(By Giuliano Scala, Aix Marseille Université)
Piero Ciampi was born in Livorno on September 28, 1934 into a modest family, as the son of a leather merchant. He is remembered today as a unique figure in the Italian music scene: a poet, a rebel, a light and tormented soul. His intense and at times dramatic life has turned him into an icon, celebrated since 1995 with the Ciampi-Città di Livorno award, which is dedicated to unpublished songs.
From a young age, Piero showed a great interest in music, starting with the double bass. His path was not linear, however: he began a degree in engineering, but soon abandoned university to follow his true artistic vocation. Music, and everything it represented, became his world. A crucial moment in his life came during his military service in Pesaro where he met the composer Gianfranco Reverberi, who recognized in his unvarnished talent and helped him find his way in the complex universe of music. Shortly after, Ciampi decided to leave for Paris, with nothing more than big hopes. The Paris of the 1950s and 1960s was the beating heart of art and culture, and here Ciampi had the opportunity to meet personalities such as the writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline and to find inspiration in songs by Georges Brassens. In the Parisian cabarets he tried his hand as a singer in the sentimental vein, making his public debut as “Piero l’italiano,” the title of his first album (but without the apostrophe: Piero Litaliano, 1963). However, broad public recognition never really followed, and the young singer-songwriter had to struggle with the challenges of life as an artist in search of affirmation. When he returned to Italy, he managed to sign with a record company, but despite the contracts and the albums he released, great commercial success always eluded him. Ciampi remained a niche artist, appreciated by those who knew how to grasp the depth of his words and the intensity of his performances. His songs—often constructed as monologues, intimate confessions and ruminations imbued with existentialism—explore themes of disillusionment, loneliness and bitterness. Ciampi was a narrator of the most tormented feelings, especially those related to human relationships, as demonstrated by the song “Te lo faccio vedere chi sono io” (“I’ll show you who I am”), from Io e te abbiamo perso la bussola (You and I Lost Control,1973):
E che sono quei cenci che hai addosso?!
Ma che è, ma fammi capire…
Ma senti, ma io, ma come!
Tu sei, sei la mia…
e stiamo in questa stamberga coi cenci addosso!
Ma io adesso esco, sai che cosa faccio?
Ma io ti porto, una pelliccia, di leone,
con l’innesto di una tigre.
Te lo faccio vedere chi sono io!
Senti, intanto però c’è un problema:
siccome devo uscire,
mi puoi dare mille lire per il tassì,
in modo che arrivo più in fretta
a risolvere questo problema volgare che abbiamo?
(And what are those rags you’re wearing?!
What is this, let me understand…
Listen, I… but how!
You are, you are my…
and we’re in this dump wearing rags!
Hey, I’m going out, you know what I’ll do?
I’ll bring you a coat made of lion fur…
with a tiger grafted on.
I’ll show you who I am!
Listen, in the meantime, though, there’s a problem:
since I have to go out…
can you give me a thousand liras for the cab,
so that I can get there faster
to solve this tawdry problem we have?)
As already mentioned, the general public of the period, eager for lighter and more sentimental songs, was not particularly enthusiastic about his raw and direct style. Despite this, Ciampi offered a few surprises with songs like “Va” (“She Goes”) from Dentro e fuori (Inside and Out,RCA Italiana, TCL2 1184, 1976), which is all about love:
Io tra miliardi di sguardi
che si inseguono in terra
ho scelto proprio il tuo
e ora tra miliardi di vite
mi divido con te
(I, among the billions of glances
that chase each other on earth,
have chosen yours,
and now among billions of lives,
I share mine with you)
More than four decades after his death, Piero Ciampi is celebrated as one of the greatest Italian singer-songwriters, alongside giants such as De André, Guccini, Gaber and Lolli. What makes him unique is not only his ability to treat existential themes with depth and irony, but also his talent for transforming every word into music. There is an innate musicality in his verses, something that goes beyond simple sound accompaniment and approaches a form of poetry in which melody and text merge into a harmonious whole.
Ciampi does not limit himself to telling stories or describing emotions, but creates a mysterious and profound link between the visible and the invisible, between everyday objects and human emotions, evoking Charles Baudelaire’s notion of correspondances. Like the French poet, Ciampi also seems to perceive the world as a set of hidden symbols, where every element of the external landscape reflects a movement of the soul. The rain, the dust, the silence, the train stations: these are not merely details in his lyrics, but instead become true mirrors of human feeling, capable of reflecting a profound existential solitude and a continuous search for meaning. His songs, in this sense, are true dialogues between the interiority of human beings and the external world, resonances that elicit a sort of cosmic melancholy, where humans appear as a solitary travelers, lost on the roads of life. Like Baudelaire, Ciampi manages to weave a poetic universe in which the material world becomes a reflection of human malaise, and his songs are transformed into correspondences between humanity and its destiny, between the soul and the reality that surrounds it. Milanese poet Maurizio Cucchi was able to capture this complexity within Ciampi’s works. In 1985 he wrote:
I have always thought that what matters is the work and that, whether we like it or not, lives are suffocated, too often painfully, by the ephemeral and the private. But for Ciampi the situation is different: like someone who is no longer able to distinguish reality from dreams and mixes the images together, for me he has essentially erased the boundaries between singing and writing and the anxieties and challenges of an intense existence, continually sucked back in, emaciated.
