The scribe’s gaze. Dialogism and dramatization in Nel magma by Mario Luzi

Abstract

The essay reflects on the anomalous, elusive genre set-up of Mario Luzi’s Nel magma, arguing that it is an effective device for representing the subject’s ambiguous relationship with his own time. Within the poems, the subtly anomalous use of lyrical self-diegesis puts the action of the lyric character and the lyric voice in tension, dramatizing the subject reluctance to truly involve himself in a relationship with the Other. To this polarity corresponds, on the macrotextual level, the tension activated between the «deliberately uninspiring» (Verdino) character ‘Mario’ and the mute perspective of the author Luzi, in which one can detect a means, both extreme and oblique, for relativizing (and someway dialogizing) a lyrical Self dramatized and objectified.