It’s World Poetry Day: 4 Reasons To Remember Poetess Antonia Pozzi, Lover of Lake Como Mountains

There's no doubt that 2021 has started in a pretty discouraging way, due to the growing trend of Covid pandemics that really seems a never ending vicious circle.

Needless to say, that’s just another good reason to keep believing in beautiful and inspiring things like... well, like poetry.

With World Poetry Day, March 21, UNESCO recognizes the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind.

This year we want to celebrate this important day with you remembering the story of an extraordinary Italian poetess, Antonia Pozzi (1912-1938). 

There has never been much talk about Antonia: only recently she has been recognized as one of the greatest poetesses of the early twentieth century. Also, none of her poetries has been published while she was alive: her professor Antonio Banfi expressed a negative opinion on her poetic work, and encouraged her to "calm down" and "write less". The thing is that in the 1930s, women were welcomed into the intellectual circles as long as they conform to it, and Antonia's "disordered" and bursting female emotionality wasn’t really accepted.

Her life has been too short - she committed suicide one night in December 1938, at the age of 26 - but astoundingly intense, like a meteor. The thing is that her story is not really a sad one, rather it’s full of life, creative energy, passions and talents: it’s that kind of story of female energy that we like here at Lakeside. She wrote about herself, in one of her pomes: “I have too much life into my blood”.

There are mainly 4 reasons why we like to recall Antonia in this special day, in the whole panorama of Italian poets. Keep reading to get to know this precious soul: you’ll come out enriched. 

#1 Her deep link with Lake Como mountains

Antonia was not from Lake Como: she was from Milano, where she had the chance to attend the highest cultural circles of the city. Here it's also where she started to devote herself to poetry during the years of college and university.

However, her rich family - a  well known and despotic lawyer as father, and a worldly countess as mother - owned a 18th century villa in Pasturo, 30 km from Varenna, in the Valsassina district.  

Those were the years - before World War II - in which Valsassina valley was the favorite destination of the wealthy Milanese for their holidays.

Despite her cosmopolitan vocation and her habit of attending the most vibrant cultural environments in Milano between the ‘20s and '30s, Antonia really loved that little village in such a pure way: she ended up withdrawing there. It was her “place of the soul”.

Pasturo in an old pic

She liked writing in contact with the solitary and severe nature of the mountain, especially the Grigna: descriptions, backgrounds and echoes of these places are found in pretty much all her poems. Climbing, in particular, was a spiritual elevation for her, a path of extreme purification to reach the absolute peak.

Antonia in 1934 at Rifugio Principe di Piemonte (source: www.antoniapozzi.it)

We just adore her deep link with the region: she totally opened herself to that area, letting it become part of her soul. That’s an incredible example of how much a place - in this case the glorious mountains around Lake Como - can literally become part of one’s life.

She wrote after her first arrival to the village:

"After the last stretch of road, a vast green valley appears, surrounded by snowy mountains and dotted with charming villages. Over there, peeping through the greenery, at the foot of the northern Grigna rises the village where I spend my holidays which, like a fearful child who clings to his mother's skirts, climbs up the side of the great mountain that overlooks it, almost ask her for protection».

#2 The emotional connection with her home

Antonia in her villa in Pasturo (source: Rocaille blog)

If you know our agency, you’ll know with how much passion we believe in the concept of the emotional connection that a human being can have with a house.

Antonia is a moving example of this: she had a genuine love for her parents’ holiday home in Pasturo, considered like a nest, something holy, a special corner of the world where she could devote herself to poetry. 

On the second floor of the villa there was her studio, with a window overlooking the Grigna: from her “old desk” (as she used to call it) she wrote many poems and letters, like this one to Remo Cantoni, where she clearly stated that the house in Pasturo was exactly the place where she managed to make order between her deepest, purest thoughts:

“…at each return between these walls, between these faithful and equal things, from time to time I have deposited and clarified to myself my thoughts, my truest feelings”.

In that villa, with an enviable view on her beloved Grigna, Antonia felt inspired and happy. And that’s exactly how we’d all deserve to feel at home, after all.

