Reading Sculpture as Enchantment and Prayer

Abstract

Reading Sculpture as Enchantment and Prayer Editorial note: Visit www.italolanfredini.it to see more of Lanfredini's work and www.worldlit.org to read the Italian version of this text. For more about Lanfredini, see also Alice-Catherine Carls's "Between Poetry and Enchantment" essay on the WLT blog. Translated by Alice-Catherine Carls (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution If I Pause If I pause for a momentand observe everythingthat surrounds megreater is the awarenessof my nothingness. A vast universeextending beyondmy mind—voice, poetry, meta-word shaped and carved from matter (clay, stone, wood, iron, . . .) that turns into song, enchantment, beauty, and prayer.humbly listening,seeing and hearing. MY SCULPTURE, while explaining the basic principles of "shaping and sculpting," always tends to create an interactive relationship with space. My sculpture is never intended as an ornament but as a graft. Aiming for a natural continuity. All this requires deep knowledge, hands on the pulse of the site, respect. For me, that means grasping its strength: sounds, noise, lights, shadows, scents, smells, breath, and silence. My sculpture is an intimate approach to the site's spirit that listens to its most secret aura, for who listens sees. Listening, thinking, and acting feed and awaken the mind and prepare consciousness to fully share and to respect all beings and things. Behold, listening and silence overflow and spread toward sound and word, toward shapes and colors until they become, together with the contributions of poets from all over the world, voice, poetry, meta-word shaped and carved from matter (clay, stone, wood, iron, . . .) that turns into song, enchantment, beauty, and prayer. Fertile outpourings and overflows that predispose to the union of all possible forms of Art and Science and take into account all the phases of life: "birth, growth, decadence and death." A whole that becomes orchestration, catharsis, harmony . . . Vase, Labyrinth, Cradle, Boat-ark . . . Poièin. Mantua, Italy Translation from the Italian [End Page 42] Italo Lanfredini Italo Lanfredini (b. 1948, Sabbioneta) studied sculpture at the Brera Academy in Milan. In 1987 his Arianna labyrinth won the International Sculpture Competition organized by Antonio Presti. His Arianna's Labyrinth (1988–89) installation can be found in Castel di Lucio, Messina, Sicily. In the late 1990s he opened "la Silenziosa," his house-studio in Mantua. Alice-Catherine Carls Alice-Catherine Carls is the Tom Elam Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Tennessee at Martin. An accomplished literary scholar and translator as well as a historian, she has contributed to World Literature Today since the 1980s and is currently a WLT editorial board member. Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma