«Im Scheinwerfer der Abreise»

La poesia dell'esilio di Lea Ritter Santini

Abstract

This contribution aims to analyse part of the poetic production of the Germanist and comparative scholar Lea Ritter Santini (1928-2208), starting with the collection of poems she published in 1986 in the German magazine «Akzente», entitled Fremdenschein and never translated into Italian, except unofficially and amicably by the writer Fabrizia Ramondino. In an attempt to provide a thematic analysis of Fremdenschein, reference will be made to the genre of the poetry of exile, and it will be shown how Lea Ritter Santini's collection fits right into the latter, in its expression of the experience of uprooting and the continual renegotiation of the self within the confines of a disrupted space and history. An attempt will also be made to bring to light the traces, disseminated by Lea Ritter Santini in her poetry in the form of figures and types, of the work on literature, and especially on German and Italian literature, which she carried out in the academic sphere; among these, the Jewish figure of the Schlemihl will be singled out in particular, which was adopted by Adelbert von Chamisso, Rahel Varnhagen and Hannah Arendt and placed by the academic at the centre of her poetry, as an elective metaphor for living on the margin between worlds and languages.