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This article explores the representation of Cappadocia (Kapadokya in Turkish) in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poetry and in one of his renowned movies, Medea (1969) 1, since as Claretta Micheletti Tonetti (2009) states “reference to poetry could never be neglected when viewing a film by a director who was most of all a great poet and who called ‘real’ cinema il cinema di poesia.” 2

Pasolini is the first foreign director to choose the Turkish central-Anatolian region as his movie set, doing so in 1969, one year after the very first Turkish production by Ertem Göreç, entitled Şeyh Ahmet, and one year before Peter Collinson’s You Can’t Win ‘Em All, starring Tony Curtis and Charles Bronson as two American soldiers during the Greco-Turkish war (1919-22); the latter, though first supported by the Turkish government, was then censured and never reached the big screen in Turkey. According to the Nevşehir Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, in the last 40 years 32 countries have favoured this area producing a total of 193 movies, TV shows, documentaries and ads (of which 80 are Japanese productions). 3

According to Pasolini’s notion, the existence of the “cinema of poetry” depends on a specific cinematographic technique, which consists of the author’s immersion in his character’s soul. This technique reflects Pasolini’s mastery of language and his literary style and, ultimately, his choice of what he called “im-segni”, “immagini significanti”. 4 He introduced the concept of free indirect point-of-view shot in his attempt to demonstrate the real, empirical existence of a semiotic marker by means of which the poetic style can be found in cinema. A term, as claimed by Michael Syrimis, which indicates “a stylistic approach to filmmaking that firmly grounds his work in 1960s cinematic modernism.” 5

Pasolini

Medea (Pasolini, 1969)

The two forms of art, poetry and film, are used to present and re-address some key points of Pasolini’s views and thoughts. The author is in Cappadocia in June 1969 for the filming of Medea, a companion piece to his Oedipus Rex (1967), a film that is far removed from his realistic early movies. Syrimis divides Pasolini’s cinematographic career (1961-1975) into three phases which, according to the author, correspond to stylistic shifts. 6 Medea – together with Oedipus Rex (1967), Teorema (1968), and Pigsty (1969) – belongs to a second modernist phase placing Pasolini’s artistic visual production, in line with the work of Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, in the 1960s European art cinema.

Most of Pasolini’s works were found to stimulate debate, most often intense uproar; some were tarnished by the harsh critique, but it is fairly safe to say that with Medea, in particular, , Pasolini was able, by reinterpreting the theme of the myth, to convey with depth and a cunning spirit the dualistic turmoil he thought was peculiar to Western society. The plot faithfully follows the myth of Medea: it starts with Jason’s childhood with his pedagogue, Chiron The Centaur, followed by the Argonauts’ journey to find the golden fleece, by Jason and Medea’s life with their children in Corinth, by Jason’s betrayal and marriage to Glauce, the King’s daughter, and, finally, Medea’s infanticide. On one side, there is the industrialised, so called “modern” society, represented by Jason, on the other, the rural, savage and instinctual purity of the barbaric world embodied in Medea. The ideal setting to place this dichotomy is Cappadocia, a rural, historical region largely in the Nevşehir, Kayseri, Aksaray, and Niğde Provinces in Turkey, which Pasolini chose as the setting for a film of his that, not coincidentally, concentrated on Myth.

Filming started on June 1, 1969 in Uçhisar; on June 2 the crew moved to Göreme, then Çavuşin. June 7 saw the filming continue in Uçhisar, where the sequences at the temple were filmed. June 13: the works continued in the rural area around Çavuşin, where the procession and the sacrificial rite took place. On June 18 the setting was again Göreme, while the last day of work in Turkey was on June 21, in Uçhisar. 7 While embarking on this journey, Pasolini wrote some poems later collected in a volume together with the scenes and dialogues from the movie by Giacomo Gambetti in Medea. Un film di Pier Paolo Pasolini. 8

In the present paper the term “landscape”, distinguished from “space” and “place”, is conceived through Georg Simmel’s interpretation, as “a vision completed in itself, unified, in connection to the infinitely more extended, free natural totality” 9, whereby the human perception of nature makes landscape something more than just an evocative metaphor to talk about society. 10 In this broad sense, the Central Anatolian region acquires new connotations and becomes a means to an end; Cappadocia is used to criticise the homologating capitalist society Pasolini lived in. While filming Medea, Pasolini had a column “Il caos” in the weekly Tempo where on 29 March 1969 he talked about “sacrilegious transformation” indicating the sense of alienation of the presence of the West, even in a primitive area such as Cappadocia. The Western world seems to penetrate and to a certain extent compromise the natural beauty of this land where the function of the landscape is to express these ideas.

