Corrado Federici: Giovanni Raboni 469

GIOVANNI RABONI TUTTE LE POESIE (1951-1993) Milano: Garzanti, 1997. 388 pp.

lthough he is an important and innovative poet, Giovanni Raboni has generated a relatively modest amount of critical Aattention, virtually all of it on the Italian side of the Atlantic. There are in fact only a handful of articles and book reviews dealing with the works written by Raboni between 1951 and 1993 and published within a narrower window of time, namely 1966-1993. Selections of his production usually appear in anthologies of twentieth century Italian poetry (eg. Mengaldo 1978, Gioanola 1986, Picchione 1993), although (1993) omits his work, presumably with some reluctance. As a rule, anthologists situate Raboni's lyric within the so-called "linea lombarda" which includes the writings of Erba, Sereni, Cattafi, Giudici, Majorino and Cesarano. The English- speaking audience can sample his earlier style in the translations of Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann (Italian Poetry Today. Currents & Trend, St. Paul: New Rivers, 1979, pp. 173-75) and in David Ward's fine essay in the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Italian Poets (Second Series, vol. 128, New York: Bruccoli Clarke, 1993, pp. 270- 75). Perhaps part of the reason for this scarcity of critical interest consists in the fact that Raboni's poetic output has not been prolific by any standard. Even though he has published eight collections of verse, the length of each ranges from nine to forty-eight pages. In addition, Λ tanto caro sangue (: Mondadori, 1988) is primarily a compilation of works spanning the 1956-87 period and reproposes many previously published poems. Apart from the "minimalist" aspect of his productivity, another factor that may account for Raboni's limited exposure is the challenging nature of his discourse which can read like hermetic poetry while it actually takes issue with and distances itself from it; it also tends to read like neo-avant-garde poetry while avoiding the acute discontinuity or jarring incongruity of that style. Having said this, the Garzanti edition of the complete poems, Tutte le poesie (1951-1993), provides the reader with a compendium of this difficult poet's art and enables him/her to comprehend the intricate evolution of Raboni's lexicon, subject matter and poetics. In working our way through the volume, we quickly come to perceive the uncanny resonance of canonic Italian poetic voices such as those of Manzoni Corrado Federici: Giovanni Raboni 470 and Parini and the sometimes strident, dissonant voices of the neo- avant-garde but also international voices such as those of Baudelaire, Auden, Pound, and Eliot. Raboni's poetics has the texture of the traditional filtered through an edgy, contemporary sensibility and formal experimentalism. The reader cannot appreciate fully or readily this phenomenon by assessing Raboni's collections individually or interspersed among other readings. The Garzanti publication affords the opportunity to solve, or at least begin to solve, the linguistic labyrinth that is the poetry of Giovanni Raboni. Tutte le poesie opens with lyrics reminiscent of Manzoni's Inni sacri and closes with provençal or Petrarchan sonnets that unconventionally address issues that pertain to existence in the postindustrial and postmodern world. For instance, the title alone of one section of Ogni terzo pensiero, "Sonetti di infermità e convalescenza", points in this direction. Paradoxically, there are also contemporary poems that reach back in time to link up thematically if not stylistically with the literary canon. This effect is achieved by means of the insertion of religiously coded references to "Giuda", "Crocifisso", "arcangelo" and "Betlemme", and among contemporary technological terms such as "la Borsa", "perito settore", and "contabilizzare". To aid the reader in this endeavour, the editors have included a 100 page critical anthology consisting of the comments of poets such as Sereni, Giudici and Zanzotto as well as those of critics such as Garboli and Baldacci. One probable reason for which critics have traditionally "aligned", or "misaligned" as the case may be, the poetry of Giovanni Raboni with those of the "linea lombarda" is the fact that the Lombardy region in general and the city of Milano specifically are explicit identified geographical entities. Another is the fact that some poems are dedicated to poets such as Giorgio Cesarani, Giovanni Giudici, and Bartolo Cattafi. One additional factor in the popular classification is the presence of Manzoni, the Manzoni of the Inni sacri and of the Storia della colonna infame. The former makes its initial appearance in the very first volume entitled Gesta romanorum and recurs throughout subsequent collections; the latter is recalled in the titles and content of compositions such as "Le case del Vetra" where we find references to the "untori" who in the seventeenth century contaminated the houses which the poetic subject observes in his present day Milano; he wonders aloud: "non è qui / che buttavano i loro cartocci gli untori?" (p. 56). In Rabonian non-epiphanic "occasioni" or situations of this sort, the poetic observer is as concerned with representation of the present as Corrado Federici: Giovanni Raboni 471 he is with representation of the past - the living as well as the dead (cf "I cotti e i vivi"). Much of his art or poetics is revealed in this one reference or intertext. Whereas the Manzonian narrator focalizes a significant historical moment (at least in terms of Italian