Dal Gast al Fremde nella poesia di Carmine Gino Chiellino

Abstract

The following essay is aimed at exploring the concepts of Gast and Fremde,
that is respectively host and stranger, in the poetic of Italian poet and literary
critic Carmine Gino Chiellino within the broader constellation of contemporary
German intercultural literature. The lyrical subject of Chiellino’s first poetic
phase tends to represent a collective entity representing Gastarbeiter in
Germany, yet it opposes a metaleptic tendency to absorb and interiorize
external identity ascriptions. The latter process of resistance becomes more
evident in the later phases of his poetic, in which the individual emerges as
lyric narrator and the concept of Fremd, stranger, is used instead of the
dychotomic concept of Gast. Whereas the latter concept is the result of an
external attribute, Fremde designs an inner condition of self-negotiation, an
intentional potentiality in the identity process of intercultural background.