Piero Ciampi’s songs and poems possess a profoundly human and spontaneous quality, almost as if they were notes written on a loose sheet of paper, destined to be lost in the wind. Every line, every creative gesture seems to escape the logic of professional perfectionism, and yet it manages to achieve an arid and stringent completeness, similar to a microdrama in verse. Ciampi wounds us because he himself feels pain; his laughter is imbued with a bitter fatalism, a laughter that belongs only to those who know how to see the world with the eyes of a poet. His figure moves in balance between affliction and lightness, between anguish and a poignant delicacy. Piero Ciampi is a heroically unarmed fighter, someone who fights without defenses, but with a strength of spirit that makes him unique. He is a poet not only for his ability to probe the darkest depths of perception and memory, but also for his ability to sing about his Livorno, the town that shaped him and which resonates in every note, in every verse. In his lyrics, a sharp and original description of his existential unease emerges: an unease that is reflected in the forgotten places of the mind, in moments of solitude, in fragments of life that seem suspended between memory and oblivion.
Io non posso più andare
tra i sorrisi della gente
né chiedere alle cose un posto in mezzo a loro
(I can no longer move
among the smiles of the people
nor ask things for a place among them)
(“L’ultima volta che la vidi” [“The last time that I saw her”], L’ultima volta che la vidi/Quando il voto si leva [as Piero Litaliano], 1961, Bluebell, BB 03056)
Or again:
Col viso tra le mani
come una volta
sono solo con la pioggia
che bagna le mie lacrime.
(With my face in my hands,
like I used to be,
I am alone with the rain
that wets my tears.)
(“La polvere si alza” [“The dust rises”], Piero Litaliano [as Piero Litaliano], 1963, CGD, FG 5007.)
Piero Ciampi also reveals himself to be an acute observer of the social transformations of Italy during his time. He captures the essence of an Italy in the midst of change, with its contradictions and its race toward a modernity that often leaves the most fragile people behind. “Andare, camminare, lavorare” (1975) is one of Piero Ciampi’s most sarcastic and biting songs, a sort of manifesto against the monotony and alienation of modern life. In this song, Ciampi describes with bitter irony the daily routine that imprisons human beings and reduces them to cogs in a larger machine with no way out. With simple but extremely effective language, Piero sketches the image of an Italy in transformation, where everyone seems to be chasing the same dream of progress, symbolically represented by the car: “La Penisola in automobile, tutti in automobile al matrimonio” (“Italy in a car, everybody driving to the wedding”). The repetitive refrain, with those three actions—going, walking, working—becomes a sort of grotesque mantra that sums up the infinite cycle of a life of travel and toil, without any real purpose. With disenchantment Ciampi observes Italy after its economic boom, unmasking the hypocrisy and the empty race towards often meaningless success. His voice, as always, is scathing and almost irritated, as if tired of watching everyone participate in this absurd comedy without ever questioning it. Piero Ciampi does not merely criticize, but stages a profound reflection on the human condition and the inability to escape the social dynamics that imprison us. “Andare, camminare, lavorare” is not just a song; it is an ironic howl against the loss of authenticity, a denunciation of modern life that seems to suffocate every vital impulse:
Nutriamo il lavoro, alé!
Gli agnelli a pascolare con le capre
fra i nitriti dei cavalli
(Let’s feed the work, olé!
