PROF DOMENICO PISANA SAID 'TODAY IS THE TIME OF THE SHIPWRECK'
.jpg)
After having finished his degree in Theology, he obtained a Ph.d in
Moral Theology at the Accademia Alfonsiana dell’Università Lateranense and the
II level Master in School Leadership. He has been a journalist since 1985 and
is the Director of the online newspaper www.radiortm.it.
He published: 10 poetry books, 11 volumes about literary criticism,
among which there is the essay on Quasimodo Quel
Nobel venuto dal Sud – Salvatore Quasimodo tra gloria ed oblio (2006), 11
theological and ethical texts, among which the book Sulla tua parola getterò le reti (1999), published by Edizioni San
Paolo, stands out and were fully translated in Polish and Spanish language, 3
historical and political volumes.
Domenico Pisana’s poetry is a matter of international interest. “Il
Giornale Italiano de España” wrote about him; the online
London newspaper “L’ItaloEuropeo Independent” interviewed him as the “personality
of the month”, and the French literary review “La Voce” published his interview
with Daniela Cecchini. His poems, articles, and prefaces to books by Italian
authors were translated in English, Greek, French, Macedonian, Arab, Spanish,
Polish, and Romanian language.
POETRY AND PROPHECY / 2… by Domenico
Pisana
Poetry, "the
lifesaver". The poet, a "rebuilder" between suffering and
prophecy.
- Domenico
Pisana
- April 26, 2022
- 16:42
.
1. Poetry in the contemporary shipwreck
The first episode of this column had, at the time of writing, 1154
readings. In thanking all readers, here is a second stage of our
reflections. If we look at our time today, it is before everyone's eyes that
it presents, beyond so many positivity, several negative characteristics which,
poetically, I converge in the metaphor of the shipwreck. Indeed, what we
are experiencing today is the time of individualism ; it
is the time of nihilism: everything is relative, everything is a
changing flow, there are no equal values for everyone, reference
points; there is a disintegration of values and culture that has called
the search for truth into question; there is no longer an objective
morality, but everyone has their own truth, their own idea of morality on the
basis of which good and evil have become interchangeable.
It is still the time of fragmentation and
segmentation: everything is fragment, segment; if everything is a
fragment, a segment, history, the past, memory are no longer needed; only
the moment he manages to grasp is valid for today's man, the existential
segment that can give the joy of the moment, that can satisfy the desire for
the ephemeral.
When everything becomes a segment, immediacy, it is no longer
necessary to ask who I am, where I come from, who my grandfather was, what he
did, where I am going, there will be a future, what it will be like, what can I
do to make it better, for what ideals do I have to commit my life. In short,
today is the time of the shipwreck : the relationships between
man and woman, between parents and children, between husband and wife are
wrecked; between young people and adults; between employers and
workers, between nations, between peoples and cultures and between religions.
It is the time of the sinking of institutions: politics, social,
cultural, trade union, religious groups, parties, schools; it is the time
of the shipwreck of the motivations, of the feelings and in which one feels
malaise, conflict, lack of inner peace; it is the time of the sinking of
social cohesion: we live in conflicts, clashes, polemics, insults, verbal and
physical aggressions. It is the time of the vaffa ... So I ask myself: why
all this? Where is the cause of this spiritual, relational, social, moral
shipwreck to be sought? And can poetry say anything?
Montale already prefigured this time of post-modernity in one of
his poems almost never explained in schools:
Stumbling, jamming
is necessary
to awaken the tongue
from its torpor.
But stuttering is not enough
even if it makes less noise
it is bad too.
So you have to resign yourself
to a means of speaking.
Once someone spoke in full
and was incomprehensible.
He certainly believed he was the last
speaker. Instead it happened
that everyone still talks
and the world has been silent ever since.
(From: Incespicare)
Montale highlights in these verses two ways of speaking: the
"half-talk" and the "whole-speaking". The latest
Montale in fact warns that the cause of incommunicability and loneliness, of
the evil of living, which today we call nihilism, relativism, moral shipwreck
is to be found in the fact that man has deluded himself into "speaking in
full" and of have the truth in hand, while in reality his has been and
continues to be a "means of speaking" that has made the world
"mute", that is, unable to communicate, unlike the speaking of that
"someone (who) once spoke in full ”and of which the post-modern man wanted
to be silent as not graspable, measurable and verifiable.
