Letter
from Lhasa, number 282. Sgarbi’s Lezioni
Private
by
Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
Sgarbi, V., Lezioni Private, Mondadori, 1995.
(Sgarbi 1995).
Vittorio Sgarbi
Cultivate, brilliant,
penetrating and deep, delicate and suave.
We’ll propose just some reading
notes.
...It is contestable
that artistic expression would not exist without individual freedom (Sgarbi
1995, p. 10). Or that may easily become a tautology assuming that an artist be
naturally free.
...That art coincides
with life has nothing of astonishing and it is seems another tautology. Anyway,
it may be useful to reaffirm that.
For Sgarbi, in old
buildings, the ancient odours should be preserved. Restructurings lose sounds
too, if they were and are places for playing music. An epoch is its odours and
sounds. Customs are memory of extraordinary events.
Sgarbi remember that he argued
with Gore Vidal who reputed that screenplay was everything. For Sgarbi, in a
movie, screenplay is as the skeleton. However, for him, image is even more
important. Since a movie is a visual work, screenplay is the text over which
image is built.
By their very individual
style, poets provide a new vision of the world. Each work of art is unique
since the uniqueness of its style. Style is what permits contents to live. Art
is style.
Sgarbi analyses the great
expressive force of Fred Buscaglione, a great poet-singer for Sgarbi. Sgarbi
loves to show the polychromy of whatever artistic expression and to underline
originality, force and transgression when he detects them.
Reading books is as to
assume narcotics, because one becomes book-addict, one assumes a narcotic
accelerating one’s own intelligence. People without this privilege assume
normal narcotics, just for forgetting their unhappy lives.
Nature is inferior to
art. Art improves nature. Poetry (as well as literature etc) is not spontaneity
and creativity at pure state. As Leopardi constantly underline, simplicity
needs fatigue, technique, architecture. Apparent simplicity is a complex
construction. What appear as natural requires science, hard work, expertise,
knowhow.
History of art should
not be learnt chronologically but by contacts and encounters coming out from
knowledge and desire to watch. Sgarbi always insists on non-chronology of time.
Time is subjective or, eventually, subjectively hierarchical. For instance, in
his paintings, Titian has such a force to remove whatever temporal and literary
reference, overcoming them by the force of his images. One of great themes of
poetry is love. Also love is a moment. Only rarely it is absolute harmony and
synchrony between two persons.
The classic and artistic
culture of Sgarbi allows him to have a sceptical point of view about politics. Politicians
are generally inept and they reflect that in whatever they do, included the
stupidity of the laws they produce. Basically, they are inconclusive. The
philosopher does not need politics. Those who do not know how to govern
themselves need politics. As bad money drives out good money, bad politicians
drive out potentially good ones. You all know that those you have elected are
worse than you.
Sgarbi will be an MP
from the XI to the XIV legislature, 1992..2006, plus government undersecretary,
assessor by a local government and mayor.
The sensibility of many
poets of our century (XX) is the sensibility of misfit individuals unable to be
fulfilled by ordinary values.
After the discussion of
the antinomy Emily Dickinson-Walt Whitman, Sgarbi concludes his book with the
absolute nihilism of Kenneth Patchen in his Street
Corner College.
Next year the grave grass will cover us.
We stand now and laugh;
Watching the girls go by;
Betting on slow horses; drinking cheap gin.
We have nothing to do; nowhere to go; nobody.
Last year was a year ago; nothing more.
We weren’t younger then; nor older now.
We manage to have the look that young men have;
We feel nothing behind our faces, one way or other.
We shall probably not be quite dead when we die.
We were never anything all the way; not even soldiers.
We are the insulted, brother, the desolate boys
Sleepwalkers in a dark and terrible land,
Where solitude is a dirty knife at our throats.
Cold stars watch, us, chum,
Cold stars and the whores.
Sgarbi, V., Lezioni Private, Mondadori, 1995.
