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Cristina Contilli- Night Dialogue

mahmag  •  20 October, 2006

Cristina Contilli

Dialogo della notte / Night Dialogue
Translated by Olivia Bisegna Maher



In the afterword to the collection of lines that make up the short poem called “Night dialogue”, the author Cristina Contilli explicitly states that her poetry is dedicated to love relationships that struggle to survive.

“In the biographies of the writers of the Nineteenth century,” she quotes “we often come across troubled love stories. These are stories that I felt close to my sensibility and which I have chosen to recount through these lines”. And what immediately springs to mind is the love torments and suffered passions of the two main characters of the poetic literature of the Romantic period: Goethe’s “Werther” and Foscolo’s “Jacopo Ortis”, as well as the entire burden of their unhappy personal stories and tragic destinies, symbol of the existential sorrow of pure and unspoilt spirits, that aspire to a free existence, free from any social convention.
The love torment, the suffering of the heart passions, therefore, are source of creative inspiration, the leading motive that delves deep down but also just beneath the surface of the story of Contilli's entire poem.

It is feelings of suffering and love that the poetic self expresses almost in a physical manner, and this can be traced in the moving lyric verses: “Your hands”, “Your eyes”; the emptiness of the solitude that pervades us in the absence of our loved one is filled and finds ardour of passion, thanks to the artistic and lyrical expression, the consoling relief of the poem: “I am writing to you a few lines/while I am travelling. / The words scorch the paper /as my body throbs with desire.” This overflowing of feelings from the poet's soul reveals, however, such a degree of sensibility and intensity of emotions that these emerge, announcing themselves as being stronger and superior to any form or expression of poetic art: “The emotion / of the eyes /and of the hands / my verses cannot grasp / It eludes all equilibriums /and makes me feel alive.” In the relationship between art and life, where the attempt at mutual prevarication ends up with eluding the supremacy by each of the two components of human existence over the other, the love stories of Nineteenth-century poets are reflected in their lines, in that form of romantic aestheticism, that Cristina Contilli is inspired by.

This is why the love dialogue from a distance, when overcoming our solitude is impossible due to our loved one being physically far away, takes place at night, in that perfect Sturm und Drang style that precedes Romanticism: “Tonight /thinking about you is not enough /to quench my loneliness.” Here the love story takes on a particular biographical poetic tone, an identity between existential and artistic passion, which however does not amount to autobiography. “I kissed the sheet of paper /bearing your verses / and the paper withheld /the taste of my lips.”

The passion for life and poetry, the inexpressibleness of the magic of existence and of the wonderfulness of love, poured in art, in Contilli’s lyrical compositions intertwine and merge in a single and eternal élan that enlivens her poetical inspiration, the one that, once for all, Goethe, the great precursor of the romantic age, portrayed in his “Werter’s”charming image : “Ah, how many times have I wished I could fly over… the edges of the boundless sea and drink, from the sparkling goblet of infinite that vital overflowing joy, and feel, in the limited force of my chest, even for just a split second, a drop of the bliss of the being that creates all things…” It is the miracle of poetry, that has always voiced the desire, the fascinating and unendurable attraction, the love for nature’s creative force, at the height of its own happiness and of the profusion of its gifts eternally sparkling from the spiritual goblet of Infinity.

To read a few of her poems go to:
https://www.mahmag.org/worldpoetry.php?itemid=162)
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Comments

Posted by Cristian Contilli  •  10 October, 2008  •  15:16:03

HOla soy crisyian sebastian contilli de argantina me gustaria conocer a parte de mi familia que esta alli, en la argentina solo queda un solo contilli para seguir la generación me gustaria comunacarme con cristina contilli?
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