POEM OF THE ROSES

the long version

La poesia delle rose is Fortini’s first, composite treatment, in verse, of the vitality and strength of Italian literary traditions. In it he also explores the problems of representation, self-representation, and imitation within the twofold baroque and neo-classical connection. Poetry, by its very nature, cannot help but be a means of underlying meshes, and of cultural appropriation; La poesia delle rose affirms the continuity of literature, but it does so by recombining traditional strands of thought and styles into a new aesthetics in order to record the impact of past poetics on the poet’s consciousness. With a distinctive modern touch, Fortini refers in the poem to the work of various authors, such as Torquato Tasso and Jules Michelet. His presence in the text is simultaneously that of the author of a daringly innovative poem and that of a writer who confirms the traditional function and cause of poetry. This metacriticism is conveyed obliquely to the reader through the composite and even violent symbolism of the rose, which is taken to expressionistic extremes, as we shall see. At the infratextual level, Fortini refers also to his personal use of the rose, as in his 1944 poem ‘La rosa sepolta’, included in Foglio di via (1946).