Death’s Knocks: A Reading of Giovanni Pascoli’s Suor Virginia

Abstract

The article offers a stylistic reading of a little-known lyric from Pascoli's production, the poem Suor Virginia. The poem is, however, worthy of being juxtaposed with the author’s most famous poems, above all Digitale purpurea, with which the text forms a diptych in terms of location and themes from the Nuovi Poemetti of 1904. The inextricable interweaving of eros and thanatos, sacredness and sensuality, purity and perversion, as well as the bewitching call of the world of the sacred and of an ambiguous and seductive nature make it a successful expression of the symbolist and decadent Pascoli, and at the same time an excellent example of poetry conceived as an instrument for the investigation of Mystery.