The man of our time speaks, speaks, speaks, screams, screams,
screams, he seems to have the presumption of wanting to replace the one who
"believed he was the last speaker", the " Verbum caro
factum est" , the kai or logos sarx egeneto ,
and with this work of presumption he raised walls of incommunicability between
men, between peoples, to the point that from the "last speaker" to
today the world has become "mute". The poet of today is a
speaker who speaks to whom? And to say what?
With respect to this, we must ask ourselves what sense poetry can
have, what is the use of a poet, supposing that it is of any use.
2.The poem, "the lifesaver". The poet, a
"rebuilder" between suffering and prophecy.
And then, seeing that the word is fundamental in poetry, I ask myself:
what is the use of a poet, supposing that it is useful for
something? Poetry, of course, is neither a job nor a pastime, but a sense
in the history of humanity has always expressed it and this sense has
impregnated its becoming, drawn its coordinates, as can be seen from the
testimony of the great poets of the history of literature.
Contemporary poetry will be able to continue to make sense if it
helps man to look for a "beyond" where there is " the
talk " of the one who " once spoke in full ",
as well as to find a "soteriological passage" that is capable of to
bring it closer to Transcendence, in search of the Mystery, horizons, these are
important even if not exclusive.
If it is true, as it is true, that poetry is not a
"product", a perishable commodity, an object of the market that time
wears out; if it is true, on the other hand, that poetry is an act of the
spirit and its voice a message of reflection from which questions arise that
the poet asks first of all to himself, and, therefore, to everyone, then it is
also true that such questions that he brings up from the abyss may be obscure,
but regardless of the fact of being understood, they will not cease to exert a
strong influence in social life.
In short, I believe that in the contemporary global world poetry
must be able to be characterized by its "soteriological and
re-constructive" vision, that is to say, by that ontological perspective
thanks to which the poetic word becomes a "prophetic act" capable of
helping the man to read from within himself, his relations with others, with
society: poetry must - and I use Quasimodo's ever-current words - "re-make
man within": this is the capital problem ! - stated the Nobel
Prize. Clearly not in a moral sense, because morality cannot be poetic
”. So what good is a poet and what poet does our time need? There are
many verse writers, but I think we are waiting for " visionary
poets and reconstructors" to re-emerge and be born., not as founders
of currents, but as bearers of new languages, of new forms of philosophical
incarnation of thought capable of "teaching" and leaving a mark on
the literary path of our time.
Who is the poet then? The poet is the one who with his verses
must enter the inner rubble of life to rebuild it, revive it; we need the
passage from the poet who describes or sings life to the poet who
"re-builds and throws a life jacket to help man save life" as we read
in some verses by Kahlil Gibran:
“Poetry is the lifesaver
I hold on
to when everything seems to vanish.
When my heart drips
with the agony of words that hurt,
of silences that drag
towards the precipice… ".
The poet is a reconstructor, and his poetry, in our time, is
called to raise questions of meaning on the need for man to "rediscover
the soul" stolen from relationships of loneliness and the prevailing
nihilism and materialism. It is within this vision that, in my opinion, it
is necessary to open a new horizon within which to orient the poetry of the new
millennium, almost with the intention of determining the passage from an
"elitist poetry", that is read by a few, to a "poem for
all" and capable of contributing to raise the qualitative level of the man
of our time.
Today, in my opinion, there is a need for a poem that acts as a
bridge of union not only with the "mens" but above all with the
"interioritas" of the reader, which becomes a vehicle capable of
saying words not "on the "Life, but" of "life. A poem
that offers itself to contemporary reality almost as a sort of new
"veltro" of wisdom, love and virtue of Dante's memory, a way of
salvation, a light, a hope, a prophecy capable of humanizing the planet.
The encounter between "interiority and reality"
constitutes the sign of poetics in the direction of a new humanism, poetics
that overcomes a certain "figure of rationalism" unfolding as a song
to Beauty in the century of the conflictual relationship between poetry and
transcendence, as a meditation on fragility of the emotions essentialized in a
"spirituality of existence" that goes beyond the boundaries of
confessionality and that makes its own the disturbance of a time that is torn
between being and having, between appearing and the need to communicate,
between the contrast between the Nothing and Being. And in this context of
the assumption of life, poetic writing can become a luminous testimony and
adventure of the persistent "hermeneutic circularity" between symbol
and reality, analysis of the experiential phenomenon and dream, listening to
emotion and lyrical code.
Save
© All rights reserved
This site uses Akismet to
reduce spam. Find out how your data is processed .
0 COMMENTS
- Share
Share on Facebook
Share on twitter
Share on whatsapp
Share on telegram
Share on email
Comments
Post a Comment