Abstract
This chapter looks at the eroticism in Saba’s poetry in relation to his interest in opera and other musical forms. The focus is the second book of the Canzoniere, comprising poems written between 1922 and 1931. This book is dense with quotations from opera librettos, as well as images, motifs, and dramatic situations borrowed from the operatic repertoire. For Saba, the power of these operatic references lay in their ability to convey the conflicting elements of his soul—most notably, his sexuality. These references manifested his inner conflicts by allowing the poet to stage mini-dramas within his works, using familiar refrains (from popular operas) for his own recurring themes, in particular the “mending” of his broken heart, a metonym of his neuroses and conflicted identity.
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Notes
- 1.
Whereas Calvin Brown sees a non-resolving fugue as a failure, Debenedetti sees it as the very objective of Saba’s “Fughe.” Debenedetti, Poesia italiana del Novecento, 130.
- 2.
In response to Benedetto Croce, Saba articulates his point in the essay “Poesia, filosofia, psicanalisi,” Tutte le prose, 964–973. Saba writes: “Poesia e psicanalisi sono fra di loro quasi incompatibili. Una persona che, attraverso un’esperienza psicanalitica condotta fino in fondo e completamente riuscita, avesse superati in sé stessa tutti i propri ‘complessi’ e, con quelli, la propria infanzia, non scriverebbe più poesie” (Poetry and psychoanalysis are almost incompatible with each other. A person who, through a complete and successful psychoanalytic therapy, had overcome all his own complexes and, along with them, fully understood his own childhood, would no longer write poems). Saba, Tutte le prose, 966. Mario Lavagetto, in analyzing this phase of Saba’s poetry, reflects on the poet’s encounter with psychoanalysis, which corresponds to a radical shift. In the long poem “Il piccolo Berto,” placed in the Canzoniere right after Preludio e fughe, Saba reconnected to his childhood traumas before finally being able to move on to the next phase of his poetry, in which he abandoned the closed metrical forms that up to that point had defined his work, opening himself up to the formal trends of his century. Mario Lavagetto, “Introduzione,” in Saba, Tutte le poesie, LI-LVII.
- 3.
This quote is commonly attributed to Shaw, though its exact origin is uncertain. Other versions of the same sentiment are reproduced by other authors, for instance, Marta Feldman: “A tenor and a soprano want to make love, but are prevented in doing so by the baritone.” Feldman, Opera and Sovereignty, 386.
- 4.
Peter Conrad, A Song of Love and Death: The Meaning of Opera (New York: Poseidon Press, 1987), 42.
- 5.
Conrad, A Song of Love and Death, 42.
- 6.
“Liebestod” is the title of the last musical motif in Tristan Und Isolde, the score of the climactic moment in which Isolde cries over Tristan’s dead body. The term, a German composite for “love” (“Liebe”) and “death” (“Tod”) is also used in literary studies to indicate the so-called theme of “love-death” or the consummation of two lovers’ destiny in their death. From Orpheus and Eurydice, to Romeo and Juliet, and to Tristan and Isolde, it is a myth central to Western culture.
- 7.
Saba claims that Nuovi versi alla Lina “sono come una poesia sola, un lungo canto di abbandono, frammisto a rimproveri, a rimpianti, ad accuse, che il poeta rivolge ora alla donna, ora a sé stesso” (The “New Lines to Lina” are like a single poem, a long refrain to loneliness mingled with reproaches, regrets, and accusations that the poet addresses alternately to his wife and to himself). Saba, Tutte le prose, 161. Trans. Sartarelli, 49.
- 8.
Fausto Curi reads “Nuovi versi alla Lina” as Saba’s most overt attempt to compose an operatic artwork—a suite of poems that possessed its own inner music. Fausto Curi, “L’onestà del melodramma,” Poetiche 3 (2003): 371.
- 9.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 136: “I say: ‘I’m rotten…’ and you: ‘If you really love me / may our rottenness be blessed’ / ‘…but I never tire of kissing you.’ / ‘Who ever gets tired of happiness?’ // I tell you: ‘Lina, what with our past, / to love … now … requires / such forgetfulness!’ / You answer: ‘The heart can’t be compelled, / And what’s done is done.’ // I say: ‘Will I be able to forgive myself; / Will I ever see you as before?’ / You say: ‘You wish to hold me in high esteem? This you must do: love me.’” Trans. Hochfield, 139.
- 10.
