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#2550 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Photo: book cover
Exclusive to the Highlights:
For this issue I typed an excerpt from Six Memos for the Next Millenium, by Italo Calvino. Here is its page on Amazon.com: http://snipurl.com/utsa
In my next issue of The Highlights I'm going to include more selections from this book.
--Jerry
Selection from
Six Memos for the Next Millenium
by Italo Calvino
As soon as the moon appears on poetry, it
brings with it a sensation of lightness, suspension, a silent
calm enchantment. When I began thinking about these lectures, I
wanted to devote one whole talk to the moon, to trace its
apparitions in the literatures of many times and places. Then I
decided that the moon should be left entirely to Leopardi. For
the miraculous thing about his poetry is that he simply takes the
weight out of language, to the point that it resembles moonlight.
The appearances of the moon in his poetry do not take up many
lines, but they are enough to shed the light of the moon on the
whole poem, or else to project upon it the shadow of its absence.
Dolce e chiara è la notte e
senza vento
e querta sovra i tetti e in mezzo
agli orti
posa la luna, e di lontan rivela
serena ogni montagna
. . . . .
O graziosa luna, io mi rammento
che, or volge l'anno, sovra questo colle
io venia pien d'angoscia a rimirarti:
e tu pendevi allor su quella selva
siccome fai, che tutta la rischiari.
. . . . .
O cara luna, al cui tranquillo raggio
danzan le lepri nelle selve...
. . . . .
Già tutta l'aria imbruna,
torna azzurro il sereno, e tornan l'ombre
giù da' colli e da' tetti,
al biancheggiar della recente luna.
. . . . .
Che fai tu, luna, in ciel? Dimmi, che fai,
silenziosa luna?
Sorgi la sera e vai,
contemplando i deserti, indi ti posi.
~ ~ ~
Soft and clear is the night and without
wind, and quietly
over the roofs and in the gardens rests the
moon, and far
away reveals every peaceful mountain.
. . . . .
O gentle, gracious moon, I remember now, it
must be a
year ago, on this same hill I came to see
you; I was full of
sorrow. And you were leaning then above that
wood just as
now, filling it all with brilliance.
. . . . .
O cherished moon, beneath whose quiet beams
the hares dance in the woods...
. . . . .
Already all the air darkens, deepens to blue
and shadows glide
from roofs and hills at the whitening of the
recent moon.
. . . . .
What do you do there, moon, in the sky? Tell
me what you
do, silent moon. When evening comes you rise
and go con-
templating wastelands; then you set.
~ ~ ~