Pasolini was a firm believer in the unity of two key concepts: myth and reality. He said: “Only a realist believes in myth, and vice versa. The ‘myth’ is merely the other side of realisms.” 11 In this framework, Pasolini tries to reach the ontological mystery of things in a mystic, atmospheric land, where the new and the old meet. Interested in authors such as Frazer, Eliade, Levi Bruhl, and Mandelbaum, he approaches Cappadocia and its lunar landscape as the supreme portrayal of the visceral, irrational and instinctive barbaric world where Nature, Man and The Divine merge.

Through the elaboration of the myth, the Italian film-maker plunges into an original dimension which is conveyed in a spectacular and majestic way by filming in Cappadocia. To compensate, though, the linearity of the visual fragments, the verbal images in his poems contribute to the description of an area strictly linked to pagan rituals. Pasolini maintained: “archaic peoples, both time and ideology wise, are our contemporaries because it is obvious that nothing belonging to us is destroyed and [that] everything coexists.” 12 In this sense, Cappadocia as an open-space museum becomes simultaneously a heterotopia and a heterochrony, where time disappears: “the experience is just as much the rediscovery of time”, as Foucault said, “it is as if the entire history of humanity reaching back to its origin were accessible in a sort of immediate knowledge.” 13 This could be, in a certain sense, a “return to the origins” so longed for by many artists: a flashback to recreate a bond with Nature, felt so strongly and genuinely in a long-gone past. It is, therefore, extremely interesting to have a look at how these “origins”, this functional landscape, is depicted in Pasolini’s mind.

At the beginning of the movie, after the centaur’s monologue (prologue) – through which Pasolini declaims “All is sacred, all is sacred, all is sacred. There is nothing natural in Nature […] Yes, everything is holy but holiness is also a malediction. The Gods that love at the same time hate” 14 – the film director takes the audience to a magical, mystic landscape, the mythical Colchis, in present-day Cappadocia. Pasolini creates the entire film in a documentary-like style. The film literally glows with a large number of shots taken just before sunset. With warm nuances of beautiful gold, orange and red colours, Cappadocia is famous for its twilight hues.

The first element that strikes the attention is the sheer silence that seeps in the ruins of primitive Christianity; silence is often used in this phase of Pasolini’s artistic work. 15 The lack of sound, seemingly representing a still, lifeless nature, powerfully conveys Pasolini’s idea of the gap between the modern man and his archaic counterpart:

CENTAUR: […] for the ancient man all myths and rituals are real experiences, and part of his daily existence and his body. For him reality is an entity so perfect that the emotion he experiences, for instance, in the stillness of the summer sky is equal to the most profound personal experience of a modern man. 16

The bond with natural and mythical forces is instinctive for the primitive populations, whereas “modern man” struggles to feel this unity, as he has created infrastructures that have distanced him from his origins. The following sequences are some of what Massimo Fusillo defined as the most striking scenes of Pasolini’s production, where the sacred sacrificial ritual filmed with the inhabitants of Göreme (so basically with non-professional actors, creating a so called anthropological cinema 17), shows a land worn out by natural elements, the passing of time and the force of the Sun. The rites symbolise the restitution of the vital spirit to the Earth to obtain, in return, fertility. It is the austere Medea, played by a diva like Maria Callas (the famous singer who is made almost silent throughout the movie), who says “Give life to the seed and with it come alive again”, thereby emphasising the concept of the life-cycle.

Pasolini

Pasolini and Maria Callas during the shooting of Medea.

The sowing time, along with its rituals, is presented in Preghiere su Commissione (Prayers on Commission), written in March 1969, and is mentioned in the short poem Endoxa dated 28 April 1969.

