Scratching the 900 ... a scratch in closed shells 
Until recently, Irene Marcionetti I was totally unknown. It took a few words of
Alda Bernasconi, publisher of "Scratching the 900" words of enthusiasm and pride a bit 'like those spoken by a godmother against his ward recently born to convince me to buy Persian-volume edited by Michael Bell, the grandson of Irene.
My purchase was in part prompted by the fact that a very short time I had finished reading "A Journey Called Love" (Letters 1916-1918 of Dino Campana and Sibilla): discovery, knowledge, passion, closeness and distance, fleeting encounters and intense. Abandonment. And of new love in its true meaning, where the passion surrounds so strongly not to grant more freedom, so upset by having to think about death, however, firmly alive in a whirlwind of emotions.
I wondered, then, if the correspondence between Irene and Sibilla Marcionetti, which I knew to be quoted in "Scratching the 900, there was still a trace of that passion burning.
And instead I discovered other types of passion: that of Irene to write yes, "his children" also, but especially for her being a woman. A
Irene same passion perhaps unconscious, but which today, in reading of graffiti the 900 "appeared to me so clear and poignant, a kind of reflex forced and compulsory for new generations of women who today are no longer able to fully enjoy what other women in the past have been fighting hard.
I devoured the book, eagerly following every step meetings that Irene has done, with the blind woman, with elements of the landscape of Ticino and the nights by the lake, with that officer in the French never will know the name but above all the meetings of Irene with itself, so intense and intimate as in the poem "Motherhood" or better as she previously held "Desire motherhood. "
as well as through his words, simple, clear, descriptive, so through his artwork, oil paintings and drawings collected in the appendix to the book, Irene was able to capture scents, colors, breath of spring wind and of winter frost, emotions and feelings live forever.
"Irene Read, read his articles, read his poetry!" Is what I recommend to all those women oh, there are still some that are surrounded inside a shell often built by other means, but too often by themselves healed and strengthened in the conviction of not being able to live without it. A guscio che isola, che comprime e mortifica impedendo di prendere consapevolezza del potenziale e della forza di ogni donna.
Benché Irene Marcionetti abbia vissuto apparentemente isolata e sola, nella “Casa Rossa”, nei boschi, in riva al lago, tra i mandorli e i ciliegi in fiore, ha saputo espandere sé stessa, attraverso le sue preziose parole, accrescendo il suo essere donna del 900 donna con i capelli corti alla garçonne, con i pantaloni e la bicicletta, donna che arricchisce il suo sapere in scuole fino a quel momento aperte solo ai maschi, donna straordinariamente donna e accrescendo oggi, permettendo a noi di leggere “Graffiando il 900”, il nostro essere donne del terzo millennio.
Thanks! Many thanks to Michael Persico, who has collected in a thin thread of a life spanning a century writings of Irene, to the poem full of "cosmic joy, light and floating, written in 2003, just for his niece, with knowledge that would be read after his death: "And then ..."
