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Il canto dell’amore

Feeling, memory and hope

Reading guide · website editors

Feeling, memory and hope

Giancarlo Ferrario guides readers through desires, fears and memories, showing how love in the collection involves a broader vision of humanity. The Egypt evoked in his reading is more than a backdrop: colours and scents become part of poetic memory. The review in Il Resegone instead draws attention to the dialogue with the Song of Songs and the presence of women. The movement from disorientation towards hope offers a thread connecting the two contributions.

These texts come from the author’s archive and include the available attributions and references. Short press extracts appear at their preserved length. Editorial readings are distinguished from signed contributions. English and Arabic versions translate the Italian texts collected here; external documents and scans retain their original language.

Archival text

A look into the universe of love

A journey around humanity, its feelings, memory and hope.

Translation of the Italian text held in the archive; not an original English contribution by the named author.

His exploration of the meaning of love itself is a full-circle journey around humanity, examined through its noblest feelings but also judged in its basest instincts and deeds. The poetry he offers is simple. Like the figures of a magic lantern, his images parade the desires, emotions and fears hidden in every adult. An adult, yes, but at times longing to become a child again, to recover that lost innocence capable of redeeming humanity's malice and selfishness.

Even for a layman, as I know myself to be in the metaphysical realm of verse, this reading is both pleasant and moving. It compels the reader to enter an almost unknown dimension. We must not forget this poet's origins: Egypt, his homeland, the poignant memory of distant colours and intoxicating scents. The sense of belonging to the earth, to woman as a presence of grace and sensuality, revealed or glimpsed through those veils that were Herod's undoing before Salome's dance.

The poet's maturity emerges in passages where surrender to a universe now adrift seems to prevail over everything; yet a moment later hope returns, summoned by the verse itself. In the end the singer makes peace with his own being and finds the strength to go on living.

Giancarlo Ferrario Editor of Il Giornale di Lecco

Source recorded in the archive: Historical Ghonim.com archive

Consult the source
In this dossier

Archival text

A rich, intense conversation filled with feeling

A brief reading of the collection through love, womanhood and the Song of Songs.

Translation of the Italian text held in the archive; not an original English contribution by the named author.

“Il canto dell'amore is a dense, intense conversation, rich in feeling, that in some verses seems inspired by the words of the biblical Song of Songs. The collection continues with other poems devoted to love and ends with a series of lyrics about women.”

Il Resegone, 28 November 1997

Source recorded in the archive: Historical Ghonim.com archive

Consult the source
In this dossier