Sincretismo gozzaniano: i nomi dell’avatar nella cuna del mondo di un popolo dimenticato

Abstract

Guido Gozzano, in his so-called Albo dell’officina, reveals many literary sources, transcribing whole passages from the works of his favourite authors among whom several French and Belgian poets that scholars have already identified. Some of them are not quoted. The analysed text is Gozzano’s last work, Verso la cuna del mondo. Lettere dall’India. His desire to speak about India is linked to his philosophical quest, described in Ah! Difettivi sillogismi. The poet summons up his teachers: Maeterlinck, Dante, Pascoli and, most of all, the wisdom of the Baghava Purana. The new idea of death, to whom he even denied the very name of Death in his poetry, is the one expressed in the Analfabeta, and, in greater depth, in the poem on butterflies. He tries to find the eternal doorway to a new life, a reincarnation and transmigration of the eternal spirit. He is looking for new models and finds them in a writer he never inserted in the Albo, and indeed never mentioned: in a quotation, we get an epiphany with just one word, a common noun: avatar! Théophile Gautier was the first western writer to make use of it, and he does so in a short novel. The avatar names are endless and none; these are the names Gozzano speaks of before the last journey. It is no coincidence that the last name he quotes is that of a poet.