Celati and Hölderlin. Of houses and habits

Abstract

The article focuses on the translation of Hölderlin's Tower Poems by Gianni Celati. Analyzing the texts, Celati's work on rhythm emerges, already central to his writing in the 1980s; his "reliance" on words, which passes here through a Leopardian model and intertextuality; the deep existential affinity with this mad giant of German poetry. Identification does not pass only through the shared passion for walking in open spaces, but speaks to us of a common nostalgia for the essence under the becoming of appearances, of the need we all have to find – thanks to habit and literature – strategies for inhabiting this world. To live and survive, even
within the "heavy horizon" that surrounds us.