Comparison. Comparisons. How many of these do we use in everyday life to tell the people around us about our world?
Many prose and poetry writers have used rhetorical figures to give their own interpretation of life. I did it too Alberto Moraviawhich we remember on the anniversary of his death, which took place on September 26, 1990.
In the poem “Comparison“, the famous Italian writer and journalist compares life to a ball: a simple, playful and not very pompous image that amazes and makes us think about how much value poetry has, how much imagination it can contain in a few verses.
“Paragone” by Alberto Moravia
Life is like a little ball
of mercuryIt breaks
it breaks
it pulverizesunder the thumb
of thinkingbut then he reforms
liquid ball
so hard
of fear.
“Comparison”, life and contrasts
What is life? Philosophers, thinkers and artists of all eras have tried to answer a question that also concerns us. For Moravia, life seems to break under man’s thought, shatter, and then renew itself in all its heaviness and sorrow.
“Paragone” is an extraordinary and contrasting poem: it is narrative, even if it breaks up the discourse with word verses reminiscent of Ungaretti; expresses a complex concept with a simple image.
Moravia’s interest in poetry
“Paragone” is in the collection “Poemsby Alberto Moravia.
The author turned to poetry as a boy. The 83 mostly unpublished poems in this collection broaden the horizons of the artistic perspective of an author about whom so much has been said and written and who continues to fascinate critics and readers.
These are intimate texts that enter into dialogue with the rest of his work because they are permeated by a reflection on literature that began at a mature stage in his life. Some typically Moravian themes return again and again – Eros, travel, the relationship between nature and history, the past and memory – and are treated in the form of a personal diary in which one can reconnect with the younger part of oneself.
Moravia surrenders to feelings and releases them in narrative verses that refer to the great metaphysical themes, starting with time and then talking about the world, passion and love: an explicit demonstration of his deep interest in poetry , who also manifested himself as an author of stories and novels, in which individual verses or entire compositions contribute to the construction of the plot.
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia, pseudonym of Alberto Pincherle (Rome, November 28, 1907 – Rome, September 26, 1990), was an Italian novelist, journalist, screenwriter, essayist, playwright, poet, travel reporter, film critic and politician. He is considered one of the most important novelists of the 20th century and dealt with themes such as sexuality, social alienation and existentialism in his works.
The author of “Gli indifferenti” gained fame in 1929 with the novel “Gli indifferenti” and published more than thirty novels over the course of his long career. The central themes of Moravia’s work are moral dryness, the hypocrisy of contemporary life, and people’s significant inability to achieve happiness. His writings are known for their simple and austere style, characterized by the use of a common vocabulary in an elegant and sophisticated syntax.
In 1941 the author married the writer Elsa Morante, whom he had met in 1936, in church. The religious rite was led by the Jesuit Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi. For a long time Moravia lived with Morante in Capri, where he wrote the novel Agostino. They then separated in 1962. From 1962 to 1983 Moravia had an intense love and work life with the writer Dacia Maraini.
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