L’esperienza del manicomio nell’opera di Alda Merini: tra autobiografia, testimonianza e autoriflessione
The Experience of the Mental Asylum in the Literary Works of Alda Merini: between Autobiography, Testimony and Self-reflection

Summary/Abstract: The literary works of Alda Merini, one of the most acclaimed and fascinating Italian poets of the twentieth century, are inextricably linked to her unconventional and troubled life. Among the events that profoundly marked her existence and her writing, the experience of hospitalization in a mental asylum left indelible traces both in her poetry and in her prose writings, above all in the poetic masterpiece The Holy Land (1984) and in the autobiographical prose The Other Truth. Diary of an Other (1986). The collection of poems The Holy Land evokes the descent into the hell of the Paolo Pini mental hospital in Milan. Here the poetic voice has a confessional tone, sometimes vulnerable and tender, sometimes sardonic and harsh. The soliloquy is imbued with autobiographical references intertwined with religious themes, but also with strong images which testify about the suffering and anguish of other patients inhabiting the same place of damnation. At the same time, The Other Truth. Diary of an Other is a diary-form narrative of this traumatic period in Alda Merini’s life, where she retraces with great lucidity the horrors endured and reflects on themes such as the body, the self-awareness and depersonalization of the mentally ill, the failed motherhood, the identity of the patient inside and outside the mental hospital or the blossoming of poetry in a place completely hostile to life. Our study aims to examine the complex ways in which Alda Merini recounts in verse and prose her experience in the mental hospital. Thus, we will focus on the most relevant passages of the literary works indicated above, where the autobiographical vein acquires an important value of testimony and self-reflection.

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