Casa

This essay explores the theme of the home in the poetical work of Eugenio De Signoribus, considering it both in its structural dimension and in its diachronic development, and comparing it with other important themes regarding the representation of the domestic space (threshold, border, alienation, the host and the stranger, fraternity and utopia). A first part lingers over the thematization of the home in 20th-century philosophy, from Heidegger’s conception of enracinement to Adorno’s claim about the impossibility of dwelling. Then, the main theme is investigated through the poetical writings of De Signoribus book after book, with a particular focus on the dialectical tension between openness and closure of the subject, that is partly autobiographical and partly allegorical. The condition of the subject himself is interpreted from a psychic (the boundaries of a house as a second skin), existential and socio-historical point of view. The fundamental question can be posed in this way: in order to reach an absolute hospitality (as Derrida put it), is it possible to start from the recognition of an identity or is it necessary to renounce to any mastery and to the ontologically founded property of an identity?