Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Jacob S. D. Blakesley / Franco Buffoni
One word in this poem would have been inconceivable in
Buffoni’s earlier work, and shows how his style is no longer tied
to high literary models: namely the English term (untranslated) fist
fucking: moreover, the utilization of such a term in a poem about a
protagonist-nun demonstrates how far Buffoni has gone towards
a forthright public repudiation of the Church, which will become
more and more pronounced as time goes on. 8
After this book is the autobiographical volume, Il Profilo del
Rosa (2000), defined by the poet himself as a “long trip through the
four decades of my life, from childhood to full maturity, but also
through the places where it principally occurred.” Returning to
his childhood home, Buffoni finds
Una radice ha rotto il vaso
Nell’atrio della casa riaperta
La pianta è sempre stata bagnata
Dal vetro rotto dal vento. 9
[A root has broken the vase
In the atrium of the re-opened house
The plant has always been bathed
By the glass broken by the wind.]
The last volume of the self-described trilogy, Theios [Greek
for uncle, 2001], is another bildung, this time of Buffoni’s young
nephew, Stefano, to whom the volume is dedicated (“A Stefano a
quei suoi / Dentini appena incominciati” 10 ). The book ends with
a Shakespearean invocation to fecundity, from the pen of a poet
whose own sexual identity prevents such a succession: “Procrea,
procrea / Ragazzo mio, che la tua bellezza non si perda” (Procreate,
procreate / My boy, so that your beauty is not lost). 11
After the parenthesis of the curious volume Del Maestro in
bottega (2002), an interesting collection of original poems and translations
(what Rodolfo Zucco would aptly call a satura), 12 Buffoni
published Guerra (2005), a poetic volume focused on his father’s
experience in World War II as a prisoner of war in Germany. This
volume, according to the critic Andrea Cortellessa, marks a striking
shift in Buffoni. From “’pure’ poet, a light and wandering thing
– to engaged intellectual, demonstrating and intransigent.” 13 The
following verses mark an undeniable break with his past poetry,
289