#3 The genuine love for local people

Antonia talks about Pasturo in a poignant way in a letter dated April 1935:

"Always, all the people I loved most, I wanted them to come here: because seeing them here is like a consecration a blessing of the affection that still binds me». 

Pic by Antonia Pozzi, Grigna, September 1935 (source: www.antoniapozzi.it)

And again, in the same letter:

"This morning a man from the village, an old man, stopped at the gate: he wanted me to bring my mother a piece of the olive branch he had had at  the church. It moved me so much. Here there are only taciturn, rough people: but I think that if one day I will remain alone and come to live here, the greeting of these old mustachioed, these toothless women, the smiles of the filthy children who come between my legs, it will console me very much… ».

Two years earlier, the poem "Evening return” (18th October 1933):

«Coming here - you see it - / after any pain / it really is / to return to the nest, to find / the maternal knees, / to lean the forehead.

We love the way such a cosmopolitan soul like hers - she was used to travel around Europe, and she spoke 3 languages - felt in love with a tiny village surrounded by the mountains in Lake Como.

#4 Her poetries, immense beauty

There would so much to say about the immense value of Antonia’s poetries, but here’s not the right space to do it.

Just some notes could be helpful to outline an overview of her heritage, before sharing with you our favorite of her poetries.

After Antonia’s death - that her parents will never define as a suicide, rather as a sad event due to pneumonia - her father discovered and published the poetries and letters she had written during her entire life. But he did a crime: he manipulated her works, cutting some parts, changing some words that he considered not appropriate for a girl belonging to the bourgeoise.

Another aspect to consider, related to the nostalgic vibe that you can find in all Antonia’s works, is that in her short life she hasn’t been that lucky with her love affairs: her father forced her to stop her relationship with her teacher, Antonio Maria Cervi, 18 years older than her and belonging to a lower social class (that will always be a deeply painful chapter for her); later, neither her love for intellectuals Remo Cantoni and Dino Formaggio had the happy ending she was hoping for.

We’d like to end this short excursus about this outstanding poetic soul sharing with you our favorite poetry from her collections - the only one that really comes to our mind when we hear talking about Antonia.

It’s called Beauty (have a look at the original and english version below) and it’s an emotional love declaration where Antonia says pretty much this: look, I give you all that I have loved and that has become myself, make it yours. There’s a wonderful world to contemplate: starry skies and mountains, endless seas, inflamed sunsets, meadows, horizons that tell you: come on, go on, life is elsewhere, don't stop here, don't close yourself in the small circle of your problems or anxieties. Think big. 

It can be said that Antonia Pozzi gives us her poetic gaze with her words. And we still need it, today more than ever.

Bellezza (4th December 1934)

Ti do me stessa,
le mie notti insonni,
i lunghi sorsi
di cielo e stelle – bevuti
sulle montagne,
la brezza dei mari percorsi
verso albe remote.

Ti do me stessa,
il sole vergine dei miei mattini
su favolose rive
tra superstiti colonne
e ulivi e spighe.

Ti do me stessa,
i meriggi
sul ciglio delle cascate,
i tramonti
ai piedi delle statue, sulle colline,
fra tronchi di cipressi animati
di nidi.

E tu accogli la mia meraviglia
di creatura,
il mio tremito di stelo
vivo nel cerchio
degli orizzonti,
piegato al vento
limpido – della bellezza:
e tu lascia ch'io guardi questi occhi
che Dio ti ha dati,
così densi di cielo –
profondi come secoli di luce
inabissati al di là
delle vette.

_

Beauty (4th December 1934)

I give you myself,

my sleepless nights,

the long sips of sky and stars - drunk on the mountains,

the breeze of the seas traversing distant dawns.

I give myself to you,

the virgin sun of my mornings on fabulous shores,

among surviving columns and olive trees and spikes.

I give myself to you,

the suns on the edge of the falls,

the sunsets at the feet of the statues,

on the hills, among the trunks of cypresses animated by nests -

And you welcome my creature wonder,

my star trembling

I lived in the circle of the horizons, bent to the clear wind - of beauty:

and you let me look at these eyes that God has given you, so dense with sky -

deep as centuries of light sunk beyond the peaks.

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Article by Laura Zanotta

Source: www.antoniapozzi.it

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