And now God? To whom should I throw the seed over my left shoulder?
Could I dismember a death person?
And bury the pieces in the fields?
In my dreams do the dead appear to me as masks or mice?
And then, do I maybe fear that the Sun, one day or the other, will not rise again, or that the grass will not grow anymore?
Do I live in this constant anxiety?
Is the year a finished time, with its beginning and its end,
and therefore, with death and resurrection?
Has wheat any importance in my life?
Do I reckon that an orgy on the grave may help the harvest?
And as for the moon, do I find it sympathetic to the snake?

March 1969 18

Once more Pasolini marks the main concepts presented in the first few scenes at the beginning of the movie. Addressing God, the author poses a series of questions which connect common images to deeper queries related to the human existence. The references to the esoteric (the seeds over the left shoulder, masks or mice, snakes) are combined with images that recall the life cycle, life itself, death and resurrection. In this atmosphere, Pasolini conveys his uncertainties and doubts about his capacity to believe in the primitive rituals and its symbols, the Sun, Death and Resurrection. Religion and depicted symbols stand against Pasolini’s figure as a left wing intellectual.

Another of the film’s striking scenes with a relation to pagan rituals sees Medea, after the requisite preparations, being purified by running through fire to ascend to the temple. Unlike monotheistic religions where water is usually a symbol of purification, Pasolini chose fire. In this scene, the silence is interrupted by Medea’s scream, a powerful inner scream representing the rituality and forces of paganism.

Connected to Fire is definitely the Sun, omnipresent in the Cappadocia of the movie. The Sun, in its anthropomorphic description, becomes Authority.

There is somebody that had the authority of the sun.
Rather, the sun has foreshadowed all possible authorities.
It provides great fleeting joys
Then comes the moment when the good times end and one has
to get one’s head together and behave. The world, let everyone know,
is not a pleasant place.
Great importance is given to time.
Therefore there is no bureaucracy that is not originated from the sun.
When the Ministers go back home to watch television
or to religiously shit
rumour has it that it is fatal (the Sunset).
The frown of the Superiors is the look given by the sun,
turning its back, to the other side of the sky:
where important things indeed happen.
Poor Kayseri region, with its generous sun that goes away.

June 1969. 19

In his sometimes hermetic poems, Pasolini contrives to create a sense of confusion in the readers’ minds: is this the supreme authority or is this an authority related to the artificial, pre-structured modern world, a creation of the human mind?

The rituals in Endoxa, which are defined as “catalitici” – the adjective catalytic is used five times in the space of 21 lines, and – emphasise the sacred-profane duality:

[It is] A redundant work but not based on the endoxa
Redundant in itself; without Functions and Clues,
catalytic, catalytic,
the suspense is obtained through long excursus
– a description of rites
Alternated with a backwards religious education,
in its phenomena (phenomenology without purpose!)
non-functional or circumstantial, inherent,
but stolidly catalytic, catalytic
– then a conversion of our inner double (coexisting)
of what was (sacred) and what is (profane);
all these things, clearly redundant;
but: the PARALLEL MONTAGE and the pre-existing schema in the ENDOXA
(which, innocent, include even the structures)…
Two moments, catalytic per se, alternating,
cast, one over the other, functionality and circumstantiality.
I am neither Christ nor Fleming,
as it always happens in the human mind thinking continually germinates…

28 April 1969. 20

The last line is a reference to Canto V of Dante’s Purgatory, to Virgil’s reprimand inviting Dante to be a “sturdy tower” against the blowing winds. 21 In the poem Pasolini talks about a “backward religious education”; it recalls, as also noted by Stefania Benini 22, one of the most noteworthy moments in the film, which can be considered a key interpretation of Pasolini’s vision of the sacred. The aforementioned duality is embodied in the two centaurs – one representing the myth with equine body and legs, the other in human features representing modernity – and in the couple Medea/Jason:

JASON: Is this a vision?

CENTAUR: If it is, it is you who creates it. The two of us, we are actually inside of you.

JASON: But I knew only one Centaur…

CENTAUR: No, you knew two: a sacred one when you were a child and a profane one when you became an adult. But what is sacred is preserved next to its new profane form. And here we are, one next to the other!

JASON: But what is the function of the old Centaur, the one I knew as a child and that you, New Centaur, have replaced, if I understand well, not by making him vanish but joining with him?

CENTAUR: He does not talk, obviously, because his logic is so different from ours that we could not understand… But I can speak also for him. It is under this influence that you – outside your planning and your understanding – in reality love Medea.

JASON: I love Medea?

