Između mora i unutarnje tišine: egzistencijalna refleksija u lirici Caterine Felici
Between the Sea and Inner Silence: Existential Reflection in the Lyrics of Caterina Felici

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses the lyrical oeuvre of Caterina Felici, a poet of Zadar origin whose literary work developed within the broader context of post-war Italian exile literature. The study focuses particularly on the existential dimension of her poetry and examines the main thematic and stylistic features of her poetic expression through an immanent reading of selected collections. Special attention is devoted to melancholy, contradiction, introspection, and the reflective position of the lyrical subject, as well as to the symbolic role of nature – especially the sea – as a space where inner experience and external reality intersect. The analysis demonstrates that Felici’s poetry is characterized by a constant tension between emotional experience and reflective awareness. Reality is not presented as stable or unambiguous, but rather as fragmented, unstable, and often contradictory. Such a perception is expressed through a highly reduced poetic language based on short verses, semantic condensation, and symbolic openness. The paper further shows that Felici’s lyrical subject is marked by a persistent sense of inner displacement, uncertainty, and existential questioning, which transcends the autobiographical framework of exile and acquires a universal dimension Particular emphasis is placed on the poetics of contradiction and mirroring, through which the poet constructs a world governed by unstable boundaries between proximity and distance, memory and present time, rootedness and wandering. Natural elements such as the sea, mist, wind, and light function not as decorative motifs, but as symbolic mediators of existential states and introspective processes. The paper concludes that Caterina Felici’s poetry represents a distinctive voice within poetry due to its combination of formal restraint, reflective depth, and semantic complexity. Her poetic discourse transforms personal and historical experience into a broader meditation on solitude, temporality, identity, and the human search for meaning.

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