Parole e simboli: “The Great Figure” di W.C. Williams

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Published in 1921, The Great Figure is among William Carlos Williams’s most paradigmatic poems. It inspired an equally famous Poster-portrait (1928) by Charles Demuth, the poet’s longtime friend. Both artists may be said to have been ‘Precisionists’: Demuth by direct association with the American Art Movement of this name, Williams by the accuracy of his medium. This essay presents a close analysis of the poem vis-à-vis the painting. To show how difficult it is to turn Williams’s ‘simple’ language into Italian, the essay analyses Vittorio Sereni’s version of the poem.