Hermetism, negativity and commitment in Aldo Oliva's poetry

Abstract

To George Steiner, modern literature is marked by a rupture that he conceptualizes under the name of “lacking word”: in a context where the written word is massified and degraded (because of growing literacy and the proliferation of journals and magazines), the poet confines himself in his ivory tower and self-institutes as literary alchemist, keeper of the pure language, guardian of the ineffable. This figuration of the poet and his role has had various consequences throughout the 20th Century. It is under this trail that we intend to regard the poetry of Aldo Oliva (1927-2000), and within it mainly a paradox that is constitutive of his production: his poetic hermeticism, his rarefied and singularized language, which seem to push him away from immediate communicability and seclude him in the artist’s ivory tower, nevertheless coexist with a social activism (theoretical but also effective) and a commitment emerging conflictively in his poems. This article will approach this paradox in the crossroads between Oliva’s poetic work, his self-figuration or author’s image, and his political stands.