“The shadowy intimity”: note on the self-writing in Al Berto

Abstract

The question we face is how can we understand the relationship between life and poetry in a work like the one by the poet Al Berto, so permeated by so-called self-writing (autobiography, diary, memoirs, correspondence, etc.). The intention in this article is to discuss the notions of autobiogra­phy, privacy, intimacy and authenticity in his poetic universe. For that, we comment not only the literary texts stricto sensu, as well as his public state­ments - interviews and speeches -, understanding them also as part of the “autobiographical game” proposed by the poet. At the end, we propose, as a case study, the analysis of two somewhat unknown texts by Al Berto: “Bio­graphical note in letter form” and “Acceptance Speech for the PEN Club Award for Poetry”, both collected by us in the poet’s estate.