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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.
M'inebbriai di sguardi fuggitivi,
rapidi come il balenio di fiamma
che guizza a notte per i cieli estivi.
Conobbi dentro ignoti occhi la gamma
torbida della muta cupidigia,
che ravvolge ne' suoi vortici il dramma.
V'opposi un mio disdegno d'alterigia,
godendo di passar fra la schermaglia
senza recarne su di me vestigia.
Ma pur conobbi l'attimo che abbaglia,
colsi a volo la lucida scintilla
che scatta in fondo a un ciglio, come scaglia
d'oro, e in un altro sguardo risfavilla.