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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.
Ella m'è ignota, anche la sua effigie
m'è ignota, ma la imagino felina
nei gesti lenti e nelle iridi grigie.
Forse per via già mi passò vicina,
e in quel momento mi percorse diaccia
del brivido la scossa repentina.
Talor la vedo dietro la tua faccia,
la spìo ne' tuoi occhi e nel tuo riso,
sento la forma sua fra le tue braccia.
Allora su l'enigma del tuo viso
sfogo in carezze un'ira vïolenta,
fin che certa non sia d'avervi ucciso
quella parvenza sua che mi tormenta.