From ‘Worldwatching’ to ‘Remixing’: Sanguineti’s Varie ed eventuali

Abstract

This article offers a detailed reading of Edoardo Sanguineti’s final (posthumous) collection of poems, Varie ed eventuali: poesie 1995–2010 (2011). In the context of Sanguineti’s long-standing practices of rewriting, travestimento and parody (including self-parody), the essay investigates the multiple layers and forms of citation present in many of the texts, and analyses the eclectic thematic and formal range of the poems, from contemporary polemics to ironic self-portraits, from pseudo-lyrical sonnets to texts built on forms of marked verbal inventiveness, often in dialogue with the work of other artists and writers. The essay analyses in particular the texts’ representations or performances of the self through various forms of masking, whether as a degraded or incoherent self, or a figure on the verge of non-existence. It considers the place of these late self-performances within what is generally regarded as Sanguineti’s vein of ‘occasional’ or secondary poetry, but also in the wider context of Sanguineti’s poetry as a whole, whose overall centre of gravity may be seen to be subtly rebalanced by this final collection.