“Condizionata alla morte essa rimava vocabolari tormentosi”: declinazioni del lutto nella poesia di Amelia Rosselli e Sylvia Plath

Abstract

This article analyses the different forms that death and mourning take on in the making of Rosselli and Plath’s poetics. Starting from a shared biographical event – the death of their fathers – and through the analysis of a limited sample of poems (in particular “Perché il cielo divinasse la tua ansia di morire” by Rosselli and “Electra on Azalea Path” by Plath), our aim is to discuss, firstly, the different meaning that paternal loss takes on in their lives, and then, the divergent way in which their poetry constantly echoes this fundamental absence.