L’innocenza oltre la memoria. La sfida lessicale e poetica di Odisseas Elitis

The poetics of innocence stems from a meditation on the past and on the poetic voice’s memory of that past. Those who are innocent can, in fact, maintain their condition of estrangement and non-involvement in the history and events of which they were the protagonists or spectators. In this regard, Odysseus Elytis’s poetry takes on an original point of view, marked by the experience of Surrealism: the perspective afforded by remembrance is in fact sublimated into a dimension that erases any temporal boundary and turns memory into the present time. The notion of innocence is thus transvaluated and deprived of any legalistic implications, if compared, for instance, to Ungaretti's poetry, whose idea of innocence was influenced by Christian references instead, such as the concept of guilt.