The Crossing of Milan

Milan is the perfect city to walk in, it doesn't assail you, tease you or molest you showing off its wonders. Milan is reserved it is the ideal place for a stroller.

This might seem strange or paradoxical, because Milan is considered a cliché, oppressed by stereotypes which the Milanese people themselves don't bother to dismantle. The cliché says that Milan is not a beautiful city, nor easy to live in, made only for work. But that isn't so, we are dealing with a superficial opinion, unfortunately often shared by the Milanese themselves. Maurizio Cucchi , who was born in Milan and It is Milan where he sets his poetry, shows that the capital of Lombardy is a hospitable, friendly and beautiful city. In his latest book "La Traversata di Milano ", he reveals how Milan is a beautiful city for a strolling around in. His book is a sort of travel book conducted within the boundaries of a metropolis, a journey between past and present, a passage through Milan. The author crosses its roads and squares, he shows us their grandeur and their secrets. He guides us to discover an invisible Milan made up of voices, of memories, of warm ghosts. Cucchi's glance alights on the architecture and presents day places with innocent amazement thankful for the infinite knowledge of the scholar and poet who recognises as time passes its rich history. Milan itself, in this book becomes a character, with gifts and whims, beauty and wrinkles. Cucchi doesn't

just illustrate its most glorious monuments, but also its parks, its obscure side streets, the suburbs. He sheds new light on the many writers who have found their muse in the Meneghina city, writing about the splendour and the fog, from Stendhal to Gadda , from Carlo Maria Maggi to Franco Loi , from Rovani of "A hundred years", to Carlo Dossi from Vittorio Sereni to Giovanni Raboni -, but also "ordinary Milanese people", and their stories of love and work. A gallery of portraits and anecdotes filling the city with life and flavour, which make it familiar, noble, rich ways in which we don't usually consider it. A true flâneur , as is known, is a solitary figure: he walks without a destination, letting himself be intrigued and wooed by apparently insignificant details, losing himself in memories and reverie, but in these pages Maurizio Cucchi allows us to join him, he talks about himself sans paraître, with a modesty and discretion typical of his fellow citizens, he traces a literary and spiritual guide for the people who love Milan- for those who wish to capture its soul. The pervading spirit which survives even when, next to the old houses with railings, skyscrapers rise up. Strolling along we discover that even Milan, freed from cliché and from the rush that suffocates it, can say a lot about the times in which we live and the people that we are.

About the article

Bio:

Poet, editor and translator, Maurizio Cucchi has worked on many periodicals and magazines, as well as being the editor of the anthology, Poeti dell'ottocento (1978) and the Dizionario della poesia italiana, 1893-1990 (1991). He has translated Flaubert, Villiers de 'Isle-Adam and Mallarmé and is currently engaged on translating the complete works of Stendahl. He is the author, among others, of the collections of poetry, Il disperso (1976), Le meraviglie dell'acqua (1980), Glenn (1983), Donna del gioco (1987) and Poesie della fonte (1993) and L'ultimo viaggio di Glenn (1999). In 1983 he was awarded the Viareggio Prize for poetry and in 1993 the Montale Prize. Co-sponsored by the Italian Department, UCLA.