Effiges / Effigi. Una poesia di Erminia Passannanti



‘Effiges’

 

wisdom perhaps occurred

on the same night of the child's birth

when she was laid down on her back

naked and awake in her prime

in that voracious moment

of original learning

 

and nothing was there

but her dim pupils

leading her mind

to the changeable effigies

appearing and dissolving

on the wall

over and above her body

unnamed

 

and the child kept silent

knowing they were eagles

 

 

 

© Erminia Passannanti. 2002

Effigi

 

la saggezza forse per sorte occorse

la notte stessa in cui

la bimba nacque

quando venne deposta

nuda supina e desta

in quell’istante

d’avido apprendimento

 

e nulla era

tranne le opache iridi

che muovevano la mente

verso le effigi

mutevoli e anonime

che si dileguavano

sul muro sopra il suo corpo

 

e quell’ infante tacque

sapendo ch’erano aquile.

 

Note by the author:

In this poem, I tried to render the moment in which a child gains insight into the world of the others.

It is dedicated to my daughter Valentina - to her precocious and even prodigious recognition of those nameless effigies that crowd around the child's cot.

Diversity of shadows and colours, forms and voices embrace the child's new eyes, ranging from the caring but still unknown parental faces to those of the appealing and portentous presences that only the child can perceive.

The poem's imagery is dominated by a phenomenological order of things that clarifies the legacy between reticence and exposure, pre-natal consciousness and the child's later knowledge of the world, gained through the senses.

Erminia Passannanti

Oxford, 14 October 2002 


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BIOGRAPHY Erminia Passannanti was educated in Foreign Languages and Literatures (Italian, English, and French) at the University of Salerno (Italy). In 1988, she obtained a First-Class Honours Degree (Cum Magna Laude:100/110 e Lode) from the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. In 2004, she obtained her first Ph.D. in Italian literature at University College London with a doctoral thesis on the work of Italian poet, literary translator and essayist, Franco Fortini, involving   XXth Century Cultural History, History of Ideas, Poetry and Literary Criticism and Translation Theory.   In 2014 she was granted a second Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Media Communication (Brunel University, England) with a thesis on Italian cinema and religious censorship. In 2000. she won the Italian state competition ("Concorso a cattedra") to become a full school professor. Her research ranges from philosophy of literature, history of ideas, translation studies and film criticism. He ac...
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