Qso many declarations of love! How many fictions! how many sighs! We live by love poems, by love songs, and sometimes we also share the most subtle and ingenious ones, like those of Pedro Salinas, from the collection The voice due to you: «Your way of loving/ is to let me love you./ The yes with which you abandon yourself/ is silence. Your kisses/ are offering me your lips/ so that I kiss them./ Never will words and hugs/ tell me that you existed/ and you loved me: never./ Blank sheets of paper,/ maps, telephones, omens tell me;/ you, no . And I am hugging you / without asking you anything, for fear / that it is not true / that you live and love me. / And I am hugging you / without looking or touching you. / I must never discover / with questions, with caresses, / that immense solitude / of loving you alone.”
It is the paradox of love, and it is also the doubt that the love expressed is not reciprocated. Salinas solves it by interpreting silence as an offering, as dedication, as silence/assent. Your way of loving hides the doubt of indifference.
There is a code of silence, a discretion and modesty of feelings which are sometimes more authentic than a statement. I am more certain that I loved, keeping it as a secret, rather than stating it to convince myself of what was not inside me. And so I thought that your lament for the love that does not manifest itself is poignant. And it doesn’t leave me indifferent.
But silence does not indicate my insufficiency, but rather your misunderstanding. And perhaps my shyness or inability. To avoid the risk of pretending. Because for me, loving you is so simple and natural that it’s like breathing. As soon as I think of you I have a spontaneous surge of happiness, I don’t have to write to you; for me you are like the air, like the sky, like the serene on a placid day. Reassuring and irreplaceable, I don’t have to confirm that to you. You are, and you are for me. Forever.
But love is also the fear of losing the good that appears desirable to others too. No one said it better than Shakespeare, in the sonnet XLVIII, translated by Montale. You see it there, love, always on the verge of losing it: «With what spirit, when leaving, did I lock them up, / my trinkets, and with what locks, / to find them, unused, for my sole use, / by the hands of ‘others, greedy, safe./ But you who make these/ jewels less than nothing if you show yourself, you my first/ comfort and now my worry, you remain prey/ of every scoundrel who approaches you./ Don’t you I have put it in some casket, outside / of the one in which you are not, although I feel you / here too: in the asylum of my heart / where you come and go as you please. / To be stolen from me, then: if it happens / that even virtue is a thief with such a good.”
Mario Reviglione: “The poet Amalia Guglielminetti”, 1911-1912, Private collection (photo by Luca Vianello, Turin).
The most precious asset is the one most in danger. Perhaps then, the irony, the withdrawal, the prudence of not allowing oneself, expressed as one’s own mutilation, a limit, The honest refusalto by Guido Gozzano: «My game of syllables will deceive you./ You will come to my deserted house:/ you will increase the crowd of disappointed ones./ I know that you are beautiful and crazy in the offering/ of yourself. You yourself, beautiful certain prey, / already almost offer me in the open palms. / But before I get to know you, with a frank gesture / I arrest you on the threshold, friend, / and I reject you like a beggar. / I am not him, I am not he! Yes, this/ I want to shout to you in honest rejection,/ so that later you don’t curse./ I’m not him! Not what I appear to you, / what you dream of brotherly spirit! / Under the verse you know, tender and cheerful, / dry is the heart, shrill with mockery / like siliqua shrill in winter, / empty of seeds, hanging from the bush …/ To keep you immune from low thoughts/, conscience dismisses you/ honestly, in more sincere verses…/ But (you are beautiful) don’t let me see you:/ the desire for the beautiful prey/ would lie the love that you hope./ I cannot love, Illusa! I have not loved / ever! This is the misfortune that I hide. / Sad I sought love for the world, sad I wandered through my past, / vicious spoiled child, / on the trail of wandering pleasure… / Ah! Don’t turn your little feet/ towards the dark soul of those who are silent!/ Don’t tempt me, pale follower!…/ For your dream, for the dream I gave you,/ I’m not the one, I’m not the one you think!/ Curious about leave me alone!”
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