Franco Fortini: Composita solvantur

Composita solvantur

Franco Fortini

Se volessi un’altra volta queste minime parole
sulla carta allineare (sulla carta che non duole)
     il dolore che le ossa già comportano.

si farebbe troppo acuto, troppo simile all’acuto
degli uccelli che al mattino tutto chiuso, tutto muto
     sull’altissima magnolia si contendono.

Ecco scrivo, cari piccoli. Non ho tendine né osso
che non dica in nota acuto: “Più non posso”.
     Grande fosforo imperiale, fanne cenere.

Composita solvantur

Franco Fortini

If I wanted once more these minimum words
on paper to align (on paper that feels no hurt)
     the hurt which bones already present.

it would become too acute, too similar to the acute
cry of birds who in the morning all closed, all mute
    on the highest magnolia tops contend.

So I write, little dears. I have no tendon nor bone
that in acute note does not say: “I can do no more.”
     Great imperial phosphorous, make it ash.

Translation © Matilda Colarossi 2025

This poem by Franco Fortini, “Composita solvantur”―also the title of the last collection of poems written between 1984 and 1993 and first published in 1994 by Einaudi―takes its name from the epigraph on the tomb of Francis Bacon at Trinity college in Cambridge, that is, “let compounds be dissolved”, where the “compound” is the cypher, the key to his words and intellect.

In Fortini the collection, as he himself states in the introduction, is a wish: “may what is composed dissolve”. And such is the collection: “testing the friction between private and public, antiquity and modernity, man and nature, life and death”, a variety of styles and themes, a dialogue with the reader, the poet’s ”reckoning with memory”. His very last work.

For more information on Franco Fortini and Composita salvantur: https://www.labalenabianca.com/2015/04/17/lultimo-fortini-denso-surreale-e-intimista/

https://ilmanifesto.it/amico-fortini-funzione-del-novecento

https://www.doppiozero.com/franco-fortini-il-super-io

For the book: https://www.ilsaggiatore.com/libro/composita-solvantur

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0