Sandro Penna, Il Canto Segreto di Eros e Cosmos

Abstract

The cosmic lyrical poetry of Sandro Penna is deeply connected with the great ancient poetry, Greek and Latin alike: his work is part of a development trend within Italian literature that goes from Leopardi to Pascoli until Ungaretti and Quasimodo. As did the ancient Greek lyrical poets, Penna’s poetry refuses rhetorical language. His verse expresses, through song, the heart’s movements, wanderings, solitude, joy and despair. Sometimes hanging between opposed feelings, the lyrical subject of Penna’s poems builds at every moment his precarious balance and celebrates without ceasing his birth to the world