Eva Colombo, As light wherever touches shadow, second chapter: The Maid of
the Night ( from Dino Campana, Orfic songs, 1914 )
A barbaric tower penetrates with his cone of shadow a long avenue of planes. A
dark and violent something stirs among the leaves: a mystic and wild myth has
impressed its prints on that place and streetwalkers are fatally magnetized by
those prints as if an ancient curse obliges them to run along that avenue almost
hypnotized by the indistinct glow which seeps through a desirable, very distant
door. Their long dresses stroke a torpid countryside which softly slips into the
hypnotic network of canals. The sharp profile of ancient maidens sinks into
green bends. Something alive shines through the bottom of torpid canals: it is a
mocking shadow, the shadow of the poet at the beginning of his initiation path.
It is this shadow from that muddy bottom which leads him to a border and a door:
a barbaric and massive matron receives him. The shadow behind her shoulders
doesn’t hide the amber – coloured maid who wheezes burdened with sound sleep.
The long procession of the matron’s ancient lovers parades monotonous to the
poet’s ears while the maid frees herself from sleep’s load and, leaning on the
elbows, assumes a Sphinx’s attitude. Outside, green gardens among red walls. The
complementary of green and red appeases the paradoxicality of the condition of
the poet, of the matron and of the maid: out of the world and of the time but
the only ones alive. Then the night envelops the poet and the maid but the
darkness doesn’t succeed in extinguishing the amber of her paradoxical golden
but wild body, unripe but sweet, a body closed in the fence of a mystery which
is humble: adherent to the ground. One frozen December night the poet meets
again the matron and the maid. In the block of frozen fog, a frozen fog which
oppresses with its shadow frozen arcades, drops of light dig means of escape -
drops of light that flow into another light which bursts out a suddenly open
door. Poet’s eyes are immediately attracted by the red of an ottoman where the
massive matron supports with the hand her heavy head, the young – eyed matron
who is ancient as the world. Beside her, the slim maid enveloped in a bright
dressing – gown. Over her head, a white curtain which bears enigmatic white
images. In the shadow of this red and white room the maid wheezes burdened with
dark dreams, troubled by the mystic fusion which is unifying the opposite and
complementary parts of her being: young and ancient, female and male, human
animal and holy icon. Another meeting, this time in a city by the sea. In a
burning - red shadow lily – white streetwalkers are dreaming in a wind which
bears the purifying salt of the green sea while the Mediterranean night glows
with stars and flames. The streetwalker chosen by the poet is pure and shining,
winged by her light dress. Red, green and white have become violet: in the
violet night the maid has reunited in a harmonious unity her paradoxicality and
she can now soar unburdened. In the beyond of the mirror her real identity
becomes visible: she is a volatile but concrete divine epiphany. |
