Article
On Rondoni
January 18, 2006
This takes place among fragments of news that immediately become history, unfinished experience of a meaning, a voyage, the coming and going of existence in the precise space of places: Bologna, Milan, New York, St. Petersburg, Paris, Chartres, Jesi, San Sepolcro . . . But everything now descends into a weekday dimension, which becomes more sharp and concrete, almost within easy reach, the more it transcends the “rule of watching” in the faint light of dawn or in the solitude of night, while accompanied by familial affection, desire, love, friendship, pity, the shiver of the body, the tranquil emotion of wonder.
From a refrigerator to a bicycle, from a cigarette vending machine to a courtyard tree, from a country snack bar to a metropolitan airport, the objects are really ‘things’, necessary signs of a common destiny. They are not epiphanies but apparitions, and the prophetic ethos of feeling the “clear flame of the invisible” comes true in an instinctive vision where perceptions penetrate each other like luminous knots, or “flights of words”, in the torn and reconstructed fabric of existence. It is a lyrical discourse with the breath and tension of experience, with musical pauses and refrains, and it’s also the spoken language of a song or the thoughtful wisdom of a silence. And it is easy to understand how faith in the word is for Rondoni also faith in man and his archetype of perfection, a certainty that arises from the “clamorous discovery of being in the universe”, life in life and in death itself, a question that becomes light and message. It is the voice of a poet of a new century, who has by this time left the changeable tradition of the 20th century with the disenchanted and defiantly controversial awareness of our “feathered and cruel” time, especially in the face of the “beautiful wounded face of the world”.
This text is taken from the introduction to Rondoni's book Avrebbe amato chiunque (2003).
In a time of uncertainty and questioning, while the obliging star of the post modern seems to be on the wane, the poetry of Davide Rondoni attains more than ever a vital fullness.
Perhaps it is his natural gift, which does not however ignore the obscure void of conscience, the tense and naked tremor of hope, while adding to it a tenderness that is both intimate and impetuous, suspended between “pain and praise”. Thus, in the concerted movement of Avrebbe amato chiunque (He Would Have Loved Anyone), the self who speaks, narrates and meditates, at times as if on the margins of a scene, lives and knows himself through the complementary presence of the other. This takes place among fragments of news that immediately become history, unfinished experience of a meaning, a voyage, the coming and going of existence in the precise space of places: Bologna, Milan, New York, St. Petersburg, Paris, Chartres, Jesi, San Sepolcro . . . But everything now descends into a weekday dimension, which becomes more sharp and concrete, almost within easy reach, the more it transcends the “rule of watching” in the faint light of dawn or in the solitude of night, while accompanied by familial affection, desire, love, friendship, pity, the shiver of the body, the tranquil emotion of wonder.
From a refrigerator to a bicycle, from a cigarette vending machine to a courtyard tree, from a country snack bar to a metropolitan airport, the objects are really ‘things’, necessary signs of a common destiny. They are not epiphanies but apparitions, and the prophetic ethos of feeling the “clear flame of the invisible” comes true in an instinctive vision where perceptions penetrate each other like luminous knots, or “flights of words”, in the torn and reconstructed fabric of existence. It is a lyrical discourse with the breath and tension of experience, with musical pauses and refrains, and it’s also the spoken language of a song or the thoughtful wisdom of a silence. And it is easy to understand how faith in the word is for Rondoni also faith in man and his archetype of perfection, a certainty that arises from the “clamorous discovery of being in the universe”, life in life and in death itself, a question that becomes light and message. It is the voice of a poet of a new century, who has by this time left the changeable tradition of the 20th century with the disenchanted and defiantly controversial awareness of our “feathered and cruel” time, especially in the face of the “beautiful wounded face of the world”.
This text is taken from the introduction to Rondoni's book Avrebbe amato chiunque (2003).
© Translation: 2003, Berenice Cocciolillo
© Ezio Raimondi
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