Pierrot, Harlequin, Columbine and Cassandro come to life, through the pen of Belgian author Albert Giraud, becoming the protagonists of situations ranging from the lyrical to the aberrant, set in a world where everything is artistically permissible. Dominating the scene, however, is always him, Pierrot, with his madness, his irony, his sadism and that deep melancholic vein that never abandons him. Pierrot as a mask but also, and above all, as the personification of the poet’s torment in search of the right words to express himself.
Albert Giraud, best known for the musical version of Pierrot Lunaire, which the composer Arnold Schönberg drew at the beginning of the 20th century from his work of the same name, transports the reader into his poetic and mental universe, to enthrall and unsettle him with unusual lexical choices and images verging on the visionary.
This volume collects the fifty poems of Pierrot Lunaire and the play that is its sequel, Pierrot Narcisse. The detailed introduction, the articles by Italian and foreign critics and the Appendix – in which, in addition to the textual version of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, a number of in-depth articles can be found – highlight the importance of the famous author’s work, which is still little known in Italy.
(edited by Annamaria Martinolli. The book is in Italian language)