Zanzotto, Eliot e il «sadico aprile»

Starting from the role played by Eliot-Montale association and its influence on the reception of The Waste Land, the article investigates the original way in which Andrea Zanzotto has reworked some figures of Eliot’s poem, and in particular those linked to the nexus of nature, history, and memory (or politics of memory). The first is that of burial, which in Dietro al paesaggio alludes both to the existential trauma of the war and the attempt to remove that trauma, but above all that convergence of human history and natural history culminating with images of self-burial and geological sinking. The second figure, only hinted at in Galateo in Bosco but absolutely crucial in Conglomerati, is the one linked to the «April», no longer cruel but sadistic, which jointly recalls Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the war memorials of WWI and the celebrations for the Italian Resistance on 25th April.