Enrica Arvigo (1963)

Enrica Arvigo is a graduate in Modern Literature from the University of Genoa and a public servant. For many years she has engaged in praiseworthy work to popularize, promote and safeguard the Genoese language by means of courses, lectures and public readings. She has been writing since 1980 and has won numerous awards in regional and national poetry competitions. She is also a graphic designer of considerable talent. The broken verse, which tends to be short, anxious, often illuminated by otherworldly chills, introduces us to the trepidatious world of the author, intent on spying on the slightest stirrings of life and hope in all that happens. Her faith in the perpetual rebirth of men and things is, at times, moving and, on closer inspection, constitutes perhaps the only possible response, in the face of small and great tragedies in everyone’s life.

Dònne

Compare with the lyric by B. Pedemonte, on the same subject, which we read earlier. We have no intellectualistic pedantry here either, but the often dark and labored imagery expresses suffering, exclusion and loneliness, in a much more pessimistic context.

Noiatre sensa sciou scorrimmo o lampo
drento un scilençio amao
pin de vento.
Noiatre semmo figge e moæ,
a neutte de cæze e de scioî,
pe sempre ciæe
into zeugo da luxe
in fondo a-e ombre
grixe
e o fattoriso cado da-o cheu
nuo
ch’o s’açende e o tremmoa,
fiña quande semmo stanche
d’ammiâ tròppo lontan
e sole
in sciô mondo.

Dòppo l’urtimo giorno

Any hope of survival is uncertain, entrusted to the memory that departed loved ones have left among us.

Dòppo l’urtimo giorno
mæ moæ
voxe de ramme inte l’äia,
a vive sensa sprescia,
ascosa inte ’n imbatto de sô.
Xeuo de rondaniñe contra o çê
mæ moæ
dòppo l’urtimo giorno,
a rie into sproinâ
e a ne lascia ancon o respio
e o profummo da vitta.

A bugatta rossa

Objects and events are often used to vicariously experience or relive personal pains and anxieties. Thus the author’s sense of exclusion, of separateness from the rest of the world, is transferred into the doll.

Ascordâ
a l’é a bugatta rossa inte ’n recanto ascosa,
comme in atteisa.
A vive d’arregòrdi
quarche poula ciarbottâ da-i figgeu
inti zeughi da stæ.
E a l’aspeta lasciù,
into soieu,
comme ’na sciô sarvæga
into mezo do campo de prie
e fumme
i sò coî consummæ da-o tempo
comme vestî feua mòdda.