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With the work Bradisismo, published by Garzanti in 2008, the poetry of Michele Sovente brings to the surface the telluric and imaginative energy that had characterised the linguistic-expressive research already presented in his first works.

The language used expresses a dense swarm of primordial images, fragments of a lived life, figures between the dreamlike and the ordinary, to form a stratigraphy where the Phlegraean universe is one with the deep, disturbing, vital tensions of contemporary life.

This work, in which the poet continues to use the three languages (Latin, Italian and the Cappellese dialect) appears as a probe thrown in depth and trying to connect the near and far, the malaise and desire, the monologue and the narration.

The shape is appropriate to the design of the movement that leaves no peace, that creates insecurity,  that leaves marks on the ground and on the walls.

In the opening poem there are all the fundamental themes of the entire collection: listening to the past that makes its voice present through archaeological remains, the image of the earth dug by live larvae and deceased presences, erosion and seismic and volcanic movements, the work of time that corrupts everything, the disintegration of memory from which loss and limitation derive, the evolution not towards a seductive progress, but towards an inevitable loss of the self.

The main themes of the book are:

  • The territory: the Phlegraean territory at the mercy of bradyseism represents the mood of the poet who feels he has no fixed               points.

  • The movement: the movement of the earth also involves people. This collection also talks about immigration in the                         Mediterranean.

   • History: the continuous ups and downs of the earth brings to the surface traces of the past.

   • Language: Geological stratification is also linguistic and therefore trilingualism continues.

 

Sovente has been defined by the critic Alfano[1] as a seismograph poet, for his attitude to record and decrypt the upheavals of the Phlegraean territory, symptom and allegory of the social imbalances of a space shaken by violence and exploitation.

Being in a land dominated by a perpetual motion that forces him to lower himself and to rise is for the poet equivalent to deal with the unexpected, the unknown, and the problems of existence.

In Bradisismo the telluric movement of Earth is seen as a kind of continuous return to the equal. Every vibration of Earth brings back the same moment experienced on Earth.

The same trilingualism is seen as if it were a continuous movement similar to the movements of Earth itself, the three linguistic expressions mingle, as past and present coexisting in the same natural system.

In the work, there is an interweaving of archaic and modern cultures, a dense talk that is like a discourse in three voices.

This transition from a natural phenomenon to a social one and to a personal one is what runs through the book, so that at the end, but also during the reading, one is seized by a kind of vertigo, given precisely by the movement of the earth and in this case of language. This movement from nature to life is an important metaphor that makes this work one of the poet's most mature.

Among the most significant poems are Qui stanno le tracce delle mie ferite and Intorno ai laghi flegrei.

 

[1] G. Alfano, Simonide guarda le rovine. Sui “Superstiti” di Michele Sovente in «Istmi- tracce di vita letteraria», n°31-32, 2013.