Dark Room - Softcover

Ruffilli, Paolo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1599540215 ISBN 13: 9781599540214

Publisher: Bordighera Press, 2011

Synopsis

The fine citation by Roland Barthes, which Ruffilli has posted as epigraph to this book, can induce (and, as far as I am concerned, has fleetingly induced me) to a curious "optic" error. For a few instants, I supposed that the title of Ruffilli's book derived, in an overturn, by a book, Barthes's, from which the citation is taken: Dark Room, that is, instead of white room. Naturally, reason quickly corrected the error: It was nothing like that: Barthes's title is overturning something, precisely a current expression, while that of Ruffilli rectifies and integrates it, that expression, in the semantic norm (even if, as it is well-understood, not without its halo of ambiguity, of ulterior feelings). . . . A discreet connoisseur of Italian poetry of this century will quickly see in Ruffilli's verses the continuity of a noble tradition, made of refined poverty, of contracted music, up to the extreme limit of inaudibility, which reaches its high point in the poetry of Giorgio Caproni; and he will think, then, of certain tangents, even thematic, between the present story in Camera oscura and the unforgettable story of Annina in Seme del piangere. But just as easy, and certainly owed, will be to watch how Ruffilli works on his verbal and sentimental material with a sort of tenacity and "scientific" impassibility, which is not Caproni's regarding how the very stillness of the photographic image constitutes a "moving" and formal correlative. - GIOVANNI RABONI, "Afterword"

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1949, Paolo Ruffilli attended the University of Bologna, where he studied modern literature. After a period of teaching high school, he became editor with the Milanese publisher Garzanti, and is presently the general editor of Le Edizioni del Leone in Venice. As an editor, he has not only supported contemporary poetry but also shown a scholarly interest in the Italian literature of the nineteenth century, preparing editions of the Operette Morali of Giacomo Leopardi, Ugo Foscolo's translations of Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey, and Le confessioni d'un italiano by the poet, novelist, and patriot Ippolito Nievo. Ruffilli has also written a biography of Nievo. He has published criticism in a number of periodicals, and is the regular literary critic of the Bolognese daily Il Resto del Carlino.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bordighera Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1599540215
• ISBN 13: 9781599540214
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96