In Risaia Della Marchesa Colombi e La Poetica Della Bellezza

Abstract

One of the author’s best works, In risaia (1878), illustrates a crucial phase in Marchesa Colombi’s poetics of ‘beauty’ which aims at reaching an harmonic correspondence between the protagonist’s inner and outer worlds. The hard work in the ricefields, which results in Nanna’s baldness and loss of beauty, and the cruel encounter with love have such a strong impact on her that she withdraws from reality into an imaginative sphere of her own, thus losing her grip on reality and becoming envious and malicious. It is only by accepting her new look and painful experience and by being aware of her egotism that Nanna finally overcomes her self-pitying attitude and the false role that she had imposed upon herself. Having conquered her own negativity, the protagonist is also able to see the goodness in reality, thus achieving a degree of harmony that is unknown to other characters in Marchesa Colombi’s works.

ISSA vol 13 (2) 2000