On 10 and 11 May, the Italian Cultural Institute of Vilnius presents the books ‘Corpo striato’ (Riccardo Frolloni, Industria & Letteratura, 2021) and ‘Concerto per l’inizio del secolo’ (Roberto Minardi, Archipelago Itaca, 2020), with readings from Italian and Lithuanian (translations by Edita Masiulianec), with introduction by Davide Castiglione and the participation of Professor Dainius Būrė.
The poems of ‘Corpo striato’ (Striated Body) succeed in the difficult aim of covering a painful subject – the death of a father – without falling back on the person who suffers, on the private processing of grief; on the contrary, Frolloni brings into his verses a good dose of reality – shared, not just individual – in which the father acted and by which he was influenced. The tragedy is thus told without drama, as if reabsorbed within a larger, pulsating picture that touches and moves the reader.
‘Concerto per l’inizio del secolo’ (Concert for the Start of the Century) is a work of emancipatory momentum; a polyphonic patchwork that embodies the voices of the last in line, of the marginalized of neoliberal societies, and who rail against those who perpetuate the mechanisms of dominance (resulting, not of secondary importance, in invective and resentment). The utopian vision that supports this work – often tinged with an authentic bitterness for the present state of things – is that of a world without hierarchies, a world that, in order to be created, requires a serious gamble on the constructive possibilities and on the inner discipline of human beings.
More information at: iicvilnius.esteri.it.
