The title of this handful of texts is, in fact, a verse by Li Po. Such audacity is an act of profound humility and, at the same time, great pride. For the former, I confess my debt to the old Chinese and Japanese poets, whom I only know through the magnificent translations of so many enthusiasts of those masters. I visited its pages as Matsuo Bashō visited, in the seventeenth century, the breathtaking landscapes of Japan. For the second, I know that placing a verse by Li Po in front of my texts announces, from now on, an imminent failure. So, I write from tradition, and in it I will be vanished.
In any case, the verse sums up the main motifs of the book well: drunkenness, nature. To them, like sudden reverberations, others come: friendship, war, heartbreak and melancholy. There's nothing in the book that belongs to me, nothing. Yet there is nothing in it that is not the effect ...read more