In my use of the adjective “melodramatic,” I refer both to its literal meaning, “pertaining to melodrama,” and to its broader theoretical connotation, described by Peter Brooks in The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). Brooks describes the melodramatic as a narrative mode, the origins of which are to be traced back to nineteenth-century French melodrama. This mode, a “total and coherent aesthetic,” is characterized by a predilection for the extreme and the excessive in the portrayal of human emotions and behavior.
- 11.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 162.
- 12.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 855: “He is the most genital artist I know, even too lustful to be considered an artist. His major beatitude is to possess the beloved woman, the worst accident to lose a dear one. These are the key-features of his eternal melodies of love and death.”
- 13.
Sigmund Freud first elaborated his ideas on human sexuality in a 1915 emendation to Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 1905). In this work, Freud proposed several stages of development of one’s sexuality : the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage and, finally, the genital stage. Beginning in adolescence, the genital stage lasts until one’s death and corresponds with a development of both ego and superego. It is during this phase that human beings begin developing sexual attraction for people outside the family.
- 14.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 855: “His eternal melodies of love and death.”
- 15.
“Eros è una parola cara a Saba che considera i poeti ‘Sacerdoti di Eros’” (“Eros” is a word very dear to Saba, who considers poets to be “priests of Eros”). Saba, Tutte le prose, 231. Trans. Sartarelli, 115.
- 16.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 215.
- 17.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 212.
- 18.
“Anche le fanciulle si distinguono una dall’altra per un tratto di carattere, una particolarità che assorbe tutto il resto della figura” (Like the similar Prisoners, each girl is distinguished from the others by a character trait, a peculiarity, that absorbs everything else). Saba, Tutte le prose, 216. Trans. Sartarelli, 101.
- 19.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 291: “Standing naked, hands behind / your back, as if you have bound / them tightly. Breasts / erect, tempting bites.” Trans. Hochfield, “Girls,” 291.
- 20.
Saba encountered Freud only in the late 1920s, when he underwent psychoanalytic treatment with Edoardo Weiss (1891–1970), pioneer of psychoanalysis in Italy. This encounter had powerful repercussions on Saba’s poetry. According to the poet himself, it is due to his psychoanalytic treatment and a more complete understanding of psychoanalysis that he was able to develop a clearer style in Parole and the following poems, one less reliant on fixed metrical forms and a limited vocabulary, but closer to the formal experimentations of his contemporaries.
- 21.
I discuss this scorciatoia (“Nietzsche”) in greater depth in Chap. 3.
- 22.
“Nietzsche non fu un filosofo: fu il caso estremo di una quasi completa sublimazione di Eros” (Nietzsche wasn’t a philosopher. He was the epitome of an almost complete sublimation of Eros. He was other things too, I know). Saba, Tutte le prose, 31. Trans. Sartarelli, 179.
- 23.
Romano Luperini, “La cultura di Saba,” L’ombra d’Argo 2, no. 5–6 (1985): 68. For a study of Saba’s debt to Weininger, see Alberto Cavaglion, “Saba e Weininger,” in Umberto Saba: Trieste e la cultura mitteleuropea, ed. Rosita Tordi (Milan: Mondadori, 1986), 269–277.
- 24.
For a study of Weininger’s impact on Italian culture, see Alberto Cavaglion, Otto Weininger in Italia (Rome: Carucci, 1982).
- 25.
Cavaglion, “Saba e Weininger,” 275. I discuss Saba’s homosexuality more extensively in Chap. 3, note 3.
- 26.
“Risulta probabile che a dilatare la dimensione melodrammatica del poemetto e ad accentuare certi toni abbia contribuito la lettura di Sesso e carattere di Weininger” (It is probable that the reading of Weininger’s Sex and Character contributed to dilating the melodramatic dimension of the poem and to accentuating some of its extreme tones). Curi, “L’onestà del melodramma,” 371.
- 27.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 160.
- 28.
“The pathos of love / in our hearts, / like a secret care or lonely / fervor, always more inward and precious; / for you a sweet thought / marries a bitter memory, / dispels the ennui that stagnates inside / and then it stays with you all your life.” Trans. Hochfield, “The Pathos of Love,” 117.
- 29.
Milanini in Saba, Coi miei occhi, 91.
- 30.
“Your father? Banish, my dear, / this bitter memory. / You have a husband and father in me.”
- 31.
Lonardi, Il fiore dell’addio, 36.
- 32.
“Mozart is the greatest among classical composers, and . . . his Don Giovanni deserves the highest place among all classic works of art.” Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 76.
- 33.
For Kierkegaard, the natural means to this immediacy is music, and “the essence of Don Giovanni is music. He dissolves before us into music, he dilates into a world of tones.” Kierkegaard, 153.
- 34.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 322: “Oh cause / of my pain, and also, / yes, my joy.” Trans. Hochfield, 315.
- 35.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 322: “Thanks to you, I now see / people coming and going, / tall ships departing, / the vast world making itself / a single thing for you.” Trans. Hochfield, 315–317.
- 36.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 226: “The ‘desire’ Saba is talking about is carnal desire; it accompanies man from his birth to his death, giving him no rest or respite.” Trans. Sartarelli, 110.
- 37.
See Chap. 3. “La brama deriva sensibilmente dal “Pensiero dominante” di Leopardi; ed anche, un poco, dal risveglio di Tristano all’ultimo atto. Vogliamo dire che Saba aveva, quando scrisse questa poesia, accolte ed assimilate dentro di sé quella lirica e quella musica” (“Desire” is noticeably derived from Leopardi’s “Pensiero dominante”; and also, a little, from Tristan’s reawakening in the final act. Saba, when writing the piece, had accepted and absorbed within himself that poem and that music). Saba, Tutte le prose, 225–26. Trans. Sartarelli, 110.
- 38.
Leopardi wrote this group of five poems, including “Il pensiero dominante,” “Amore e morte,” “Il consalvo,” “A se stesso,” and “Aspasia,” between 1831 and 1834 during his Florentine stay. The poems were inspired by and dedicated to Fanny Targioni Tozzetti (1801–1889), a noblewoman and the host of an important literary circle in which Leopardi participated. The poet eventually fell in love with Targioni Tozzetti. These poems represent an important step in the evolution of Leopardi’s philosophical system. They center on the theme of carnal love, a novelty for the poet. Most importantly, this cycle chronicles the poet’s approach to so-called “Cosmic pessimism.” While love is first welcomed as the most powerful of human motives, it is ultimately portrayed as the final illusion for men, and the failure of Leopardi’s erotic experience dictates a change of heart: with love, all other human illusions disappear and leave in their absence a complete desperation. This ultimate disillusionment leads Leopardi to contemplate the absolute vanity of human existence.
- 39.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 321: “Other than you, what have I talked about / in the practice of my art; what have I hidden / or unveiled other than you?” Trans. Hochfield, 313.
- 40.
Leopardi, Canti, 209: “Who doesn’t speak / of your mysterious nature? / Who hasn’t felt its power among us?” Trans. Galassi, 213.
- 41.
Leopardi, Canti, 209: “Terrible but precious / gift of heaven.” Trans. Galassi, 213.
- 42.
Leopardi, Canti, 212: “One love alone / lives among us: the eternal laws / gave it to the human heart, as its all-commanding lord.” Trans. Galassi, 219.
- 43.
Leopardi, Canti, 210: “What are they in my eyes now / next to you, / all earthly works, the whole of life!” Trans. Galassi, 215.
- 44.
“La brama” (23–27). Saba, Tutte le poesie, 320–21: “And from his bed / already stained, the proud youth / leaps up disgusted, in horror at himself, / whose heart is oppressed with shame / and self-reproach for the whole day.” Trans. Hochfield, 311–313.
- 45.
Saba confirms that this image was based on Tristan in Storia e cronistoria. Saba, Tutte le prose, 225–26 (quoted above, note 44).
- 46.
As critic Bryan Magee best puts it, in his discussion of the philosopher’s influence on Tristan und Isolde: “The entire work is a sort of musical equivalent of Schopenhauer’s doctrine that existence is an inherently unsatisfiable web of longings, willings and strivings from which the only permanent liberation is the cessation of being.” Magee, The Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 356. James McGlathery offers a detailed analysis of Wagner’s principal operas in light of their focus on the erotic theme in Wagner’s Operas and Desire (New York: Peter Lang, 1998). However, Schopenhauer’s influence extends far beyond eroticism. For instance, according to Magee, Wagner conceived of the second and third acts of Tristan und Isolde as a dramatization of the philosopher’s ideas. Behind the metaphorical opposition of the realms of Day and Night, Wagner masks the dialectic between the Phenomenon and Noumenon that Schopenhauer discusses in his Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818). Bryan Magee, The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy (New York: Henry and Holt Company, 2000), 126–173. Schopenhauer discusses the centrality of sex in the lives of human beings, and its relation to artistic creation, in the essay “The Metaphysics of Love” (1818): “The yearning of love, the [Greek: Ίμερος], which has been expressed in countless ways and forms by the poets of all ages, without their exhausting the subject or even doing it justice; this longing which makes us imagine that the possession of a certain woman will bring interminable happiness, and the loss of her, unspeakable pain; this longing and this pain do not arise from the needs of an ephemeral individual, but are, on the contrary, the sigh of the spirit of the species, discerning irreparable means of either gaining or losing its ends. It is the species alone that has an interminable existence: hence it is capable of endless desire, endless gratification, and endless pain. These, however, are imprisoned in the heart of a mortal . . . and can find no expression for the announcements of endless joy or endless pain.” Schopenhauer, Essays of Schopenhauer, Trans. Rudolph Dirkcs (London: Scott, 1897), 194–95.
- 47.
In reference to Wagner, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek polemically challenges Freud’s placement of Eros and Thanatos as two opposed forces. In the actions of Wagner’s characters, he recognizes what Freud defines as the “death drive,” a desire for death and self-destruction. However, Žižek argues that death is love’s true object and offers the Wagnerian characters a liberation from their self-destructive tendencies as well as their perpetual longing: “Love itself culminates in death, its true object is death, and longing for the beloved is longing for death . . . The death drive does not reside in Wagner’s heroes’ longing to find peace in death; it is, on the contrary, the very opposite of dying . . . The final passing away of the Wagnerian hero (the death of the Dutchman, Wotan, Tristan, Amfortas) is therefore the moment of their liberation from the clutches of the death drive.” Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, Opera’s Second Death (New York: Routledge, 2002), 106.
- 48.
“Il piccolo Berto” marks a pivotal moment in Saba’s conversion to psychoanalysis. Saba explains that this collection of poems is essentially a collection of memories from childhood. The young Berto, the poet’s alter ego, is described as a young boy “reborn” after being cured by psychoanalysis. The procedure is described as removing the amnesia that surrounds early childhood memories and finding within them the deepest reasons for the boy’s inner conflicts. Saba, Tutte le prose, 261. Mario Lavagetto underscores the centrality of this poemetto in the thematic development of Saba’s poetry, in that it marks a passage to a phase of his poetry characterized and defined by Saba’s encounter with psychoanalysis. For Lavagetto, “Il piccolo Berto” openly mirrors Saba’s own experience of analysis with Doctor Weiss. The critic reinforces his claim by citing Saba’s own words: “La psicanalisi, che aveva . . . portato alla luce il bambino e gli aveva dato la parola, strappandolo dall’ombra in cui continuava a mormorare e a condizionare le azioni dell’adulto” (Psychoanalysis, which had . . . brought the child to light and had given him the ability to speak, elevating him from the shadow in which he continued to whisper and condition the actions of the adult). Lavagetto, “Introduzione,” Tutte le poesie, LI.
- 49.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 335: “Is it fascination? Is it disgust? Is it both? / Who knows? Maybe he’s thinking of his mother, / or wondering if this is love.” Trans. Hochfield, “Eros,” 333.
- 50.
Italics mine throughout. The word “altero” will be recognized by opera audiences as an echo of the famous “Un dì, felice” in La traviata I.3: “Di quell’amor che è l’anima / dell’universo intero, / misterioso e altero, / croce e delizia al cor” (Love which is the soul / of the entire universe, / mysterious and proud, / cross and delight of the heart). Saba uses the adjective “altero” (proud) at points throughout the Canzoniere . In “Sonetto di primavera” (“Spring Sonnet”): “Io solo qui di desideri vani / t’esalto, mia inesperta anima altera” (Alone with my vain desires / I celebrate you, my proud, inexperienced soul). In “Così passo i miei giorni” (“How I Spend my Days”): “Solo alle volte mi mescolo alle altere / genti del mondo. E anch’io quei loro affanni / provo: non cure tacite severe / ma le lotte crudeli e l’onte e i danni” (Only at times I mix myself with the proud / people of the world. And I share their pain: / not just secret worries / but cruel struggles and offenses and damages). In “L’uomo” (“The Man”): “Nel largo petto il suo cuore non era / altrui malvagio, la bocca di altera / forma era facile al riso” (Inside his large chest his heart was not / evil, the proud shape of his mouth / was prone to smiling). In “Vacanze” (“Holidays”): “E sull’altero volto / la mia condanna per sempre si incide” (And on the proud face / my sentence is forever worn). In “Dall’erta” (“From the Hill”): “Un fanciullo / che se Borea t’investe, mette l’ali / a ogni cosa, per te vola. Poi torna / a se stesso, ti passa accanto altero” (A young boy / that if Boreas invested you, he would put wings / on everything, make everything fly. / Then he would come back to himself, / pass proudly next to me). In “Campionessa di nuoto” (“Swimming Champion”): “E un giorno / un’ombra mesta ti scendeva—oh, un attimo!—/ dalle ciglia, materna ombra che gli angoli / ti incurvò della bella bocca altera” (And one day / a sad shadow came down—just for a moment!—/ from your eyelashes, like a maternal shadow / that bent the angles of your proud mouth).
- 51.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 335: “He only listens to the music, light / trivial stuff, dear to me also / at times, which for him has become, / in his homely but proud spirit, // a battle march.” Trans. Hochfield, 333.
- 52.
“That love that’s the pulse of the universe, the whole universe, / Mysterious, mysterious and proud, / Torture, torture and delight / Torture and delight, delight to the heart.”
- 53.
The noun “compassion” comes from the Latin noun “compassionem” and the verb “compatire,” a composite of the preposition “cum” (with) and the verb “patire” (to suffer). “Compatire” thus literally means “to suffer with,” “to share somebody else’s suffering.”
- 54.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 344: “A man in agony / you have comforted. / Do not forget Eleonora, / do not forget, my Eleonora!”
- 55.
This scene of Il trovatore has inspired several authors, in particular, as Lonardi convincingly demonstrates, Montale. In Chap. 6, I will discuss this opera and Montale’s references to it more extensively. Luigi Pirandello also wrote a short story entitled “Leonora, addio!” (1910), later collected in Novelle per un anno (1922–1937). Pirandello adapted this short story into a play entitled “Questa sera si recita a soggetto” (1928–29), first performed in Königsberg, Germany on January 25, 1930 (in German translation). The first Italian performance was in Turin, on April 14, 1930.
- 56.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 237. The reference to this character forms part of Saba’s erotic symbolism. In this regard, Mengaldo argued that Leonora is one of the highest manifestations of Verdian eroticism. Mengaldo, “Montale critico musicale,” 221.
- 57.
Mila, Verdi, 468.
- 58.
I will analyze this particular operatic moment in greater depth in the following chapter, while discussing Verdi’s influence on Montale’s poetry.
- 59.
For instance, Pietro Cataldi has analyzed Verdi’s influence on Saba’s poetry, focusing on a series of thematic and textual affinities between the two. Cataldi identifies a number of textual citations from Verdi’s opera that resonate with Saba, in particular when he deals with the erotic. For instance, in “La brama,” Cataldi identified numerous textual citations from Verdi’s Otello—an opera inspired by Shakespeare’s famous tale of love and jealousy—that focus on the erotic theme. Cataldi, “Saba e Verdi,” 54-55n.
- 60.
Saba envisioned his Canzoniere as divided into three books, which correspond to three different stages of his poetry as well as different periods of his life. This partition is preserved in the current edition of the book. However, before the publication of the 1945 Einaudi edition, the publisher considered releasing the Canzoniere as three separate volumes, as testified in a letter by Saba to his daughter Linuccia dated January 1945. See Umberto Saba, La spada d’amore: Lettere scelte 1902–1957, ed. Aldo Marcovecchio (Milano: Mondadori, 1983), 23. See also Marcovecchio’s note in La spada d’amore, 123.
- 61.
Chiaretta is a central character of Saba’s poetry. Saba himself underscores her centrality in Storia e cronistoria when he claims that “Chiarezza” (Clarity) could have been the title of the Canzoniere. Saba, Tutte le prose, 628.
- 62.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 251: “I started out from Melancholy / and on the way found Bliss.” Trans. Hochfield, “Finale,” 251.
- 63.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 251: “Art hardly helps me not to think / of her; yet from many scattered things it makes / one beautiful thing in me. And a good verse / cures me of every ill.” Trans. Hochfield, 251.
- 64.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 225: “From you, my heart, I await the final song, / And thinking of it pleases me.” Trans. Hochfield, 225. Italics mine.
- 65.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 225: “And I heard him singing / To himself, but so that the city / Heard it too, and the hills and shore, / and above else my heart.” Trans. Hochfield, 225.
- 66.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 200–01.
