La vita vulnerabile. Saba e il «romanzo» del Canzoniere

Abstract

The «extraordinary poetry» of Umberto Saba – wrote Elsa Morante – «never forgets, in its almost maternal piety, the vulnerable quality of everything that lives». Understanding and narrating vulnerable life, going through pain and sublimating it in verses, using love and compassion as cognitive keys to access the "truth that lies at the bottom": these instances are at the center of Saba's work, which structures the his Canzoniere as a "novel". An autobiographical and "psychological" "novel" with a narrative architecture, in which what counts is not so much the facts as the "internal resonances" that external events produce on the poet's psyche (and hence the importance assigned to psychoanalysis) . Starting from these premises, each chapter of the book focuses on an exemplary poem, from which some founding traits of Sabian poetry are inductively derived. From time to time the analysis broadens from the single text to the work as a whole, discussing crucial themes and questions: the relationship between poetry, dreams and truth; the search for a "totality" which however remains fragmented and imperfect; the rereading of oneself and childhood through the psychoanalytic lens.