La musa di Carlo Levi non si fermò a Eboli

This essay embraces the idea that Carlo Levi was a poet even before he was a painter or a prose writer. His masterpiece (Cristo si è fermato a Eboli), infact, could be read as an expandend prose poem by the archaic appearance. During the last two years of confinement in Lucania (from 1935 to 1936), Levi composed some poems in his notebook, later collected under the title Eterne lontananze. They represent some precious evidences of a real descent into an underworld out of history: warm testimonials that will be amplified, but also filtered in the Cristo, written after ten years. By commenting a selection of these poems, it's possible to point out themes, symbols, perspectives by which the author observed that reality, dominated by death and painted with black color, still putting trust in poetry as synonymous with freedom.