history) while operating within the poetics of Romanticism, Raboni's discursiveness appears not to poetize the event at all. In fact, the line quoted above sounds like a throw-away, a passing or weakly verbalized thought on some aspect of empirical reality that would normally go unnoticed and unrecorded. Yet the observation still manages to point to a social ill, a contemporary act of intolerance and neglect. Through the Rabonian poetic subject, the reader encounters a precise description of the "indecent" comportment of social beings without the indignation or the rhetoric one finds in more conventional poetic discourse. This same reliance on understatement, which has its roots in crepuscular self-effacement and Montale's explicit desire to "torcere il collo della retorica", applies to mythological or Biblical events, to historical events such as the second world war or the assassination of public figures such as Giangiacomo Feltrinelli or , as well as to those daily occurrences that normally go unperceived or unexamined. From Gesta romanorum (1966) to Ogni terzo pensiero (1993), Raboni's poetic eye searches for the inconspicuous incidents, the unuttered phrases, the involuntary gestures that somehow function as expressive vehicles for the repressed sense of panic with which the human race has lived alongside the horrors of violence on all scales throughout history. Paradigmatic is Raboni's technique of either having the principal actors in, say, the Passion of Christ articulate unorthodox, non- rhetorical statements, or focussing on secondary figures who obliquely allude to that historic event. The titles themselves are suggestive of this procedure: "Il rimorso di Giovanni Battista", "Timori della Maddalena", "Orazione di Giuda," "Personaggio di sfondo di una crocifissione," and "Altre interviste". Indicative of Raboni's intention of underscoring the 'contemporariness' of the drama unfolding is the process of ascribing modern-day paranoia or distress to the figure of Mary Magdalene, where unshakeable faith in the divine should be; her internal monologue in part reads: "Ho paura del legno e della rupe, / ho paura del corpo, del nervo lacerato (...) ho paura del sasso che chiuderà la tua porta (...) ho paura / del corvo che ti mangerà, ho paura del lupo / che troverà le tue ossa" (p. 12). The same paranoid fear permeates the verses of a composition entitled "Economia della paura" which is part of the volume Cadenza d'inganno, originally published in 1975; only in Corrado Federici: Giovanni Raboni 472 this case the context is the fear of having one's telephone line tapped by intrusive authorities as well as the fear of divulging personal secrets while under anaesthetic: "Possono. Possono sempre. E senza notifica preventiva. E senza? Non vengono a dirtelo prima, è chiaro" (p. 101). Raboni's very first volume (i.e., Gesta romanorum) also presents his technique of shining the narrative and poetic light on figures in the shadows: tragic figures who participate marginally in the historical event. (This too is reminiscent of Manzoni's 'historicism'). It is the case of "Il falegname" in the poem "Altre interviste" cited in the preceding paragraph. His thoughts, transcribed by the poet, are the following: "Per risparmiare del legno / invece di inchiodarlo su un quadrato, / su un triangolo isoscele, su un cerchio,/ si può metterlo in croce" (p. 23). A similar, almost casual, reference to a significant event that takes place off stage as it were surfaces many years later in the poem written, as Raboni himself tells us, shortly after the murder of Feltrinelli. The poem is called "Notizie false e tendenziose", in which we read the following matter-of-fact announcement of the tragedy: "Il discorso, per disgrazia, saltò fuori alle cinque./ Non si sapeva molto, il telefono era guasto [...]. Qualcuno, tornato dal paese, riferì / d'aver intravisto mozzi, nani, mani" (p. 131). As stated above, the anthology also includes critical views on the poetry of Raboni comprising 12 pieces presented in the chronological order in which they first appeared, that is, parallelling the appearance of Raboni's publications through the decades. In most cases, the critique is a book review or short comment varying in length from one to ten pages (most are three to four pages) and published originally in newspapers such as Il , magazines such as Epoca or journals such as Quaderni piacentini. Some important articles, such as those of Maurizo Cucchi (Belfagor, 1977), Marco Forti (Nuovi argomenti, 1978) and Stefano Pastore (Paragone, 1987) are however omitted. Nevertheless, the pieces that Tutte le poesie does include offer interesting perspectives and are useful instruments with which to approach the poems. The publication of the complete poems, then, affords the reader a unique opportunity to study closely the subtle and complex ways in which several fundamental stylistic and ethical markers which define the poet's art interact to penetrate the many levels of contemporary existence. Since each composition is structured like a collage of seemingly disconnected and in themselves meaningless segments or micro-slices of experience, the entire volume acquires the form and sense of an enormous montage which can be read in multiple Corrado Federici: Giovanni Raboni 473 directions. Only by examining the entire text does the reader become aware of striking patterns of meaning that are not apparent in any one poem or collection and are greater than the sum of the parts.

CORRADO FEDERICI Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario