written by Federico Migliorati
Decana of the Italian poetesses, born in 1929, Curzia Ferrari (at the Calcagno registry office) is presented to the public in its widest range of intellectuals in the round thanks to the recent work by Vincenzo Guarracino entitled "Tutto o niente" (Giuliano Ladolfi Editore, 90 pages, 10 euros). Guarracino, an authoritative scholar of Leopardi and Verga, a famous Latinist and Greek artist, delineates a fine portrait of Ferrari, with a critical and precise analysis that leaves space, at the end, to a conversation with the heart in his hands. A life that is anything but linear and simple, both in the professional activity and in the affections, that of the Milanese poetess, which emerges imperious as a whole plumbs her way backwards in time. From family quarrels (with the father above all, that will lead her to change the father's surname with that of her husband) to the existential dilemmas of which his poetry is rich. Not only on the other hand, however, has been nourished by the soul of Ferrari, whose pen has proved "multifaceted and ductile": even in the narrative, in non-fiction, journalism has been able to show off without forgetting the translations and especially the biographies (on all that of Majakovsky) in which the Milanese writer demonstrates "empathetic and mimetic" skills, coming to rebuild and relive the character, man or woman, from the inside.
Married to an appreciated musician, musicologist and composer (Domenico Ferrari), he also lived a short-term sentimental relationship ("born through the fault of books") with the poet Salvatore Quasimodo, outlined in several pages of his works. In his critical analysis, Guarracino also describes the artist's passions: painting (in his "house full of silence", among others, works by Francesco Messina and Giorgio Morandi), sport with typhus on for Milan (" rossonera from the tip of the hair to the toenails "), the practice of skiing, mountaineering and cycling and still animals, especially the felines," who can not pretend, offend, hurt ", politics and" socialism " rose colored ". The volume ends with the conversation, almost an intimate dialogue between Guarracino and Ferrari with the latter to remind us, as an epigram to be carved in marble, that "thoughts and feelings need to be shared", just what she he has always practiced and emerges so brilliantly in "All or Nothing".