In my last post I just described what happened with “Vengo dalla luna” and remarked on why a song is a difficult kind of text for me. And set down my translation. Translating it, I had time to think upon and decide if it is POETRY. Not because of any independent criteria I use. Looking at my anthology and my audiobook selections of poems, I was disappointed that the majority of them are not poetry FOR ME because I couldn’t use them for “poetic” purposes, which I specified in my last post as the potential to get myself into some kind of emotional state, respectively intensify or navigate it. Some of them probably would be, though, if I could understand them. I cannot judge the ones I don’t understand, but the bulk of the material is just too flat and banal to feel something interesting about it, or funny in a way that doesn’t entertain me. Or the outcome of some fascist mindset I wouldn’t want to get into. (What I realize as a big step into the future right now: how much of the content I tolerated so far has suddenly become “fascist”.😉)
My decision that the song IS poetry means nothing else than that I had begun to use it poetically, or – having done so before I really understood the lyrics - to understand WHY I did that. Why the text had this potential for me. In this way, my own implicit criteria for choosing what I REALLY READ become transparent to me and emerge as my personal criteria for what a good poem is, totally independently – and much more so than I thought! – of the multiple criteria for which poems obviously became canonized.
I realize that I always had an implicit prejudice that poems were canonized mostly for being BEAUTIFUL because this is such an obvious criterion for them TO BE THERE. It certainly applies to Shakespeare’s sonnets – designed to be beautiful, though it is only a part of what makes them extraordinary – but it applies only to a surprisingly tiny fraction of what got canonized as poetry according to my anthology and recorded selections. As a rule, though, it applies to POP SONGS. When I just look at the text of “Vengo dalla luna”, it doesn’t really. There is a lot of rhyming that works very well, but there are also a lot of incongruous elements, like outdated words put together with contemporary slang, and clumsy, cumbersome expressions. There is little sense of harmony or of what goes well together. Other songs by Maneskin suggest that they have a knack for THIS kind of poetry also – one reason why they are so good is obviously that they are great at imitating and picking up things, musically as well as poetically – and therefore there is a conscious choice here to use “awkward” language. Something to do with the disgust and the opposition that came into this song. And the awkwardness disappears anyway when the text is sung, dissipating into the strong rap and rock beat. (I often noticed the aesthetic potential of the “rap metre” as an environment where you can get away with ANYTHING you want to say, no matter how “ugly”, if you are skilled enough. In particular, the felt restrictions for what kind of words and expressions to use fall away because it sets its own aesthetic standard: Anything goes.) As I said, there is very skilled rhyming, that doesn’t become monotonous, which “absorbs” a lot of the awkwardness. It is without doubt a very good and, in a non-classical sense, quite beautiful song.
So – though it appears to be an outdated notion which makes it difficult for me to use “modern” poetry – this is obviously a primary criterion for me. I have to be able to appreciate a text aesthetically as a motivation to engage with it, and this is certainly why songs are usually so much easier to read.
It also entails that the lyrics get underappreciated as a necessary but minor factor in reading a song. But I have always loved a song with good lyrics. To complete the process of intense reading that I had begun, I had to look into them, and then they became vital. Doing the translating, I came to fully appreciate the song as poetry, which, as I have noticed before, has to have some kind of second level of meaning, for example some kind of metaphorical twist, to hold my attention. And “Vengo dalla luna” definitely has that. It works completely only in Italian, as there is this obvious connection of “luna” and “lunatico”, but it is only one step further in English where the word “lunatic” exists as well, and “Luna”, the goddess of the moon, is still a familiar concept. (In German it doesn’t work at all.)
Of course, poetry doesn’t HAVE to have to refer to literary traditions to be poetry, but it helps. I think it was a conscious choice for Maneskin to do it in THIS case which has to do with what they are saying. The moon as a metaphor has certainly become a cliché, but it gets reinterpreted when this seemingly obvious connection “luna – lunatico” is highlighted in the way they do. It is already crazy for an Italian rock band to call themselves “Moonshine” in DANISH. It sounds pretty alien. I suppose the reason is that they liked the word – but then the idea was on the table, to make the most of it.
It
is not that to be lunatic is a desirable concept for me. Not as such. But it is
highly desirable to be able and allowed to decide what is right for me. I am in
fact a very practical person - and really, really lunatic WHEN IT SUITS ME. (“Sono
lunatico e pratico dove cazzo mi pare” just nailed it – except for the
“inbuilt” gender restriction. Oh my – the Italians have a still bigger problem
than we have, the asterisk wouldn’t help here … 😉) And to be ABLE to decide if something is
fiction or if it is real. I find it interesting and penetrating of Maneskin to link
this ability with the ability to acknowledge that real life is unpredictable,
not LIKE anything we have already read somewhere.
qualcosa già scritto
su un libro que hai già letto tutto
Thinking about it, it becomes really complicated, but it fits exactly my intuition about HOW I have always been different. Life and fiction are certainly linked, but there is an entirely different set of rules. “We” lunatics – people who have this approach to life – are “different” because we have always known that there are different forms of existing, different ways of life, different people. And it satisfies me as a metaphorical explanation that this is because we are actually COMING from a different planet. I never knew why I am like this, and why other people appear to have popped out in the “right” place, with no questions asked and never any need to do so.
Unlike “Maneskin”, this hasn’t made me angry. I probably felt depressed at the time, but I don’t remember because, only about eight years ago, I found out by an incredible stroke of luck that this place where I come from actually exists. That it is not (just) fictional because there are other people in it. Real people, adult people, who, like me, don’t (just) live in the place they are supposed to live. Like myself. I met small people before – my nephews and nieces – that was already a revelation. I love that state when they are about three years old and start talking rubbish all day because they know nothing but suddenly discover their IMAGINATION. How we see things when nobody tells us how to see them … Yet they’ll have to grow up. Will they remain just a little bit lunatic …? As I still am. I needed to FIND people who weren’t so bloody literal and serious about everything, but not unhinged either. And I did. Somebody got me started, and then I even discovered this quality in people I already knew. I became convinced that I was not completely surrounded by people who were so boring and one-dimensional that they would want to kill people who are different, or make laws that deny their existence, or revile them in antisocial networks and football stadiums … because we lunatics are not DIFFERENT – WE are normal. Democracy and decent, considerate behaviour towards others are NORMAL. We are many, and we are not to blame for YOUR FUCKING PROBLEMS!!!
So, now Maneskin has made me angry. It is not so easy, by the way, to make me angry. When I have good reasons to be, I am always deflecting, making fun of myself. The news don’t make me angry anymore, not even Viktor Orban made me angry, he just made me feel helpless. Angry is too serious and makes me feel bad … But sometimes it is just the RIGHT THING to get angry and FUCKING SCREAM!!!
So, thanks for that, Maneskin!😍
I wonder why I ever was in any doubt about the influence poetry has on how we survive and change the world? At least I am not anymore. Just try and imagine the world without it! I couldn’t.