«Tu sei la fiaba estrema»: le poesie di "Alibi"

Abstract

Elsa Morante’s first volume of poetry, Alibi, was published in 1958 by Longanesi. The poems are strongly linked to Morante’s coeval novels Menzogna e Sortilegio and L’isola di Arturo, as stated in the Premessa by the author herself, who refers to the poems as being a choir to her novels. Some of her poems are here examined in light of the latest studies on the autographs which are deposited at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma; even in view of the collection’s relation to Morante’s prose-fiction, an overall analysis of the volume is carried out according to two main themes: cats, symbolizing an animality without the knowledge of good and evil, and the theme of the fable, with particular reference to the theory of the «alibi», formulated in Sul Romanzo, and to Sheherazade, heroine of The Arabian Nights who defeats death with her tale-telling.

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