- 67.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 225–226: “But on that bright morning / the voice warned of something else, and you / know, my heart, what strange things / you asked yourself while listening: / will the boat sail far away; was suffering / not vain, and my being sad a fault?” Trans. Hochfield, “The Morning Song,” 227.
- 68.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 227: “Melancholy, / you fatally consume / my life, / and there is nothing in the world, nothing, / that diverts me.” Trans. Hochfield, “Melancholy,” 229.
- 69.
This younger Saba, however, is significantly older than Chiaretta (though it is not specified by how much).
- 70.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 237: “With what ingenuous cunning, little girl, / you stretched out, now face down, now on your back. / . . . / how much you revealed to my enraptured eyes / rolling about the grassy meadows.” Trans. Hochfield, “Chiaretta on vacation,” 233.
- 71.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 238: “There is much to enjoy with looking, / lovely Chiaretta, but sweeter is it to have / the one you love to yourself alone.” Trans. Hochfield, 235.
- 72.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 238: “I led you by the hand / Behind a low wall and kissed your / Ardent mouth for a long time.” Trans. Hochfield, 235.
- 73.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 238: “I heard an angry rebuke / from you, ‘Take such a chance here?’” Trans. Hochfield, 235.
- 74.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 238: “Anger and sadness showed in many eyes.” Trans. Hochfield, 237.
- 75.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 242: “I look at the real, and trace / The sweet life / With something more // That says: look and revere: / See how lovely the world is / If your pain is cast aside.” Trans. Hochfield, “The Engraver,” 241.
- 76.
Saba comments: “Formalmente, le Canzonette sono tutte composte di strofette chiuse; la misura dei versi e il gioco delle rime si ripete in tutte le strofe dei componimenti, imitando il modello, volta a volta, offerto dalla prima. Né mai, come in quest’epoca della sua vita, Saba fu così ligio alle forme regolari” (In terms of form, the Canzonettas are all made up of short stanzas with regular rhyme schemes. The meter and rhyme are repeated in each stanza of the compositions, each time imitating the model of the first stanza. Never was Saba so observant of regular forms as in this period of his life). Saba, Storia e cronistoria, 191–192. Trans. Sartarelli, 77.
- 77.
“Dei due elementi fondamentali che, all’esame empirico, ci sembrano caratterizzare una musica lineare, orizzontale e non armonica e verticale quale è una musica fatta di parole, di questi due elementi che sono ritmo e melodia, quello a cui Saba si attacca maggiormente, quello da cui ricava la maggiore persuasione che la sua è davvero musica, si direbbe che sia il ritmo” (The fundamental elements which, at an empirical examination, seem to characterize a linear, horizontal, non-harmonic, and vertical music—a music made of words—are rhythm and melody. But the most important “musical” element for Saba’s poetry is certainly rhythm, persuading him that his poetry really is music). Debenedetti, Poesia italiana del Novecento, 163.
- 78.
His metrical choices, for instance, include the use of regular meters such as settenario, novenario, and endecasillabo; the use of rhymes, repetitions, and closed forms; and the use of canzone forms and sonnets, in contrast to the experimental tendencies of his contemporaries.
- 79.
Solmi, Scrittori negli anni (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1963), 35.
- 80.
Roland Barthes, making a distinction between classical and modern poetry, gives his definition of “relational poetry”: “The economy of classical language (Prose and Poetry) is relational, which means that in it words are abstracted as much as possible in the interest of relationships. In it, no word has a density by itself, it is hardly the sign of a thing, but rather the means of conveying a connection.” On the other hand, modern poetry “must be distinguished from classical poetry and from any type of prose, [it] destroys the spontaneously functional nature of language, and leaves standing only its lexical basis. It retains only the outward shape of relationships, their music, but not their reality.” Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, 41–52.
- 81.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 306: “Now that I can forget /—albeit for a short while—/ how close to my heart / is the pain of the world // and for this inner peace / I can finally enjoy / my heart is thankful / as much as it’s deep.”
- 82.
These breakdowns occurred in the spring of 1924 and the winter of 1926: see Arrigo Stara’s chronology in Tutte le prose, LXII. Despite the physical and mental pain of these breakdowns, Saba felt that they sharpened his understanding of the world. His poetry goes through what he calls an “illimpidimento”—an intensification of vividness (again underscoring the connection he finds between suffering and creativity). Saba’s work in the bookstore that he would own all his life was, incidentally, also instrumental for overcoming these crises.
- 83.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 306: “I turn two evils / into a higher good. / Among so many sorrows / I do not say: I am done.”
- 84.
“Le Sonate per violino solo di Sebastiano Bach, che egli non fu certamente mai in grado di eseguire, lo affascinavano in modo singolare, anche per motivi estranei, in parte, alla musica. Soprattutto lo aveva colpito un Fuga, che di quelle Sonate fa parte, e della quale si era provato a decifrare le prime note . . . Ora accadde che un giorno—udendo una sua nipotina eseguire al piano certi esercizi, Saba ebbe egli pure la sua ‘strana idea’ . . . di ‘suonare il violino sul piano’ . . . si proponeva, in una parola, di eseguire al piano i pezzi—gli studi—che, da ragazzo, non era riuscito a eseguire sul violino; tra questi la famosa Fuga di Bach . . . Per Saba quella di ‘suonare il violino sul piano’ si trasformò—altre circostanze aiutando—nel libro che adesso s’intitola Preludio e fughe” (The Sonatas for Solo Violin of Johann Sebastian Bach, which he certainly was never capable of playing, held a special fascination for him, in part for reasons extraneous to music. He was particularly taken with one Fugue that formed part of those Sonatas, and had even attempted to decipher its opening notes . . . Now, as it turned out, one day, upon hearing a niece of his playing some exercise on the piano with deplorable indifference, Saba had his own “strange idea” . . . of “playing the violin on the piano” . . . His intention, in short, was to perform at the piano the very pieces—the studies—that he had been unable to perform as a child on the violin, including the famous Bach fugue . . . For Saba, the “desire to play the violin at the piano” was transformed, with the help of other circumstances, into the book now entitled Prelude and Fugues). Saba, Tutte le prose, 249. Trans. Sartarelli, 130–31.
- 85.
“The fugue is usually considered the most intellectual of musical forms . . . For rather obvious reasons, the literary fugue has seldom been attempted. The form is essentially contrapuntal, and, as we have already seen, real counterpoint is impossible in literature.” Brown, Music and Literature, 149–151.
- 86.
“Like various large musical forms, it is simply an expansion of ABA form, but each section has its own prescribed structure . . . the fugue is divided into three sections: the exposition, middle section (development), and final section. The exposition begins with the announcement of the subject, or theme, in a single voice, unaccompanied. When the subject has been thus given out, a different voice enters and repeats it . . . The middle section gives the composer a good deal more freedom than does the exposition. It is formed of episodes alternating with ‘middle entries’ of the subject . . . The final section returns to the keys of the exposition. Up to this point the entire treatment has been contrapuntal, but now the voices usually abandon their separate motion and finish off with a block of chords in the original key.” Brown, Music and Literature, 150–51.
- 87.
“Naturally, a poor fugue is as tedious as a poor sonata or a poor march, but because of its very perfection of form a good fugue can be one of the most satisfactory forms of art, emotionally as well as intellectually.” Brown, Music and Literature, 149.
- 88.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 367: “Oh, come back to me voices of the past, / Dear, discordant voices! / Who knows but that in sweet new harmonies / I can make you sound again?” Trans. Hochfield, “Prelude,” 343.
- 89.
As Saba explains in Storia e cronistoria: “Le Fughe sono voci che si parlano fra di loro, s’inseguono per dirsi cose ora contrastanti ed ora concordanti. Ma i loro contrasti . . . sono solo apparenti. Le voci sono, in realtà la voce di Saba; l’espressione—diventata poesia—del si e del no che egli disse alla vita, alla ‘calda vita,’ amata ed odiata al tempo stesso e dalla stessa persona. Riflettono uno stato d’animo, del quale Saba sofferse in modo più acuto forse di altri, ma comune agli uomini, che lo portano in sé senza sospettarlo, o almeno senza averne coscienza” (The Fugues are voices speaking amongst themselves, following one after the other to say things that are at times in conflict, at times in agreement. Yet . . . these conflicts are only apparent. The voices are, in fact, Saba’s voice: they are his expressions of the yes and the no—made into poetry—he says to life, “warm life,” that life at once loved and hated and feared by one person. They reflect a state of mind from which Saba suffered perhaps more acutely than others). Saba, Tutte le prose, 247. Trans. Sartarelli, 129.
- 90.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 367: “In peace / You may compose the richest harmonies, / Vainly discordant voices. / Light and shadow, joy and sadness / Love one another in you.” Trans. Hochfield, 343.
- 91.
A neurosis is a mild mental disorder: the term indicates a form of dissociation from reality, but is less acute than psychosis. While it has not been used for diagnoses in the past decades, it was a central idea in Freudian and Jungian theories. Freud saw neuroses as the psychosomatic manifestations of repressed aspects of a person’s psychosexual development. For Freud, their difference from psychosis lay in the level of dissociation from reality. The idea of a broken heart encompasses this dissociation, while symbolizing the sexual connotations implicit in Freud’s formulation.
- 92.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 401: “O my heart divided in two at birth, / how much pain I endured to make them one! / How many roses to hide an abyss!” Trans. Hochfield, 355.
- 93.
In his essay on the linguistic aspects of Saba’s work, Lorenzo Polato treats Saba’s fugues as musical forms, focusing on the poet’s use of polyphony. Polato, “Aspetti e tendenze della lingua poetica,” Ricerche sulla lingua poetica contemporanea (Padua: Liviana Editrice in Padova, 1966), 39–90. Later reprinted in L’aureo anello: Saggi sull’opera poetica di Umberto Saba (Milan: Francoangeli, 1994), 47–86. Gianandrea Gavazzeni attacks this position, and reprises Sergio Solmi’s idea that Saba’s “fugues” are actually metaphorical. Gavazzeni denies the possibility of actually realizing musical forms in poetry. Gavazzeni, “Fra poesia e musica,” Nuova rivista musicale 2 (1968): 1089–91.
- 94.
“E veramente questo ‘Fuga a tre voci’ è la poesia più ‘alta’ di Saba” (And this “Canto in Three Voices” truly is Saba’s “loftiest” poem). Saba, Tutte le prose, 253. Trans. Sartarelli, 134.
- 95.
Saba, Tutte le prose, 253.
- 96.
History and Chronicle of the Songbook, 134.
- 97.
For its regularity and rhythmic predictability, this verse is considered to be among the most musical and memorable of the Italian metrical tradition, even if not the most prevalent in the Italian Novecento. This metrical form enjoyed better fortunes, however, in musical theater and opera librettos . As Friedrich Lippmann explains, the ottonario was often a privileged metrical form in eighteenth-century opera buffa and nineteenth-century opera librettos. Lippmann, Versificazione italiana e ritmo musicale, 31. Coincidentally, the ottonario is also the most prevalent meter in Verdi’s early librettos. See Daniele Darra, A misura di canto: Aspetti di metrica nei libretti scritti per Verdi (PhD diss, University of Padua, 2014). As Gianfranca Lavezzi underscores, the ottonario is prominent in a number of arias and lyrical moments, for instance passages of La traviata, Saba’s favorite opera. Lavezzi, Manuale di metrica italiana (Roma: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1996), 224.
- 98.
The poet goes so far as to evoke an episode that, unknowingly to him, inspired the composition of this poem in the first place. A young girl, likely Saba’s own daughter, was sitting in front of a mirror as two boys tried to seduce her. The first attempted to illustrate the joys of love, the other the torments. The young girl enjoys the attention and watches the scene and herself in the mirror. In Storia e cronistoria Saba expands on Debenedetti’s insight and explains that the first voice is that of extroversion, the second that of introversion. In these voices, one can also find a reformulation of the two characters in “La malinconia amorosa,” representing two different approaches to erotic love.
- 99.
Debenedetti, “Saba,” 135.
- 100.
Debenedetti, “Saba,” 141.
- 101.
Saba, Tutte le poesie, 376: “I do not know a sweeter thing / than the youthful love / of two lovers in happy rapture / dying in the arms of each other. // I do not know a higher pain / than being deprived of such pleasure, / and I wear no other chains / than two long white arms.”
- 102.
“. . . due amanti in lieta ebbrezza / di cui l’un nell’altro muore” strongly echoes the overarching themes of La traviata (“Godiam, fugace e rapido, / è il gaudio dell’amore; / è un fior che nasce e muore / né più si può goder,” La traviata, I.2).
- 103.
In Tristan und Isolde, erotic passion accompanies the two lovers as they meet their deaths; Mozart’s Don Giovanni is an impenitent sinner who eventually is punished with death; Bizet’s Carmen portrays eroticism as a wrecking force that haunts Don José and leads to Carmen’s death; lastly, in Verdi’s Rigoletto, the lust of the Duke of Mantua is the chifef cause of Gilda’s accidental killing.
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Acetoso, M. (2020). Heart of Darkness: Saba’s Operatic Eroticism. In: Echoes of Opera in Modern Italian Poetry. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46091-4_5
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