The Jury of the Viareggio-Rèpaci Literary Prize 93rd edition chaired by the journalist, essayist and historian Paolo Mieli, today announced the award of the Poetry Prize to Claudio Damiani with his collection “Before being born” published by Fazi. The prize will be awarded during the final evening on Sunday 31 July in Piazza Maria Luisa in Viareggio. Silvia Bre with “Le campane” (Einaudi) and Carlo Carabba with “La prima parte” (Marsilio), the other two finalists, will receive the “Giuria-Viareggio” award.
The winner of the Viareggio-Rèpaci 93rd edition for Non-fiction will be announced in the next few days. The Jury will meet again on the occasion of the final evening announcing the winner for the Narrative.
“Before being born”, we read in the motivation of the Award, is “the new collection of verses by one of the greatest contemporary Italian poets. Damiani continues his journey of exploration of the skies, flying over a daily cosmic war whose true causes are unknown. . He starts from an obsession he had as a child, at the age of four or five: he wondered where he could have been before he was born, suspended in the sky, where he could have rested his feet: ‘it seemed incredible to me not to have existed before / and it also seemed incredible to me to have existed. ‘The journey takes him to his childhood and birth, to before birth and even after life, as if this were the visible part of an invisible line, or rather a chain, or of a network of chains and rings all connected. And as a sound covers another sound, this marvelous network almost covers our anguish, our ignorance like beasts being led to slaughter, or perhaps to a sacrificial rite “.
In the book of the poet Claudio Damiani, the jury still remembers, “the abyss in which the child felt suspended before being born always returns, similar to the one in which contemporary man is suspended, who, in the image of Emanuele Severino, it is like a trapeze artist who has just left one trapeze and has not yet grasped the other, and finds himself suspended without grips in the void “.
“If the first trapezoid to which we were attached was religious and metaphysical truths, including more or less recent ideological beliefs and hopes, what will be the other trapezoid that is moving in the dark towards us, of which we seem to feel the An imperceptible hiss? Maybe a sentence written in nature, which awaits us quietly, in our excited research, to which we are perhaps close, and which is not a scientific formula, but a word that welcomes and calms us, taking us away from unbearable ignorance in which we are – concludes the motivation – Meanwhile, the trees, animals, mountains and shadows of our loved ones, to which we are close and from which we do not want to leave, comfort us, while the technique runs at breakneck speed, a natural evolution too, and in need of having art alongside, again and forever “.
The Jury of the Viareggio-Rèpaci Literary Prize is composed of Paolo Mieli (president) – journalist, essayist and historian, Leonardo Colombati (vice president) – writer, Costanza Geddes da Filicaia – professor of contemporary Italian literature, Luca Alvino – poet, Maria Pia Ammirati – television executive, writer and journalist, Camilla Baresani – writer and teacher, Giorgio Biferali – writer and teacher, Maria Borio – poetess, Gabriella Buontempo – film producer, Diamante D’Alessio – journalist, Francesca Ferrandi – author, Emma Giammattei – Professor of Italian literature, Luciano Luciani professor and journalist, Edoardo Nesi – writer and essayist, Mirella Serri – professor of literature and journalism. The Italian doctor Erika Bertelli takes care of the organizational secretariat.