Poètes pour Haïti. La parola che ricostruice

Versuche einer metaphorischen Bewältigung der Erdbebenkatastrophen von Haiti und den Abruzzen

Abstract

In 2009 and 2010, two major earthquakes in Haiti and Italia shocked the whole world. The trauma suffered by the victims, but also the worldwide dismay, was reflected in the production and publication of poems about the earthquakes. In the case of Haiti, a volume of poetry was offered on the internet in return for a donation to an aid organization. In Italy, the Edizioni Tracce and the Associazione Poeti Abruzzesi published a collection of poems. In these texts, which were written by residents of the area, but also by those who were not directly involved in the disaster, there are various patterns of interpretation for what happened, which can be interpreted as an attempt to make what has been suffered understandable. In the present contribution, an analysis of the manifesting metaphorical concepts is intended to deal with recurrent perspectives with the aim of developing both typical and culture- or countryspecific (linguistic) conceptualisations for disasters in general and earthquakes in particular, but also hypotheses about the purpose to generate this pattern of interpretation.