimento alternativo per l’individuazione della categoria di “migrante” in ambito critico. Con riferimento ai versi di Gëzim Hajdari, scrittore (in) italiano di origine albanese (Poesie scelte, 2009), l’analisi letteraria incrocerà i “border studies”. Il riferimento al limes, infatti, è alla base di una recente diramazione di quegli studi che ha proceduto negli ultimi anni ad una ricostituzione materiale del concetto, a fronte della precedente tendenza alla sua estensione metaforica. Il confine, del resto, oltre che tema, può risultare struttura profonda nell’opera di certi autori (non necessariamente immigrati) se di quella si analizza la peculiarità metrica, la dinamica dei generi, o il peculiare orizzonte bilinguistico. Alcuni autori, che sperimentano lo sconfinamento fin dall’opzione linguistica, ci richiamano alla materialità dei confini. Al di là di certe dichiarazioni di poetica, infatti, un’analisi ravvicinata della produzione più recente evidenzia riemersioni del tema identitario e segnali inequivocabili dell’attività sismica nel sostrato della madrelingua. Risulta perciò possibile ricondurre la definizione di “migrante”, dalla dimensione extratestuale della biografia, entro i confini naturali del fatto letterario.To what extent the notion of boundary moulds the production of “migrant writers” in Italy? Is it possible to make boundary a reading key to some of these writers? To verify a possible sentiment of the boundary aside from the congruity of biographical events, into the living texts, could set an alternative procedure to the detection of the category of “migrant” within the critics. As to Gëzim Hajdari verses, Italian writer of Albanian origins (Poesie scelte, 2009), the literary analysis will intersect “border studies”. The reference to the limes in fact is at the bases of a recent offshoot of those studies which have in last years proceeded with a material reconstitution of the concept against the previous tendency to its metaphorical extension. The boundary by the way, besides theme can be deep structure in the work of some authors (not necessarily immigrants) if of the structure one analyzes the metric peculiarity, the dynamics of the genres or the particular bilingual horizon. Some authors who experiment the trespass even since the linguistic option draw our attention to the materiality of boundaries. Besides some poetical statements in fact, a close-up analysis of the most recent production stresses re-emergences of the identitarian theme and indubitable signals of the seismic activity in the substratum of the mother tongue. It is then possible to trace back the definition of “migrant” from the extratextual dimension of biography to (and within) the natural boundaries of the literary fact

Migro ergo micro. Nuovi localismi nella poesia dell'Italia multiculturale.

Ugo Fracassa, “Migro ergo micro. Nuovi localismi nella poesia dell’Italia multiculturale” In Semicerchio LIV, 01, 2016 Abstract A New Localism in Multicultural Italian Poetry The relationship between "scenic beauty" and "civil and literary history" was set by Benedetto Croce in Law 778 ( 1921), and traces remain today in the landscape definition formulated by the Fondo Ambiente Italiano. The literary expression of the relationship between man and nature is manifested, according to Michael Jakob (2005), by poetry and, in particular, by a "look marked by the experience of alienation." Jakob recognizes as a first example of that look the Ascent to Mount Ventoux, where Petrarch (Familiares, IV.1) nostalgically stares at his homeland abandoned ten years before. The Italian landscape, already marked by the look of native authors, is nowadays crossed and described by transcultural writers. The article aims to verify the persistence of some literary landscapes (Ciociaria, the Marches country, the Po delta) in the verses of Gëzim Hajdari (Hajdàraj, 1957), Carlos Sanchez (Buenos Aires, 1942) and Nader Ghazvinizadeh (Bologna, 1977), poets whose gaze seem necessarily estranged