La scatola onirica

Maurizio Cucchi’s work ventures into new territory. In this Scatola onirica (Dream Box), in addition to exploring a new topographical space – Casa Cucchi, a location in the province of Pavia – he pursues his search for identity along a more daring journey, towards a primitive language, to the ‘primitive grumbling’ of ‘homo ergaster’. Divided into seven sections, La scatola onirica opens with the fragmentary connections of an ancient neighbourhood of lineage, home to people still alien to “homo oeconomicus”, a reality in which ethical tension is always expressed through a “geography of the minimum”. But Casa Cucchi is nothing more than a preparatory place for memorial returns, granted by the dimension of dreams. It is no coincidence that the second section, Macchina onirica (Dream Machine), presents us with the antithesis between sleep and wakefulness, an interval in which past and present merge. Sleep expands the epic of a fragment rich in conjunctions, almost a longed-for unity compared to the “precarious existence” of reality. Everything is traced back to the unlimited (and unknown) potential of the mind, to the point of almost questioning its existence in the last chapter, Mente cielo materia (Mind, sky, matter). On the other hand, few poets like Maurizio Cucchi know how to inhabit the frontal space of the tragic with such casual lightness, never sheltered by consolatory alibis. In Sfiorando l’afasia (Touching on Aphasia), a remote character such as Sabatino reappears, obsessed with etymology, the same that leads us to obvious semantic contradictions that develop in the mobility of themes and metrical-prosodic multiplicity. A possible response to the risk of aphasia is highlighted in the section L’immagine, la parola (The Image, the Word). From the works of twenty-two great artists, the poet traces a philosophical and social reflection. If Cucchi has always made us aware of the evocative power of the fragment, here the disconnections sink into the contradictory mystery of language, finally arriving at a frontal relationship between image and word, between ethics and aesthetics, paraphrasing the soul of each work represented, which is nothing more than the reflection – stripped of self-deception – of our lives.