“November Prayer”, Irene Gianeselli

Irene Gianeselli, Preghiera di novembre

«Is a man his name? And if nobody pronounces it, will he still exist?»

Irene Gianeselli is a young writer, class of 1997,  with a rich curriculum already. Her last work is entitled Preghiera di novembre (November Prayer), published in 2017 for editions Florestano, with the subtitle Pasolini, all his crazy love. The entire  is in fact dedicated to the poet of Casarsa, composed of six stories united to form a Trilogy of mysteries and a Trilogy of disaffection. Weaved of cultured citations, freely taken and sewn without solution in the continuity of the text, inspired by poets that emerge gradually during reading, the collection proceeds with a certain musicality that accompanies the words finely balanced, deep, sacred, serious musicality, soft notes that probe well the depth of what happens in a time that slows down and accelerates, suspended as it is in a permanent dream state. Indeed, melody of Pasolini, raw and nonchalant, brutal but without losing a certain natural grace:  «how can a verb become again flesh? and how can the flesh become again verb?» asks himself a character,  Alfredo, man by now, not a poet anymore. All characters, in their own way, move in a predestined loneliness, desperately revealing, illusions fall relentlessly but without making noise, «there is no time anymore for history », «every now and then I feel alone when I think what true love is, what death is ». The identification seems to happen physiologically: Pasolini is body and death, poetry and life, gravel and words; characters become corpses, even though alive. Their destiny is of bleeding body and flesh without losing their own poetry, even if they are all lacerated at the seaplane base of Ostia.  Humanity continues, physicality breaks always the dream, the epos collapses to make space to a man, to a woman, in front of their naked life, because «Light to Light, Bread to Bread, Flesh to Flesh».

I don’t know if Pier Paolo Pasolini indeed would be instantly conquered by Irene Gianeselli’s personality, as clearly affirms David Grieco in the preface of the book, and I don’t even think it is crucial for understanding what raises the reading of Preghiera di novembre. I do believe though that the most appropriate word to grasp the sense is shown openly in the title: “prayer”. The language is rich and colorful, the style is wisely modulated in more frequencies, the choice to use the page as a canvas on which to work and paint phrases that capture or encourage to move firmly, almost with rush,  contribute to form a whole of heterogenic texts but coherent, welded together, reunited in a ritual that becomes peculiar and revealing.  A prayer, sure, but tormented, personal, restless, that does not spare the accusation, that it is not covered by a prepackaged salvation, it lies suspended between the subject and life, the continuous research and greed. The rhetoric game or the excessive stylistic care, common error of most young writers, is lost in a superior level, complete, that still has  its explicit references but from which it takes the distance so as to penetrate unknown and necessary territories. The shortness of the collection does not cover the depth of action in which it is located. The texts do not spread common reassurance, do not grasp on empty, conformist, approving hopes, do not have fun as a purpose. The ultimate objective is to explore, to show, with a holy realism, piles of material, a combination of bodies where the soul rebels, stubborn and obstinate, bared in front of the world and life that does not give in.  «Silence›› as the one that scans rhythmically the first story which gives the book its title.  A silence not guilty any more, but aware, gathered, sincere.

We don’t know if Irene Gianeselli was really immerged and «penetrated» in her intimacy in a silent and personal night, inaccessible to anyone, to ask herself if writing coincides for her with life and if writing is a necessity for her. One thing seems certain for her, reading Preghiera di novembre: her writing is alive, clearly and lucidly, as a flesh that bleeds, solemn not corrupted, human because suffering.