“nothing has changed but the living / who usurp the place of the dead”

The trials of #war – Peace now for #G*za

Vincenzo Cardarelli (Tarquinia 1887-Rome 1959) was a journalist and correspondent. His literary activity was inspired by classical Italian literature: “Suspended somewhere between Baudelaire and Leopardi […] he composed verses that both covered and uncovered a profound desire of self-ennoblement” (Fortini). He was a “nostalgic of the stile alto” according to Sapegno, but as we can see from this poem and others (here), it is not just nostalgia, he is, in truth a poet truly capable of uno stile alto.

Of his poetry Cardarelli wrote: “My verses (careful of pauses and distances) suppose nothing but syntheses. Light without colour, existence without attribute, hymns without interjection, impassability and distance, orders not figures, this is what I can give you.”

In today’s poem, Cardarelli describes the horrors of war upon returning to his home town: What does war leave behind? Ghosts of those who once were, new faces of those now occupying their place. They are memories fixed in his memory: they are still, as is the wind.

I have chosen the poem for obvious reasons. Today it calls to my mind the people moving in droves through the rubble on makeshift carts, bent under the burden of nothing but the dusty remains of a life they once had. I imagine them marching through G*za in search of what is lost and will never return. I wonder if the new faces are the so-called “peacemakers” who since the beginning have been planning the reconstruction of homes and towns, which most likely excludes the presence of their original inhabitants. I wonder if for these “peacemakers” peace must always represent subjugation.

I wish we could live in peace. I have come to think I will never see it in my lifetime. – M.C.

Painting: A War-torn village, Edouard Detaille (1848 – 1912), oil on canvas

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/