my free song. The writer awarded for «aurum Tellus» released in ’91 – Corriere.it

We have a poetics for the 21st century. A song to the impossible. Who does it more?
aurumTellus
by Gavino Ledda a new cosmogonic enterprise. Carlo Ossola, philologist and literary critic, lecturer at the Universit of Padua, Turin, Geneva and for twenty years at the Collge de France in Paris, member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and of other similar institutions in Italy, the United States and Great Britain, he is holding the lectio magistralis Maieutics of a text. Vanni Scheiwiller and Gavino Ledda in the Napoleonic Hall of the University of Milan, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Apice center (Archivio word, image, editorial communication) of the Department of Historical Studies of the Milanese university.

We follow the lesson of Professor Ossola together with Gavino Ledda, in video link from his home, in Siligo, because Ledda was awarded the Cesare Pavese-Poesia 2022 Prize precisely because of his poem aurumTelluspublished in October 1991 by the publisher Scheiwiller, and thanks to the proposal of Carlo Ossola, reference juror of the prize for the poetry section.

The author of aurumTellusand in 1975 of the masterpiece Father
master – translated into 47 languages ​​and still read all over the world as if it had been published yesterday -, will receive the award on 5 November next during the ceremony to be held in Santo Stefano Belbo (Cuneo), the birthplace of Pavesewhere, says Ledda while listening to Ossola, they asked me to make a short speech, but I frankly don’t know what to say, maybe I could recite, or rather sing, a few pages of aurumTellusfor I should be fine with the voice, which at the moment not in the best condition.

The poem aurumTellus it should be recited little, much sung and much weeping, because – explains Ledda – it could not be otherwise for a Homeric poem and for a direct descendant of Homer as he feels. Not a delusion of omnipotenceand not even a simple delirium, the approach of himself to Homer, because almost at the same moment Ossola makes another, between Ledda and Hesiod: Ledda is a visionary Hesiod – says Ossola – andurumTellus can be compared to The works and the days of Hesiod.

Ledda listens in silence, concentrated, excited. Then he says: Already as a student, at the University La Sapienza in Rome, where I had Ettore Paratore as a Latin teacher, I was convinced that a Lucretius of the present years was missing. Here, for me aurumTellus the dress rehearsal of a De rerum
nature for the years 3000. Do you realize the courage I had then ?.

Ledda worked on his poem for ten years, from 1978 to 1988. Then, thanks to two very cultured and influential Sardinians – the former President of the Republic, Francesco Cossigaa friend of Gavino and his neighbor in Siligo, and the economist Paolo Savona -, here is the meeting with Vanni Scheiwiller, publisher of precious books, both in content and as objects of typographic art.

In 1991, finally, aurumTellus sees the light. And, says Ossola, a real enterprise of typographic art, beautiful, comparable to the “bolted book” of Fortunato Depero. Rich in Ariosto’s inventions, Ledda’s poem a whirlpool, a contortion of syllables, a polyphony of vocal increases and decreases, also marked by the increase in the typographic body of the letters, a poem ranging from Stphane Mallarm to the futurists. The book that cannot be found today, they did not even have it in the archives of the Apice center, until Ossola, at the end of his lectio, gave him the only copy in his possession.

Gavino Ledda has always said that this of aurumTellus it had to be a nature-paced narrative, following the bios, life, and in fact to compose the poem he also studied physics and chemistry for ten years. So that Scheiwiller wanted Carlo Rubbia to write the introduction. Which then did not happen (the afterword instead of Paolo Savona), but which did not change Gavino’s life: the protagonists of the poem remained the same: the elements of nature. aurumgold, considered by the venal for its value, certainly not by nature – says Ledda -, so I wrote it in lowercase, as opposed to Tellus, Land. The title means this, La Terra d’oro.

The human word, in Gavino Ledda’s poem, as Ossola says, is the root and corolla of the universe. Or the whole universe, as you prefer to call it the author of aurumTellus, who wrote his work in four languages ​​- Italian, Sardinian, Latin and ancient Greek -, enriching it with musical scores written by him, drawings, animal verses, letters scattered like asteroids or ringed like pearls on a necklace or chained like chemical formulas , phonosymbolisms, illustrations taken from books on matter and energy. One line, one line. And each verse begins with the conjunction and. Why? All those “and” are necessary, they are the force of gravity of the poem. The “e” in this poem is the all-universal conjunction, says Gavino, as if he were giving the most obvious and natural answer. And the music pages? The word music itself. The verses? The noises? There are not only the lines of the human voice. Or just those of animals, or the sounds of nature and plants. In space, but also ten, twenty thousand meters above us, there are sounds and physico-chemical reactions, and more. They are so many alliterations, a kind of polyphony….

To sing aurumTellusLedda says, you need a continuous note and a suitable phonatory apparatus, and you have to be exuberant, lustful … Vittorio Gassman and Carmelo Bene they would have been perfect, but they are dead.

Gavino, we have to ask you: but in the end what aurumTelluswhat did you mean with this poem? aurumTellus the representation of nature and the whole universe – he replies seraphic -. Nature, since it has existed, has always been beautiful, has always changed form but repeated itself in an iridescent way, demonstrating that the form is as important as the substance, indeed it is more. the form that can change the substance, not the other way around. I say this as a poet: the form has given me more satisfaction than the substance.

Rediscover, and reward, a work like aurumTellus thirty years later it should not be surprising, if, as Gavino Ledda says, one has the luck, or the grace, which fell to me, to find that “younger” work today than thirty years ago, when I wrote it . Also because, as Carlo Ossola argues, if we limit ourselves to describing, which photography does better, it would be useless to write. Gavino Ledda was therefore simply ahead in 1991 thirty years.

The ceremony in Santo Stefano Belbo (Cuneo). Il Pavese and the new museum space

It will take place on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 in the birthplace of Pavese, Santo Stefano Belbo (Cuneo), in the Church of SS. Giacomo and Cristoforo, the 39th edition of the Pavese Prize. On Saturday 5, at 3.30 pm, the award ceremony will be held for the winners announced by the president of the jury, Alberto Sinigaglia (the jurors are Gian Arturo Ferrari, Giulia Boringhieri, Chiara Fenoglio, Claudio Marazzini, Carlo Ossola and Pierluigi Vaccaneo): in addition to Gavino Ledda for poetry, Michele Mari for fiction, Norman Gobetti for translation, Emilia Lodigiani for publishing, Ludovica Maconi and Mirko Volpi for non-fiction will be awarded. After the ceremony, Dialoghi will be inaugurated, the new museum space of the Cesare Pavese Foundation which houses the copy of the Dialogues with Leuc on which the writer left his latest message, and a series of unpublished books (annotated books, manuscripts, letters, drafts of stories) donated by the Molina and Vaudagna families and enhanced by a multimedia display. In the Church of SS. Giacomo and Cristoforo also the exhibition You are of blood and earth, with sculptures by Paolo Spinoglio (open until 8 January 2023); Sunday 6, book presentations and readings.