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Cerisy on the work of Bernard Noël (Bernard Noel: le corps du verbe,
Colloque de Cerisy sous la direction de Fabio Scotto, Lyon, ENS éditions,
Collection Signes, 2008). His anthology of contemporary French
poets for Einaudi was published last year (Nuovi poeti francesi, a
cura di Fabio Scotto, traduzioni di Fabio Scotto e Fabio Pusterla,
Torino, Einaudi, 2011, pp. 311). My own translations of Scottto’s
poems in English appeared in Journal of Italian Translation, vol. III,
No. 2, Fall 2008, 102-109.
1
THE SHORES OF FABIO SCOTTO
Deftly navigating between poetry and story, Fabio Scotto’s A
riva 1 explores the shores of different lakes, from Varese to Gavirate,
from Caldè to Luino, from Como, to Lugano, from Aix-les-Bains
to Madison. As adolescence fades into adulthood the narrator
discovers the value and beauty of each thing, even the smallest (a
puddle, a wounded pike, a dead bird on the sidewalk). The natural
progression from adolescence to adulthood provokes considerations
on the 70’s which, even outside major cities, saw young
people get together, play music, found free radio programs and
student newspapers, share civic and intellectual passions as they
sought a common purpose. Today those ideals appear to have been
overcome by cynical individualism.
Dialoguing with Hélène Cixous and Bernard Noël, and with
friends and lovers from the past, Fabio Scotto listens not only to
a magical and nocturnal nature but to a suffering and poisoned
one as well.
2
RIVA: THEMES AND STRUCTURE
These singular compositions progress not only from origins in
water, to adolescence and adulthood, but also from May through
Fall, hope to memory, presence to absence. A consistent alternating
pattern is clearly delineated. It begins, after the Prologue, “externally,”
with objects connected to the lakes: a puddle, a dying
pike, a dead mallard, an old picture of the lake. These “external”
visions are punctually interrupted by autobiographical epistolary
pieces in which an interlocutor is always present. Often the other