Tikkun olam: cumuli da una memoria materiale. Rombo di Esther Kinsky

Abstract

Whether the concept of familiarity to a place can appear in opposition to that of disorientation, some environmental and social realities tell a different story, of a domestic feeling to disturbance. With the concepts of Störung and Gestörtes Gelände, contemporary German poet and writer Esther Kinsky attempts to shed light on the creative and vital implications of disturbance and disruption within a collective understanding of the environment. This is what takes place in Rombo (2022), set in a village Friuli during and after the earthquakes that struck the region in May and September 1976. The experience of the seismic shocks creates a new level of disturbance in the human and non-human inhabitants of the region, which is now tangible in folds and piles of rubble. an accumulation due to plasticity which not only is material but also mnemonic. The article aims to analyse the topics of domesticity, disorientation and Störung with reference to the form of the fold, which recurs in Kinsky’s descriptions of the landscape as well as in the experiences of the Friulan inhabitants in the novel Rombo.