CENTAUR: Yes. And you also pity her, and you understand her… spiritual catastrophe…her disorientation as an ancient woman in a world that no longer believes in anything she has always believed in … the poor soul has had a backward conversion, and she has never recovered. 23

Medea is subject to a “spiritual catastrophe”, the result of a “backward conversion” from which the female figure never recovers. Both in the brief but to-the-point verses and in the dialogue the author confirms the persistence of two systems in one that is all-encompassing. These constant binary oppositions are characteristic of the author’s wide production.

The aforementioned poems focus on the themes presented in the movie but not solely on landscape. However, a vivid description of Cappadocia emerges from the verses of The e mele, written in June 1969, where, recalling the Turkish well-rooted tea culture, Pasolini offers a remarkable example of how poetry can elevate its object and transfigure it; the valleys in their polychrome description become an expressionist portrayal the reader can vividly relate to:

Just outside the town of Nevşehir,
the colour pink and the poor ochre, that of the old wineskins
– a little opaque and deaf, also – and the humble yellowish
Brownish almost (but together with the insane yellow of the sulphur)
– I am not an art prose writer anymore…but the fact is that these colours
creep everywhere in this region of Cappadocia:
a thousand pleasant small valleys (including the one mentioned above) with the poetic
fields (small terraces, parcels, etc.) of wheat;
vineyards not bigger than cauliflowers, countable one by one,
on clay trapezoids – between a wall
of pink pinnacles, a group of pyramids, a low wall…

June 1969 24

In this first section of the poem with a clear geographical location, “just outside the town of Nevşehir”, Pasolini describes Cappadocia emphasising the colours that take almost an active role in shaping and animating the region. The same image is conveyed by the film itself: the widespread, impregnating yellow and all its shades, typical of all deserted areas, visually strike the audience. The visual impression of the dry, solitary land is enriched by the details provided in the stanzas of his poems. In its combination of “opaque and deaf” but “insane”, the colour yellow symbolises the Sun, its light, but also energy and ultimately knowledge. There are often labyrinthine “thousand small valleys”, microcosms connected with each other by a system of openings and closures that separate and unite at the same time, recalling the separation between two worlds, the modern and the archaic but also the external and the internal. The similes play with well-known images, “vineyards not bigger than cauliflowers”; the landscape is described by following and creating a specific order. The geometrical forms frame the limitless Nature in familiar portrayals to which the reader easily relates to so that the unknown far-away becomes the known close-by. In the second part of the poem, the yellow gives way to a more vibrant green. The colour green in the colour spectrum can be found between yellow, symbol of the Earth, of Reality, but also the Sun (the Divinity) and blue, symbol of the Sky, of the Divinity and the Myth.

There are plenty of fruit trees: leafy
so small and pure to bring tears to the eyes –
there in the middle, randomly. Alone with their shadow.
Green of a heavenly gloom whether apple or cherry trees,
which, however, are sparse; while almonds and pistachios are abundant,
and some olive trees with thorns. They are often in a row
against a terrace opening on the thebaids
so in solidarity with the weak blazing sun: a green
of the almond tree, a green of the apple tree with grey-green tufts
(like smoke turned to stone) of those olive trees:
and on the right and on the left the pink ivories of the cones
(which in hundreds crowd into jewellers
and plissé furious of another pink,
more subtle and mysterious, against the side of a cut-off mount).

June 1969. 25

The fruit trees are “so small and pure to bring tears to the eyes”, “green of a heavenly gloom”. Green represents Nature, the love for all that is regulated by the universal natural law, something that exists in time and, thus, it can be a metaphorical representation of the respect for traditions as it symbolises perseverance and a higher level of knowledge. In this balanced and harmonic world, Pasolini provides details that enrich the verbal canvas, “apple, cherry, almond, pistachio, olive trees”; the natural formation meets the man-made elements, “jewellers and plissé” not coincidentally “furious”, in Pasolini’s similes. Another colour then is added to the picture, pink, which generally encompasses the idea of giving and receiving love, passion and vitality. It conveys the individual’s ability to open up toward others in a constant exchange, as was done in the “thousand small valleys” before. A static hint is given to the canvas where “grey-green tufts” are “smoke turned into stone” together with the cones “against the side of a cut-off mount”, against a mountain that is incomplete. The adjectives “opaque, deaf and insane” are substituted by “weak, subtle and mysterious” in the oxymoron “heavenly gloom”. The landscape is categorised and put in relation to earthly and heavenly dimensions. Cappadocia represents a world that is being glorified as it is located in a different dimension of time and space, but it is violated by Jason’s colonialist assault. With his pragmatic approach, Jason disturbs the natural balance; the theft of the Golden Fleece indicates how modernity has the power to disrupt and modify the natural course of things. Jason, and thus (metaphorically) Modernity, is obsessed by the symbol of authority and kingship.

