Corporal Controversy: Mario Luzi's In corpo vile

Abstract

Mario Luzi's most recent volume of verse, Alfuoco delta controversia (1978), contains a series of five poems grouped under the title In corpo vile. The poems concern the controversial function of the human body in belief systems and in human behaviour. One poem depicts acrobats on a trapeze and likens them to the prophets, and a second poem presents the torment of a boxing match which repeats an empty ritual of corporal violence. Both poems carefully create, through descriptions of lighting and selection of spatial details, a frame for their physical participants. These settings assume importance because with them Luzi calls attention to the significance of the multiple frames of reference through which we view the body, suggesting that the key to understanding the complex, enigmatic poems of In corpo vile lies in recognizing the frames he utilizes. At least four can be identified here: 1) the anthropological, or the symbolic exchanges in bodily rituals, 2) the theological, especially the Christian doctrine of incarnation, 3) the philosophical, or how the physical becomes metaphysical, and, lastly, 4) the semiotic, or the body as a source of expression. Luzi's aim is to evoke and attempt to understand the suffering of life, which the body, as vitality itself, represents. In corpo vile forms the second part of a larger group entitled Segmenti del grande patema, which contains twenty-nine of the forty-two poems of Al fuoco della controversia. The controversy of the title reflects the cultural and historical crises in Italy which culminated in the kidnapping and brutal assassination of Aldo Moro in 1978. The poems of Alfuoco delta controversia were not only published in 1978 but they have much in common with Luzi's later poem (1980) on Moro, whose mutilated body was stashed in a car trunk: .