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The collection gathers lyrical sequences and sonnets in a confessional voice that probes modern female identity, desire, and social performance. One extended autobiographical sequence composed of many thirteen-line terzine reads like a novel without plot, tracing appetite, flirtation, indifference, and the exhilaration of urban fashion and nightlife; other poems, including more compact sonnets, record earlier romantic suffering and youthful passions. The speaker juxtaposes classical female archetypes with a contemporary Parisian model to explore ambivalence toward love, liberty, and reputation, using vivid sensory detail, psychological introspection, and recurring images of gaze, costume, jealousy, and theatricalized seduction.
Mortificai la mia anima schiava,
ma sotto cruda sferza di sarcasmi
l'incatenata più s'umilïava,
più inseguiva per vane ombre fantasmi
dolci d'amore, come chi per sete
succosi frutti col desio si plasmi.
E fatta a me nemica, con inquete
pupille e voce roca e gesto asprigno
snudavo l'ansie e le viltà segrete.
Freddo disdegno chiuso in freddo ghigno
m'oppose: — Donde vieni? E chi sei tu?
Ed io invocai gemendo quel benigno
sonno per cui non v'ha risveglio più.