Giorgio Bassani, the Poet-Ghost, and the Memorial Duty of the Survivor (original) (raw)

When Giorgio Bassani first approached poetry and started to write verses by imitating a fellow student in the first years of high school (ginnasio), he was somehow resurrecting an art that belonged to the past. He did not believe that writing poetry was possible in the modern day. Poets are characters who belong to history, and literary handbooks: 'nella mia dabbenaggine non supponevo che se ne facessero più di versi: le poesie appartenevano al passato, i poeti erano già tutti accaduti' [I was so gullible I believed that writing verse was old-fashioned: poems belonged to the past, all poets were long gone]. 1 Poetry itself, therefore, was no longer in fashion in modernity, which forces a dialogue with dead, celebrated models, and, more generally, with the past. During his lifetime, writing and mourning became fatally intertwined. It is widely known that Bassani's works, particularly his world-famous novels, are dominated by a need to remember the dead-specifically, the members of the Jewish community of his native town, Ferrara, and his own acquaintances, who were decimated by the deportations to Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. This desire is rooted in Bassani's ethos of remembrance and recollection, perhaps enhanced by survivor guilt. This was made clear directly by him, echoing the duty of the survivor that had already been evoked by Primo Levi a few years previously: Il pericolo che incombe sui giovani di oggi è che si dimentichino di ciò che è accaduto, dei luoghi donde tutti quanti siamo venuti. Uno dei compiti della mia arte (se l'arte può avere un compito), lo considero soprattutto quello di evitare un danno di questo tipo, di garantire la memoria, il ricordo. Veniamo tutti quanti da una delle esperienze più terribili che l'umanità abbia mai affrontato. Pensi ai campi di sterminio. Niente è mai stato attuato di più atroce e di più assoluto. Ebbene i poeti sono qua per far sì che l'oblio non succeda. Un'umanità che dimenticasse Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, io non posso accettarla. Scrivo perché ci se ne ricordi. 2 [The danger looming over young people today is that they forget what happened, the places where we all came from. One of the duties of my art (if art can have duties), is first of all to avoid damage of this kind, to guarantee 6-Chapter 4.indd 71 27/03/2022 16:16