You can not explain or summarize in a few lines the life and work of a poet, the only way to know is to read what she wrote. Alda Merini has written many books, mostly poetry, to talk especially about love. She was born in Milan in 1931, the first day of spring, and during her life she has gone through and helped create the Italian literature of the twentieth century.
At twenty she had already written a lot and she knew Montale and Quasimodo, but her life was suddenly shattered by the experience of the asylum. Interned several times in mental hospitals in the 60s and 70s, an experience he regarded as especially painful because she lost her children, Alda Merini was able to draw beauty and poetry from her history of suffering and marginalization. In the 80s and the 90s her life becomes more stable, she won the Montale award for poetry in 1993 and benefitted from Bacchelli law, a state subsidy to poor artists, which allowed her to escape from a state of constant deprivation and poverty. Over the last twenty years she became increasingly known to the general public, appeared several times on television, continued to write and publish books of poems. Dario Fo proposed her for the Nobel prize in literature, although the poetess has not been widely translated abroad, singers Roberto Vecchioni dedicated her a song, Milva sang her poems, she participated in several theatre plays.
The fame did not shake her too much, she lived in her usual house, disorderly and chaotic, heedless of money so that the city of Milan brought her hot meals every day. But Alda Merini didn't care much to live as "normal" people, in a house rich and orderly. Her presence and her life were the embodiment of poetry: she always had something important and wonderful to say, she seemed to know everything about love and loneliness, or at least a lot more than others. And she had visited the saddest and darkest places of humanity. Alda Merini died but she continues to live in the way in which poets can live forever, until someone will read what they wrote. The saddest aspect of her death is the fact that she, even though was no longer young, continued to write beautiful poetry, and it seems that today there aren't many young italian poets able to fill the void she leaves. And in a historical period in which Italy there is certainly much squalor and very little poetry, it is hoped that Alda Merini, who thanks to her history, her life and her poetry has been able to make herself heard, will continue to inspire a bit of poetry also for the future of this country.
Francesco Defferrari
I do not need money.
I have need of feelings
of words, words chosen wisely
of flowers called thoughts,
of roses called presences
of dreams inhabiting the trees,
of songs that make statues dance,
of stars that murmur to the ear of lovers.
I need poetry
this spell which burns the weight of words
that arouses emotions and gives new colors.
Love do not damn me to my fate
Hold me open all the seasons
let my great and warm decline
not fall asleep along drives
put in passive all the passions
sleep on the pillow tenderly
where grow provident ambitions
of love and universal passion
take my everything and do not hurt me.
Alda Merini
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Comments
con la tua poesia hai creato un bastione irto a difesa delle nostre menti.
un semplice grazie e' poco.