«La vita che genera, la carne che vive». La passione poetica di Testori da I Trionfi a Nel Tuo sangue (1965-1973)

The early stages of Giovanni Testori’s poetic career are here retraced, attempting
to identify its fundamental themes and, consequently, its most
original stylistic and expressive achievements. From the very beginning,
with I Trionfi, Testori sets forth the essential terms of his anthropology:
life and death, love and eternity, birth and pain. The religious exaltation
of maternity is attested and reaffirmed, emphasizing the sanctity of the
woman in labor, joyful and suffering in the act of giving life. The theme
of love, as an experience of self-offering and of sacrife, that serves as a
bulwark against the nonsense from which Testori feels besieged, ultimately
reaches, in the poems of Nel Tuo sangue, the extreme point where this
obsession – the “you” that torments and wounds – takes the form of the
crucified Christ. Some early drafts of the poems of this collection are also
examined, highlighting the genetic corrections that allow us to define the
main characteristics of a unique voice in the landscape of 20th-century
Italian poetry.