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SOURCE: "Conception of Time and Language in the Poetry of Cesare Pavese," in Italian Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 29, Spring, 1964, pp. 14-34.
On October 28, 1935 Pavese made the following entry in his diary: "Poetry begins when a simpleton says of the sea: 'It looks like oil!'" The Burning Brand, translated by A. E. Murch, 1961. Immediately, however, he added that this discovery actually is not the most precise description of a flat calm. It is merely the pleasure of having perceived the similarity, the titilation provided by the establishment of a mysterious relation between the thing perceived and the idea of the thing, between the man who sees the object and his unconscious need to express it with a parallel, an image, a symbol. Pavese points out that this is how a typical poem begins, it is based on an idea. But then it is necessary to finish it. How? He...
This section contains 6,041 words (approx. 21 pages at 300 words per page) |
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