Abstract

The paper is an analysis and textual interpretation of Franco Fortini's (1917-1994) the "Poem of the roses" that has been defined «the deepest abyss of his entire work», his negative summit, his «black truth» and that Fortini himself considered «a monster, a misunderstanding». This was not the whole truth. The short poem (1962) was also a prophecy, or perhaps more precisely an Apocalypse and as such should have been read and interpreted. The Apocalypse, as the Bible scholar Gianfranco Ravasi reminds us, is first of all a «political» way to read the present and etymologically it is like a «revelation» of a hidden truth, and therefore like a «breaking of a veil» and a «vision». The paper then takes into account also this «secret trait».