The sound of words in Italian and European poetry
17.10.2024, 18:15
Interview, theatrical reading and musical programme (event in Italian and German)
Guest: Andrea Molesini, publisher and author
Moderation: Dr Marita Liebermann, Director Akademie Erbacher Hof – Mainz
Music played by: Marta Cametti
‘Poetry is a harmonious synthesis of meaning and sound, a balance that comes from the precision of expression, a power that cannot do without lightness, an elegance that cannot do without depth of thought’.
Poetry, one of the highest forms of artistic expression, could not be absent from the exhibition The Presence of Absence. Poetry is a transformative and introspective art par excellence, in which the vital, powerful and ephemeral energy of the word is inscribed. It is the trace of the living, the sign that is captured and set free on the written page in order to survive in time.
In the omnipresent and overwhelming dominance of the image in every moment of our daily lives, the word is increasingly relegated to the role of supporting actor. But it is precisely in the secret music of every language that lies the treasure of the luminosity of thought, the only place where freedom exists.
It was the desire to revive – and reflect on – the role of poetry in Italian literary life that prompted the writer, translator and poet Andrea Molesini to take on the challenge. In October 2022, he embarked on the venture of founding a publishing house dedicated to poetry, and not just Italian poetry: Molesini Editore Venezia.
Poetry, a meaningful human gesture, is the fruit of the persistent and incessant intervention of the imagination. In each individual, in each fragment of life, the imagination creates and celebrates a ritual confrontation with reality. It engages in a real duel that allows us to transcend both the sharp blades of objectivity and those of our own experience, without being humiliated and overwhelmed by them. A creative imagination to be understood as a nobility, as indefinable as singing, made up of vibrations, timbres, movement and metamorphosis.
In summary, poetry is a source of thought and a treasure chest for its storage, a place of enchantment and the highest linguistic achievement. Where the ear is sovereign and the sound gives meaning and the meaning gives sound, adapting and incorporating it.
The presence of Molesini Editore Venezia from 17 to 19 October in the foyer of the Frankfurter Kunstverein will enable the entire public at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where Italy is this year’s Guest of Honour, to get to know the valuable work of this Italian publisher at first hand. To date it has published 25 volumes of poetry, including translations by three German-speaking poets.
We are also looking forward to exploring and discovering the connection and creative power of the traces inscribed in the poetic material on the evening of 17 October at 6.15 pm, also in the foyer of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Traces that are accompanied by the awe and wonder of the sound of words. Dr Marita Liebermann will conduct an interview with publisher Andrea Molesini and present a bilingual (German/Italian) staged reading of selected poems by Italian and German poets. There will be musical interludes by the pianist Marta Cametti.
Admission is free of charge. The event is part of the programme accompanying the exhibition The Presence of Absence and takes place in cooperation with and under the patronage of the Consulate General of Italy in Frankfurt am Main.
Andrea Molesini, writer, poet and translator, was born and lives in Venice. He teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Padua. In 1999 he was awarded the Andersen Prize for his life’s work as an author of fairy tales and children’s novels, and in 2008 the Monselice Prize for Literary Translation. His novel Non tutti i bastardi sono di Vienna (Sellerio 2010 – To love and to die, Piper 2014) received several awards, including the Campiello Prize in 2011 and the Comisso Prize. In May 2013, he published his second novel, La primavera del lupo (Sellerio – Im Winter schläft man auch bei Wölfen – Piper 2014). This was followed by Presagio (Sellerio 2014), La solitudine dell’assassino (Rizzoli 2016), Dove un’ombra sconsolata mi cerca, (Sellerio 2019) and the latest novel Non si uccide di martedì (Sellerio, 2023). In 2022, he founded the publishing house Molesini Editore Venezia with the intention of ‘revitalising the role of poetry’.
Marita Liebermann, a literary and cultural scholar, has been director of the Akademie des Bistums of Mainz since 2023. Her current research focuses on reading from a cultural and media theory perspective, theories of translation and concepts of interdisciplinarity. Italy is a centre of her interests. She completed her studies in German and Italian in Hanover, Pavia and Perugia in 1999 with a master’s thesis on the poet Laura Battiferri. Following research and teaching at the Universities of Hanover, Constance and Eichstätt, she obtained her doctorate in 2006 with a dissertation on Giacomo Casanova’s autobiography and her habilitation in 2015 with a work on the age of Galileo. From 2017-2023 she was director of the German Study Centre in Venice. She is the author of numerous scientific and journalistic publications.
Marta Cametti completed her piano studies with Ida Scognamiglio at the O. Respighi Conservatory in Latina in 2003. She has experimented with various chamber music formations, choirs and jazz ensembles. Her interests gave her insight into the abilities of all the performing arts through her musical collaboration with actors, dancers and painters. In 2016 she founded the duo Kham with the violinist Flavia Succhiarelli.
