My adaptation of comics of a poem by the Italian poet Vincenzo Mascolo. The poem represents a section of a long poetic cycle (still in progress) titled “Orphée,” which is in turn inspired  by the modern classical album of the same name by the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. Besides the classical myth of Orpheus, the passage I illustrated alludes to T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the “Ville radieuse” project of Le Corbusier, the three Italian Renaissance paintings of “The Ideal City,” Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and Dante’s Inferno (and possibly others that I didn’t pick up on!). All in a few short lines. (Scroll down to the end for an English translation)

THE RADIANT CITY

Often
we would go
through the streets
soaked
in the sewage
of the night
to seek
in the
construction site
over the border
the remains
of the ideal city
Le Corbusier’s
sketches
the detritus
of the common good
liberty
democracy
Marco Polo’s
journey
to reach
Tecla
its
starry
night’s project
that the darkness
of the underworld
conceals from you

(Based on a translation-in-progress by John Morre and Giorgia Sensi)