Between Nel Tuo sangue and Ossa Mea: Testori to the test of “conversion”

Abstract

The essay offers an analysis and a comparison of the poems Nel Tuo sangue (1973) and Ossa Mea (1983) by Giovanni Testori: the first poem was written just before the event of his troubled “conversion” to Catholicism (1977), while the second one a few years later. The commonality of backgrounds, perspectives, existential problems, and languages suggests that the two poems constitute a sort of diptych, whose components are connected by a speculative tension that does not end once the “conversion” has been carried out: on the contrary, it continues and is not resolved in a peaceful and definitive acceptance. The analysis favours a philological and hermeneutic approach, and is composed by four parts: the first paragraph deals with the background the two poems are placed in, and the reason why a compared reading is possible; in the second one the imaginative and textual relations of the two poems with sacred literature are highlighted; the third one traces the linguistic coordinates that distinguish the poetic fabric of the two works; lastly, the fourth one draws the con-clusions.