Due to the fundamental presence of assonances, internal rhymes, rhythms and repetitions, and metrical wisdom, Daniele Petruccioli's Viaggio nell'Ade ("Journey to Hades") is a text that should be placed in the blurred territories where prose and poetry meet due to Voices, characters and symbolic apparitions set up a concert and a dance in which the descent into the underworld, the meditation on death, i.e. on life, the reminiscences and experiences of the past reach the areas where our stores of archetypes and symbolic structures are layered. I, We, She, You, they all are like bullets fired into the text: they riddle it with their denotative bearing and the complexity of their reciprocal relationships. In this descent the reader gets lost and as if by a miracle finds himself again. Facing death, both as bodies and as thoughts and figures, is the pivot of Petruccioli's concerted meditation, so dense with musicality and rhythms that it engages our sensibilities as readers on many levels.
Petruccioli's sensitivity to the Italian language incorporates his frequentations as an exquisite translator from other literatures like a yeast, and visions that also come from these further linguistic and textual territories often flare up in his pages. The result is a language that ceaselessly grows and ferments from within, unleashing impressive figures in terms of clarity and relevance (The Old Woman, The Madwoman...). The text is rich in indications for the musical score, alluding to the symphonic universe that welcomes us here with suggestions of the tempo and rhythm that the reading asks of us (Largo, Allegretto in swing's rhythm, Adagio, Rondò, etc.) in order to enjoy it more fully. A surprising text: a lushly, incoercibly vital face-to-face with death.
Daniele Petruccioli is a translator of novels from Portuguese, French and English. He teaches Editorial Translation and Translation Theory at the University of Rome UNINT. He made his debut with the volume of poetry Sonderkommando (Zona, 2007), has published articles and essays on translating, such as Le pagine nere (La Lepre, 2014), short stories and novels, including La casa delle madri of 2020 (in the dozen of the Strega Prize) and Si vede che non era destino of 2023 (Basilicata Literary Prize), both for TerraRossa Edizioni. He lives in Rome.