Lo spazio dell’aldilà in "Poema a fumetti" di Dino Buzzati

Abstract

The aim of this paper is the analysis of the afterworld space in Dino Buzzati's Poem Strip (1969), a graphic novel ante-litteram. Buzzati rewrites, in an ultramodern and secular way, both the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, restoring the centrality to the power of music, and the myth of the descent into hell, an absolute topos of Italian literature, starting from Dante's allegorical representation of the christian afterworld. Buzzati invents a visual representation of the afterworld space focussing on two elements: the continuity / discontinuity between the two worlds, nominally different, and the thresholds that allow the passage from one world to the other. The recurrent theme of Poem Strip is therefore the search for this threshold that would allow us to distinguish between the two worlds, but at the same time dissolves as soon as we try to overcome it. This paper analyzes, in particular, the narrative frame of Buzzati’s Poem Strip, to identify that door of hell that gives access to the underworld space and which marks the impossible exit for the souls who live there eternally. Like in all fantastic stories by Buzzati, the descent into hell is framed by a prologue and a conclusion set in imaginary and impossible spaces, but at the same time too realistic, common, urban.