Pasolini

Pasolini in Cappadocia

In conclusion, there is a strong relation between the landscape presented in the film and that of the poems. The verbal and visual images become the representation of a whole much more complete as the two forms of art become complementary and inseparable. On the one hand, in both the film and the poems, Cappadocia is a dry land burnt by the Sun, where pagan rituals take place. These ceremonies are connected to a primitive society based mainly on agriculture which is strongly bound to the Earth. But, because of its beliefs, it is also connected to magic. On the other hand, the Turkish region and its lunar, magical, primitive landscape becomes the epitome of a dualistic complementarity and an instrument for asserting Pasolini’s rejection of contemporary society.

 

Endnotes

  1. Medea (1969): Directed and written by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Story: adapted from Euripides. Starring: Maria Callas as Medea. Cast: Giuseppe Gentile (Jason), Luigi Barbini (Argonaut), Annamaria Chio (Wet Nurse), Margareth Clementi (Glauce), Massimo Girotti (Creon), Laurent Terzieff (Chiron), Sergio Tramonti (Apsirto). Music by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Elsa Morante. Cinematography: Ennio Guarnieri. Edited by: Nino Baragli. Release date: 1969. Running time: 110 minutes. Country: Italy, France, West Germany. Language: Italian. Synchronisation: Rita Savagnone (Medea), Pino Colizzi (Jason), Enrico Maria Salerno (Chiron).
  2. Claretta Micheletti Tonetti, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Women of Stone, (May 2009) http://people.bu.edu/vivo/womenofstone.html.
  3. “Doğal Plato Kapadokya”, Sabah Cinema (February 25, 2011), http://www.sabah.com.tr/sinema/2011/02/25/dogal_plato_kapadokya.
  4. Guido Nicolosi, “Cinema di Poesia” in Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pagine Corsare, http://www.pasolini.net/cinema_poesia.htm.
  5. Michael Syrimis, “Pasolini’s Erotic Gaze from Medea to Salò”, Italica, 89:4 (2012), p. 515.
  6. Syrimis, pp. 510-12.
  7. Fabio Francione (ed.), Pasolini sconosciuto. Interviste, scritti, testimonianze (Alessandria: Edizioni Falsopiano, 2013), p. 243.
  8. Giacomo Gambetti, Medea: Un film di Pier Paolo Pasolini (Roma: Garzanti, 1970).
  9. Paolo D’Angelo, Estetica e paesaggio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009), pp. 3-4 (own translation).
  10. Monica Sassatelli, Georg Simmel: Saggi sul Paesaggio (Roma: Armando editore, 2006).
  11. David Ballerini, Edipo Re e Medea di Pier Paolo Pasolini: il mito, visione e storia di due sfortune (Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2013), p. 25 (own translation).
  12. Ballerini, Edipo Re, op. cit., p. 30.
  13. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”, trans. Jay Miscowiec, Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986), p. 26.
  14. Scene 7 in the screenplay, in Gambetti, Medea, op. cit., pp. 92-93 (own translation).
  15. Massimo Fusillo, La Grecia secondo Pasolini. Mito e Cinema (Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1996), p. 122.
  16. Scene 11 in the screenplay in Gambetti, Medea, p. 93 (own translation).
  17. Fusillo, La Grecia, p. 158.
  18. Gambetti, Medea, op. cit., p. 113 (own translation). (“Dio e adesso? A chi getto i semi oltre la mia spalla sinistra? // Posso smembrare un morto // E seppellire i pezzi nei campi? // In sogno i morti mi appaiono come maschere o topi? // E poi, ho forse il terrore che il Sole, un giorno o l’altro, // non risorga, oppure che l’erba non cresca più? //Vivo in questa continua ansia? // L’anno è un tempo concluso, con il suo principio e la sua fine, // e dunque, con una morte e una resurrezione? // I grano ha qualche importanza nella mia vita? // Penso che un’orgia sulla tomba aiuti il raccolto? // E quanto alla luna, la trovo solitale col serpente? // marzo 1969.”)
