Being a cloud

Candiani invites readers to take up residence in the woods. All around, there are only voices devoid of any definitive meaning, sounds that never translate into a definitive judgement: every glimmer, the slightest movement, the rustling of the leaves or the murmur of the wind lead readers into a life that is more than human, predating humanity and its impositions. Language itself, in poetry, sheds its pretence of reordering the world and is freed from the burden of expressing a subjective inner life as the centre of gravity of the world around it. Candiani describes how being lost in nature, dreams and the poetic word are one and the same experience: dimensions in which the subject loses themselves, feels the thrill of dissolving, until they learn the task they must fulfil. In dreams, logic gives way to the complete freedom of images, signalling the surrender of all possible control. In the woods, nature demands that we listen whilst coexisting with other beings. In the poetic word, beyond the syntax that rigidifies language in the transmission of well-formulated messages, we find ourselves at once dispersed into anonymity and multiplied into the infinite figures with which we merge. Anonymity is an attribute of a better-understood love: far from being a possessive trait, it is the opening up of a space for life.

Candiani’s verses introduce an education in the ‘dream of words’, in which the genitive appears subjective, and the subject functions as a conduit – the place where words can unfold as the enigma of a wandering life. To be or not to be; the emergence or the fading of a single small leaf completely alters the appearance of the woodland and, at the same time, does not in the least alter its seraphic persistence amidst impermanence. To dwell in the woodland is to make one’s home in the space between meaningful words, a space that is suspended yet not silent. We thus learn to renounce identity; we accept that every single physical contact that involves us becomes part of us. The vertigo of losing oneself, beyond the grasp of time, soon transforms into an unexpected intensification of lives: deer, badger, hare, blackbird, fish, beech – these are not merely creatures to be captured, but unexpected opportunities for salvation within a constant metamorphosis in which everything dies continually, yet nothing ever truly dies.

Letting oneself be carried by the wind and dancing with no purpose other than the gesture itself – these are not matters of vague, apolitical pleasure. It is a question of learning a patient and diligent care, even amidst the menacing roar of gunfire: the nearby echo of humanity. 

Being a cloud

Chandra Livia Candiani

Einaudi, 136 pp., 13 euros