An intimate, ironic portrait of Italian poet and author Patrizia Cavalli. Her story is one of a free woman who needed her audience and her friendships, a girl who left her hometown and its rigid r
I met her in Rome in 1969. I remember seeing her at class: she was beautiful, beautiful and way out of my league. I saw her again years later, me one face in the crowd listening to her readings of Shakespeare’s comedy, which she translated to give a full, natural body to the jokes. A true gymnast of words, she didn’t quite like earlier translations by Quasimodo or Lombardo.
She somehow reminded me of Emily Dickinson, who once told her love interest Sue Gilbert: “Dear Sue With the Exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living”. I am talking about Patrizia Cavalli—a poet, a fearless woman, a friend of Elsa Morante, of whom she once said “I was so lonely, she opened the world to me.” In an interview, she admitted that when Elsa Morante asked to read her poetry, she trashes it all and starts anew. She dedicated her first poem to Kim Novak, and later debuted with poetry collection Le mie poesie non cambieranno il mondo (lit. ‘my poetry won’t change the world’) in 1974.
We should not think of her poetry as a voice letting off steam in verses. She is quite restrained, and her poems are oftentimes mere epigrams: a few lines to paint a situation, a thought, a reflection. Her lexicon is familiar and commonplace.
Patrizia Cavalli died, after a long battle, last year. She was also a valid prose author. Her Con passi giapponesi (lit. ‘with Japanese steps’) was nominated at the 2020 Campiello Award. Poetry was her life, though. “What I want to do is writing, not communicating.” And yet her writing was so powerful – it hit you hard.
Prose, as a matter of fact, reveals more than poetry, and shows how women see women. Patrizia was not much interested in the male world, but she did once say: “The only moments one stops thinking about their beloved, is when they’re in each other’s arms. It is a moment of physical rest, too. Lost in that vast territory that is the body of the one we love, we forget our individual bodies” and “half of my poetry is dedicated to unrequited love, and always finds someone who is willing to listen. It is about revealing, offering, and abandoning.” She also cited author Goffredo Parise: “Poetry comes and goes, lives and dies whenever it wants, and knows no offspring… a bit like life, and above all, love.”
A further few verses of hers: “But please tell me about everything, even your sadness, with some lightness” “With soft voice you put me to bed, you want me to sleep. To start my dreams you list the many wonders of who you’d be, if you only were.”
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