An interview to Fabrizio de André

Fernanda Pivano

In 1971 Fabrizio De André released the album "Non al denaro, non all'amore nè al cielo (Not money, not to heaven or the sky)" freely adapted by the anthology of Spoon River. De André chose nine of the 244 poems and turned into many songs.
The nine selected poems touch on two main topics: envy (A fool, a judge, a blasphemer, a heart patient) and science (a doctor, a chemist, an optical). The poems were published between 1914 and 1915 by the American poet Edgar Lee Masters.

Almost to learn more about the characters, Fernanda Pivano began to translate the poems in Italian, of course without telling Cesare Pavese who gave them to her: she feared that he could make fun of her. But one day Pavese discovered the manuscript in a drawer and persuaded Einaudi to publish it. Incredibly, he managed to avoid censure by the Ministry of fascist popular culture by changing the title "Anthology of S. River" and claiming to be a collection of thoughts of a highly unlikely San River.

interview by Fernanda Pivano to Fabrizio de André

Pivano you like to tell us how you thought of making this record (not the money, not to heaven or the editor's note.)?

Fabrizio Spoon River I read as a boy, I had 18 years. I liked it, and do not know why I liked, perhaps because in these characters was something about me. Then I happened to read it again, two years ago, and I realized that was not aged at all. Above all, I was struck by one fact: in life, you are forced to compete, maybe you have to think about the false or not be true, in death, however, the Spoon River characters are expressed with great sincerity, because they have more expect nothing, have nothing to think about. So speak as live have never been able to do.

P. I mean, you've heard in these poems that in life you can not "communicate"? That seems to me that the complaint as a forerunner of the Masters, the reason why these poems are still relevant today, especially among young people?

F. Yes, definitely yes. At this point I thought it was worth obtaining themes which are suited to our times, and as the disks always describe the things I do, my life story, sure to express my discontent, my flaws (because I think I'm a normal individual and therefore I think these things may be of interest to others, because others are quite similar to me), I tried to adapt to the reality that Spoon River where I live. Why I chose Spoon River and I have not even made up myself, these stories? From the creative point of view, since there was this Mr. Lee Masters who had managed to penetrate the human soul so well, I do not see why I should I riprovarmici.

P. So the big manipulations you have done on the texts were like the surgery to make the present book, contemporary?

F. Even Yes to make the existing characters, to snatch the petty bourgeoisie of the Little America in 1919 and include them in our type of social life. When I say I will not say middle class bogeyman, tell the class that holds power and needs conservarselo, no? its power. But in our kind of society we have judges who are judges for a sense of revenge, we have an idiot in office that people are used to download his frustrations (it's so convenient to all, an idiot ...)

P. From the book you took nine poems, choosing the most suitable to explain the two issues that seemed more insistent constants of provincial life: envy (as a spring of power exerted on individuals and how INGNORANZA towards others) and science ( as a contrast between the aspirations of the researcher and the repression of the system). Why these themes?

F. As for why I would say that is the envy of emotion which reflects the more competitive climate, man's attempt to compete constantly with others, to imitate or even over to possess what he has and believes that others possess. As for science, because science is a classic product of progress, which unfortunately is still in the hands of the power that creates envy and, in my opinion, science has not yet been able to solve life problems.

P. Who made this choice of themes and poems?

F. Having made the choice I spoke with Bentley which I proposed to help in this work. Among us there have been many discussions, as is obvious as it should. Bentivoglio tended to make a political speech and I wanted to make a speech essentially human. In the end the most difficult task was hard, never giving up on the express content, to keep as close as possible to poetry. Fatigue aside I must say that Bentley would like to meet a hundred in life if I lived a hundred years, a record year, I would be the most prolific songwriter in the world.

P. Can you explain the idea of a heart condition as an alternative to envy?

F. If I could. The other characters are left to take and envy in some way they answered, positively or negatively (the idiot who for envy studies the Encyclopaedia Britannica from memory and ends up in a mental hospital, the judge who reaches the envy enough power to humiliate those who have humiliated the blasphemer who is a commentator for salirne to the origins of envy and the search goes to God), while the patient's heart while being uniquely positioned to be jealous performs an act of courage e. ..

P. We can say that because it has bypassed the envy was not to push the spring of the calculation but it was the spring of love?

F. But yes, I would have told you if I had not told me.

P. So we can conclude with the old proposal for a Masters, that life is only to triumph over those who are capable of love?

F. Yes, to triumph are "available".

P. Even for the group of science have found an alternative, right? Bentley told me to represent the theme of science you choose the doctor who tried to heal the sick for free but did not succeed because the system did not permit him, for fear that the chemical takes refuge in law and order as that repressive and optical that would transform the reality in which light and you saw a kind of hashish dealer, a kind of Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley. How does the violinist is an alternative?

