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Mar.6,2005 -Mar.13,2005 |
Centuries of poetry and love discussed
York University professor leads lively cultural exploration
By Niccolò Marras
Originally Published: 2005-02-27
What shall I do... shall I go on?" "Go on, have a drink and go on!"
Freewheeling John Picchione had a captive audience last Sunday at Bar Tricolore on Corso Italia, during an evening on Love in Italian poetry. Professor Picchione, teacher of Italian Literature at York University, managed to squeeze close to 800 years of Italian poetry - with explanations, parallels, declamation of verses and comparisons with the present - into 50 minutes of presentation. About 40 people - youngsters and seniors, women and men, Torontonians and others from the vicinity - were ecstatically listening to Picchione, who seemed to embody all the lovers of the various centuries he was discussing. The ardour and passion of those lovers were passed on to him, and he in turn passed them on to his audience. The magic of Love conquered all, culminating in an applause that led Picchione to remark, "Who has ever heard an applause in class!"
Have a drink and go on! Picchione sipped some water and continued, reaching all the way to the 20th century and concluding with the poetry of Mario Luzi, who defined love as "...one of the great emotions that help us live, and last."
Picchione had chosen both serious and funny poems, but all were profound and beautiful. One of the last he read, was by Umberto Saba, dedicated to his wife, "who wanted to kill him when she first heard the poem," joked Picchione, "because it compared her to various animals: 'You're like a young white hen... You're like the pregnant heifer... You're like the fearful rabbit...', ending with 'You're like the provident ant...'." Picchione remarked how Saba saw the whole of Creation in that provident ant.
The audience had a great time.
Recounting 800 years of poetry while entertaining a varied audience is no mean feat, but the York U professor managed to accomplish it.
He spoke of love in the 1200s, with the poets of Dolce Stil Novo (Dante Alighieri, Guido Guinizelli, Guido Cavalcanti), when these bourgeois artists were actually countering the nobles of the time, who claimed that nobility was in the blood. To those poets, who looked back to the principles of the early Christians, nobility was a gift from God; Dante said that the love of God is the prime mover. It was a class struggle through poetry.
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