Abstract

The essay examines some of Giorgio Bassani’s engagés texts, in particular those relating to the Second World War. It focuses on an article from 1944, Le leggi razziali e la questione ebraica, and on a series of poems that reveal the close relationship that Bassani established between art, morality, and politics. The analysis specifically considers two texts that Eugenio Montale considered among the best European poems of the Resistance: Non piangere compagno, dedicated to a young man who fell during the Neapolitan days of September 1943, and Retrovia, portraying an unknown German soldier buried near Lake Albano. Both poems show the attitude of pietas with which Bassani approaches even the death of his enemies. A French source, Apollinaire’s Calligrammes, is used for the interpretation of Retrovia.