F. The violin player (who has become for the sake of metrics flute) is one that if you solve existential problems, and solves them because, again, is available. E 'available because its climate is not an attempt to get rich, but the attempt to do what he likes: it is one that always chooses the game, and we die without regrets. Do not you think it has made a choice? The decision not to bury freedom?

P. Then you can say that this is the message you wanted to convey with this album? Because we are accustomed to thinking that all your disks have brought a message: the libertarian and non-violent of your first dance, as in the War of Piero, the freeing of the fear of death as we died with difficulty in all, demystifying one of the characters of the Gospel as in the Testament of Titus. What is the message of this Spoon River?

F. I would say, after all, that we came from the atmosphere of death groped for an investigation into human nature, through characters that exist in our reality, even if the characters of Masters.

P. It 'clear that the poems have all redone. For example, in the poetry of blasphemy, you have added an idea that was not the Masters, one of the "forbidden fruit", ie the possibility of knowledge, but God no longer held by held by the police power of the system.

F. I do not traumatic enough the fact that the blasphemy was killed barrel: I also wanted to say that perhaps it was blasphemous to be wrong, because in an attempt to challenge a particular system, a certain way of living, maybe had to steer his kind of rebellion against something more substantial than an image so metaphysics.

P. Bentley told me that if the "forbidden fruit" is not in the hands of a God but the police power, is the police power that compels us to dream in an enchanted garden. That is, the enchanted garden is no longer the divine second Masters where no man should have known that in addition to the good there is evil.

F. Yes, indeed blasphemous for the enchanted garden was not created by God but was actually invented by man and not the "forbidden fruit" is still on earth and we have not yet stolen. Now you understand what I mean I to dream: I mean think about the way you have to think after the system has acted decisively to break away from reality.

P. I think that your addition is not a stretch, because even in the denunciation of the manipulation of thought, of brainwashing carried out by the system, and Masters is a forerunner of our problems. Try to tell me how, when you were a boy, a boy of your generation Masters seemed to be a protester.

F. Because it reveals the flaws of people attacked the little things that can not see beyond their noses, which has no human interest outside of practical needs.

P. That is more than his political protest has you concerned of its human context?

F. Yes, I think the fundamental flaw lies in human nature.

P. Returning to your manipulation of the text, we can say that the addition of this concept of "forbidden fruit" is not held by God but by the power of the system is handling larger. On the other hand is the past half a century since the Masters wrote these poems, so if it could rewrite the portrait gallery now there is no doubt that his libertarian streak would include the elements that merely touching as first mover. This also applies to other large manipulation you have done, the optician seen as a proposal for an expansion of consciousness. But the stylistic point of view, why did you feel the need to change the form of poetic Masters? Bentley told me that the free verse of these poems do not need, you needed to rhythm and rhyme, this is clear. But it seems that you have wanted to disclose, explain at all costs.

F. Yes I felt it necessary to explain these poems, then there was the need to turn it into songs. That is, stories and a story is not an excuse to express an idea, it must be the story to understand the idea itself.

P. But how do you explain for example the fact that he used the words of a contemporary language almost brutal, for example in the verse of the poetry of the court "a bastard of a dwarf is safe because his heart is too close to the hole in the c. .." and have included such images as "the pearl-colored legs" in poems that despite being full of sex are expressed mostly in the form of aseptic, almost asexual?

F. Because even the vocabulary to this day is a bit 'changed, and I was especially encouraged by the effort to explain the true meaning of these things. On the definition of the courts hearing, this is a character who becomes carrion because people do become carrion: it is a figment of carogneria general. This definition is a kind of symbol of the wickedness of the people.

P. All in all I think they have been handling the heaviest you've done to the concepts of text and the Masters, and on the other hand when the book came out, it seemed to his contemporaries far and aseptic asexual: the group of Neo-Humanist attacked him as "founder of a new school of sordid realism and pornography."

F. You'll understand.

P. However I am sure you will not disappoint your fans, because the poems you've just written, with that your unpredictable, pathetic in the inventive rhymes and assonance, as in the poetry of ancient folk tradition. But to what extent, for example, you identified with the violinist (Jones, who plays the flute in '71) which ends the disc? And I will not allude to the fact that a boy approached the music you studying the violin.

F. There is no doubt that for me this was the most difficult poem. Abseiling in the reality of the other characters full of flaws and complexes has been relatively easy, but his empathy with this character so clear to play for fun as well, without being paid, for me as a musician was not easy. Do you understand? For Jones, the music is not a profession, is an alternative: to reduce a trade would be like burying freedom. And right now I can not tell if it'll end sooner or later to follow his example.

Fernanda Pivano

Interview recorded in Rome October 25, 1971.

F. Have you forgotten to address one question: Who is Fernanda Pivano? Fernanda Pivano for everyone is a writer. For me it is a girl of twenty years that he began his professional translating a book by a libertarian while the Italian company has an entirely different trend. It 'happened between '37 and '41, when it meant courage.

Fabrizio DE ANDRE'