  19. Ibid., p. 124 (own translation). (– C’è qualcuno che ha l’autorità del sole. // – Anzi, il sole ha prefigurato tutte le possibili autorità. // – Concede grandi gioie passeggere // poi viene il momento che la bazza finisce e bisogna // mettere la testa a posto e rigar dritti. Il mondo, lo si sappia, // non è luogo ameno. // – Grande importanza vi hanno gli orari. // – Non c’è perciò burocrazia che non abbia origine dal sole. // Quando i Ministri rincasano a vedere la televisione //o a cacare religiosamente // lasciano credere che ciò sia fatale (il Tramonto). // Il cipiglio dei Superiori è lo sguardo che rivolge il sole, // voltandoci le spalle, all’altra volta del cielo: dove sì che succedono cose importanti. // Povera regione di Kayseri, col suo sole generoso che se ne va. // giugno 1969.”)
  20. Ibid. (own translation). (“Un’opera ridondante ma non fondata sugli endoxa // Ridondante in sé; senza Funzioni e Indizi, // catalitica, catalitica, // la suspence ottenuta attraverso i lunghi excursus // – una descrizione di riti // Alternati a un’educazione religiosa alla rovescia, // nei suoi fenomeni (fenomenologia senza scopo!) // non funzionali né indiziari, insisto, // ma imperturbabilmente catalitici, catalitici // – poi una conversione del doppione che è in noi (compresente) // di ciò che fu (sacro) e ciò che è (sconsacrato); // tutte queste cose, evidentemente rindondanti; // ma: il MONTAGGIO ALTERNATO e lo schema preesistente negli ENDOXA // (che includono, innocenti, anche le strutture)… // Due momenti, di per sé catalitici, alternati, // getttano l’uno sull’altro funzionalità e indiziarietà. // Io non sono né Cristo né Fleming, // ché sempre l’uomo in cui pensier rampolla sopra pensier… // 28 aprile 1969”.)
  21. Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia. Purgatorio, (a cura di N. Sapegno, Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1991), Canto V, Line 16-19: “ché sempre l’omo in cui pensier rampolla // sovra pensier, da sé di lunga il segno, // perché la foga l’un de l’altro insolla.”
  22. Stefania Benini, Pasolini the Sacred Flesh (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), pp. 136-8.
  23. Scene 69, in the screenplay in Gambetti, Medea, p. 98 (own translation).
  24. Ibid., p. 130 (own translation). (“Appena fuori dalla città di Nevscheir, // il rosa e l’ocra povero, quello dei vecchi otri // – un po’opaco e sordo, anche – e il giallino umile // Che dà sul marrone (ma insieme al giallo pazzo dello zolfo) // – non sono più un prosatore d’arte …ma fatto sta che questi colori // si insinuano dappertutto in questa regione della Cappadocia: // mille vallette amene (tra cui quella di cui sopra) con i poetici // appezzamenti (terrazzete, piazzuole, ecc.) di grano; // vigne non più grosse di cavolfiori, numerabili a una a una, // su trapezi di argilla – tra una parete // di guglie rosa, un gruppo di piramidi, un muricciolo… // giugno 1969”.)
  25. Ibid., pp. 130-131 (own translation). (Non mancano gli alberi da frutto: che frondeggiano // così piccoli e puri da far venire le lacrime agli occhi – // là in mezzo, dove capita. Soli con la loro ombra. // Verdi di una cupezza paradisiaca se meli o ciliegi, // che però son radi; mentre abbondano i mandorli e i pistacchi, // e certi ulivi con le spine. Spesso sono in fila // contro una terrazzetta che dà sulle tebaide // così solidali col debole sole a picco: un verde // di mandorlo, un verde di melo coi ciuffi // grigioverdi (come fumo impietrito) di quegli ulivi: // e a destra e a sinistra gli avori rosa dei coni // (che a loro volta si affollano a centinaia su oreficerie // e plissées furibondi di un altro rosa, // più tenue e misterioso, contro il fianco d’un monte mozzato). // giugno 1969”.)