Giacomo and Emily : my loves at first sight

 

About one year ago I fell in love during a literature  lesson. In fact, my former literature teacher introduced me this man. He asked me to read one of his poems to the class. I read it and I felt understood: finally somebody else said that Sunday isn’t a happy day!

After lunch I read other poems written by this author. The more poems I read the more I felt understood. But unfortunately, in that literature book there were only a few poems by this poet, so I ran to a bookshop and I bought his  book of poems. At the end of the day I asked myself :”How have I lived all this time without this?”.

About one month ago I was reading a journal and, while I was browsing its pages, I found an article about this woman. I read it and, at the end of it, I felt curious. So I went to a bookshop and asked for a book of poems  written by this poet . Once at home I started reading it. The more poems I read the more I wanted to read. At the end of the day I declared “I profoundly love this poet.”

 

Falling in love with poets or artists happens once every few lifetimes. I feel lucky, because it happened to me twice: the first time I fell in love with Giacomo Leopardi, the second time with Emily Dickinson.

I don’t want to say they’re my “favourite” poets, because that isn’t true. They are more than that.

 They taught me how to live. They revealed to me the reality without deluding me that evil doesn’t exist , the good things and the bad things of humanity and that loneliness isn’t always something negative.

I’m an only child and, for me, they are like siblings, because every time I need help they are the only ones who know exactly what I need.

Every time I’m a bit sad or sorrowful, they listen to me, they understand me and they solace me. They don’t try to soothe my sorrow or dry my tears: they help me comprehending the issue and, with their verses, they calm me. Sometimes they even make me laugh!

Emily taught me the importance of nature and that “The Difference-made me bold”. When I say “nature”, please, dear reader, forget William Wordsworth poetry and his “Daffodils”: Emily doesn’t dance with flowers ( she isn't a hippie…) and she never “floats on high o’er vales and hills”. She talks about the wonders of nature and nature, in her poetry, is benign and represents a renaissance.

Giacomo taught me that those who are doubtful are closer to the truth than those who think they’re always right. He also taught me to delude oneself is fine but, at the end, there will always be a massacre of those illusions.

Thanks to him I know that “until the last second, on the last day of our lives, there is the possibility of changing our destiny”.

If you are thinking that Giacomo and Emily were depressed you are absolutely and unequivocally wrong: no one has never lived like them. They loved and they lived their life in the most complete way possible, and now they teach us through their poems how to live.

They changed my life. They changed my vision of life and of the world. They just changed me. I’ll never stop reading their poems because, thanks to those poems, I “live”.

Someone say that they sadly died in the 1800's. Unfortunately that’s true. But, their souls are still alive in their poems.

I’m profoundly grateful to Giacomo and Emily, my loves at first sight.

 

P.S. Here’s my favourite Emily Dickinson’s poem. Unfortunately Giacomo Leopardi’s poems are difficult to find in a good English translation that can be as profound as the Italian version.

 

There is another Loneliness

That many die without -

Not want of friend occasions it

Or circumstances of Lot

 

But nature, sometime, sometimes thought

And whoso it befall

Is richer than could be revealed

By mortal numera -

 

 

 

                            G.R. IVAgin.