"Transference, or the role of poetry into civic life"

By Erminia Passannanti
(2 March 2001)

I am editing a new online-literary magazine,
called "Transference.EU&Beyond" : it aims at publishing the work (poetry,
prose  and/or literary criticism ) of authors from Europe and Beyond.
The idea is to create another cross-cultural space for net-meetings, on the
theme of dialogue. Therefore, it will deal with the principle of
transference of ideas in both concrete earthly terms and  in transcendental
ones .

Beyond the mere appreciation of other people's poetical achievements, the
pleasure of literature is becoming more and more one of "production".  And
in fact, far from being exclusively passive targets, we all try to be also
the producers of ideas and "art-crafts" that are circulating in the
established and non-established literary circles of our times: what we do,
in effect, is to communicate our feelings, views and discourses to the
world of others mainly to avoid the sense of exclusion imposed by our
present world of post-realities, while activating a re-signification of the
role of poetry in our societies.

Machiavelli believed that political truth must be shown to both the Prince
and those who Princes are not. That is why he transferred the same doctrine
from his political tractatus, The Prince, to the folk comedy La Mandragola.
Though, the ideas conveyed in the latter were considered , by Machiavelli
himself, a vulgarisation of those expressed in the  former. Machiavelli’s
concern was, of course,  that poetry and the Arts, in general, have  a
status far more inferior than that of politics. And to be honest, in my
being  a typically politicised Italian, I share Machiavelli's concern, and
I regard Dante as a true exception to this rule.

But I have the feeling that we can finally give up Machiavelli's pessimism
and no longer believe that to express one's opinions in verse, say, to be “
poets”, would necessarily imply the  risk to gain limited power to the real
world of action. And indeed, for Machiavelli the desire of being called a
poet and be included among the great Italian  lyricists, such as Dante,
Petrarca and Ariosto,  and the ambition to be considered by the Medici as
their best counsellor was indeed a controversial one, implying the danger
to compromise his remarkable reputation as a pure thinker. Which was,
possibly, also the fear of being regarded as something less of a man, less
of a living force : to be, in other words, disempowered.

A concern fully justified, if we think of the strict humanistic background
of the Renaissance civilization. We have not walked a long way from
Machiavelli's times, yet I am sure that in spite of the present
postmodernist tendency to annihilate all fields of dispute, our artistic
endeavours can fully stand the burden of intellect and still express
themselves freely. A poetical itinerary can indeed be an aesthetical
spiritual one and yet be able to bear  the sword of our ideologies.

It is in this sense that Transference can meet dialogue, or better, meet
what Vico  considered the desirable role of poetry in civic life.
Transference, then, in the sense of going forward, towards something which
is in front of us, beside us, and which is, at times, paradoxically non-
visible.

If you think of yourself as an author worthy of inclusion among the
significant number of our contemporary who operate within the project of
transcending and transferring ones culture and civilizations to those of
others, please feel free to submit your work to "Transference.EU&Beyond".


Please, visit this page if you wish to read an essay by Michael Pickering
recently published in
Transference.EU&Beyond.

http://transference.bizland.com/pickering.htm.

The site is under construction.
Those interested can contact me ([log in to unmask])
or my co-editor and Web Master, Larry Jaffe, at [log in to unmask]