I read Aldo Palazzeschi’s “Rio Bo” in class yesterday and felt compelled to share my first impressions.

The thing that struck me immediately was the piece’s simplicity - no rhyme, an absence of grand, ‘baroque’ type imagery, use of modern language and narrative.
This is simple, accessible prose. I get this!
It’s like no other Italian art or literature that I have seen (albeit from a pretty limited background, but you get the point!).

Let’s think for a moment about time and place…

This sort of writing must have seemed pretty radical at the time; being such a departure (even from the vantage point of 100 years of hindsight!) from historical Italian literary orthodoxy.

In that sense, I find it really interesting that this poem was written in 1909, around about the time that F T Marinetti published his Futurist Manifesto.
Check out Marinetti’s words at the time and it’s easy to get a sense of energy and excitement that his movement must have triggered.

We want no part of it, the past…we the young and strong Futurists!

I can easily imagine Palazzeschi (and other artists of the time) getting swept up and influenced by Marinetti’s Futurism movement and I get a strong sense that this piece carries some of the heat from that very early association.

A couple of key characteristics that appeal to me here:
- I love the feeling of playfulness overlaid with abstract imagery (the star in love with a cypress tree?!)
- the ambiguous nature of the town (microscopic…from nothing, but also magnificent)
- the personalisation of the star (what is so special about the village that a majestic star should maintain such an enduring, devoted vigil?… why does “not even a great city” have this devoted star looking over it?)
- the latent sexuality (the playful flirting, the ambiguous “love” imagery)
- the semi-religious overtures (calling to mind the star of Bethlehem
- the sense of fantasy and open, free-style prose

RIO BO
Tre casettine
Dai tetti aguzzi,
Un verde praticello.
Un esiguo ruscello: Rio Bo,
Un vigile cipresso.
Microscopico paese, e’ vero,
Paese da nulla, pero’…
C’e’ sempredi sopra una stella,
Una grande, magnifica stella,
Che a un dipresso…
Occhieggia con la punta del cipresso
Di Rio Bo.
Una stella innamorata?
Chi sa
Se nemmeno ce l’ha
Una grande citta’.