ORTESE E RABINDRANATH TAGORE. NUOVE DIREZIONI DI RICERCA NELL’EPISTOLARIO CON ADRIANA CAPOCCI BELMONTE

Abstract

The marginal position long reserved for Anna Maria Ortese, along with the dispersion of her documents, has limited the understanding of her originality in the literary and cultural history not only of Italy. The study of her correspondence with Adriana Capocci Belmonte offers significant new research directions today. This corpus of documents spans from 1938 to 1944, the years following the publication of Angelici dolori. Only the letters from Anna Maria Ortese have survived, while those from Adriana are lost. Despite its gaps, the correspondence contributes to understanding the personality, relationships, and experiences of the writer. Thus, new and decisive research paths are opened, revealing the influence that the thought of the poet and philosopher Tagore exerted on Anna Maria Ortese from the 1930s onwards. This influence came through her acquaintance with a passionate orientalist and her circle of intellectual friends, anticipating the widespread interest in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s. There are strong correspondences between Ortese’s poetics and Indian thought, and in the correspondence, one finds not only lexical and conceptual references but also explicit mentions of Tagore and his correlation with a particular short story.