Today's literates have learned nothing from Giacomo Debenedetti

Praised with so much rhetoric yet totally ignored in today's literary studies departments. And the fact amounts to a harsh judgment of condemnation for these departments, whose managers no longer even ask why they study what they study

The hegemonic poetry of the twentieth century, the one that to oppose the standardized "words of the tribe" has chosen the obscurity of symbolism or hermeticism, has served as an alibi for many: undoubtedly for certain poets, who have hidden their inconsistency behind obscure verses ; but also to several scholars who transformed his esoteric codes into a latinorum with which to recover a clerical power almost lost in the chaos of modernity. By passively accepting the glosses of the authors, or with the help of rather generic theories, these scholars have usually over-interpreted such a poem, i.e. basically they have not given it a concrete interpretation – which is, moreover, a very dangerous thing to do, where language is little clear. Thus an audience of so-called experts has formed who pretend to understand what they often don't understand at all, because it can no longer verify whether the king is naked or clothed. Also for the courage with which Giacomo Debenedetti instead took the risk of attempting this verificationit is now more liberating than ever to read his lectures on "Italian poetry of the twentieth century", held at the University of Rome between 1958 and '59, published posthumously in 1974, and just republished from the ship of Theseus with comments by Berardinelli and Pasolini.