Amelia Rosselli reads Dante. The fifth canto of the “Inferno” in “War Variations”

Abstract

Through the textual analysis of eight poems from Variazioni belliche, the article intends to demonstrate how Amelia Rosselli’s appropriation of Inferno vmainly presents a metapoetic connotation. Dantean echoes in Poesie (1959), the collection's first section, embody a kind of poetry in which the lyrical I has a distinctive role – hence, the use of the free verse, even if already projected towards the spazio metrico, the fixed form which has the task to distinguish Rosselli’s poetry from the previous lyrical tradition. On the contrary, in Variazioni (1960-1961), the second section of the volume, the strong lyrical subject conveyed by Paolo and Francesca’s canto collides with the «pretesa di universalità» of Rosselli’s new poetic form. This conflict results in a deep fracture within the lyrical voice.

Keywords

• amelia rosselli
• dante
• inferno v
• intertextuality
• metric space