The lambs grazing with the goats
amid the neighing of the horses)
Ciampi plays skillfully with language, creating an image that, in addition to its pastoral and grotesque connotation, (thinly) veils a subtle and critical reference to the Agnelli family, a symbol of the economic and industrial power of Italy in that time. The use of the word “agnelli” (lambs) does not seem accidental: it brings to mind the dominant figure of lawyer Gianni Agnelli and his family, owners of Fiat and an emblem of Italian capitalism. The “lambs” and the “goats” grazing together evoke an ironic image of the working masses led like a flock towards a destiny imposed by the elite, with the horses — symbol of strength and power — neighing in the background, watched over by the shepherds, a metaphor for social control. Ciampi, with his caustic style, denounces the subordination of the working classes to the will of the big industrialists, painting a scene in which work is nothing more than a form of exploitation disguised as normality. The call to the “azzurri, azzurri, attaccare attaccare” (“blues [Italians], attack, attack!”), perhaps an echo of the typical phrases of encouragement from the world of sports and/or the military, is transformed here into a cynical invitation to continue blindly, without fear, as if the fight for survival were part of the social game. Ciampi’s sarcasm then explodes in the call for frenetic and senseless activity: “attaccatevi a calci nel sedere” (“kick yourselves in the ass”), an expression that demolishes the apparent dynamism of modern life, reducing it to a ridiculous race towards nothingness. The vision of a Sunday spent “pedaling” on the Pordoi — an Alpine pass in the Dolomites — becomes the emblem of collective alienation, where even free time is consumed in a useless and repetitive effort, while work, pedaling and partying mix in an endless cycle. With a biting irony, Ciampi closes the stanza with “tanti tanti tanti tanti auguri agli sposi!” (“many many many many best wishes to the newlyweds!”), a wish that sounds almost empty, repeated mechanically like a social ritual that has lost its true meaning. The song’s ending accentuates the contrast between the expectations of ordinary life and the harsh reality of an existence that seems increasingly like a theater of the absurd, where roles are assigned and individuals are trapped in a pre-established script.
“La Penisola al volante, questa bella penisola è diventata un volante” (“The Peninsula at the wheel, this beautiful peninsula has become a steering wheel”) summarizes with bitter irony the transformation of Italy from an agrarian country to an industrialized country dominated by modernity, which the automobile symbolizes: here we are at the end of Italy’s economic boom, and the features of the “beautiful peninsula” seem to have changed radically. The “beautiful peninsula,” an affectionate and almost nostalgic reference to Italy, is reduced to a simple “steering wheel,” a symbol of technological progress that removes beauty, authenticity and humanity from the country. Rapid economic and industrial development has reduced the nation to a mere moving machine, in which cultural identity and traditional values are overwhelmed by the race for consumerism and efficiency. The “steering wheel” in fact represents the mechanical control that has taken over people’s lives, enslaving them to the logic of speed and productivity. In this sense, the image of the Peninsula transformed into a steering wheel is a powerful metaphor for modern alienation: Italy is no longer a place of poetry and natural beauty, but a land driven by the frenzy of endless movement, where “go, walk, work” becomes an endlessly repeated mantra, devoid of real meaning and purpose. The verse criticizes the illusion of progress, revealing the emptiness that lies behind apparent economic well-being.
Ciampi’s unconventional lifestyle and rebellious attitude relegated him to the margins of the mainstream music scene, unable to adapt to the mechanisms of commercial success. Hostile to fame and the compromises it required, Ciampi condemned himself to an existence of poverty and artistic ostracism. Yet, this choice to remain faithful to his vision makes him an authentic artist, without filters, capable of overwhelming the listener with his hoarse, raw and unmistakable voice, which seems to reveal truths hidden beneath the surface.
His personal life reflects the same isolation that permeates his music. A man of few friends, he was often abandoned by those closest to him. Even his mother left him at a young age, and his two companions, Moira and Gabriella, were unable to remain at his side. His poems, fragmentary and incisive, seem to have been written between fumes of brown tobacco and alcohol, instruments that accompanied his inner torment. They are a reflection of a restless soul, perpetually searching for something that always seems to escape him. “Adius” is perhaps the song that best captures Piero Ciampi’s character: fierce, bitter, but profoundly human. In this song, the title’s “farewell” is not just a melancholic detachment, but an explosion of restrained anger, disillusionment and frustration. From the first notes, you can tell that this is not the classic sweet and resigned farewell, but a farewell full of tension, in which Ciampi alternates moments of suffering with peaks of bitter irony. The refrain itself, with its famous and cutting “ma vaffanculo!” (“fuck you!”), is the perfect expression of this dualism. Ciampi takes his leave, but he does so without hiding his anger, as if that “fuck you” were the only way to say goodbye with sincerity, without hypocrisy. His words are direct, raw, yet imbued with poetic depth. In “Adius,” the farewell becomes an act of liberation, a self-assertion, as if that extreme gesture were the only way to find some form of dignity in the midst of internal chaos. When he sings “Ma non sono io, sono gli altri. E così… vuoi stare vicina, no?” (“But it’s not me, it’s the others. And so… You want to stay close, no?”), Ciampi’s voice is almost strangled, as if every word is an effort, but then it finally explodes in that “fuck you!”, breaking the tension, freeing him from the heaviness of a feeling that has become unbearable. The song is a perfect reflection of his poetics: a mixture of pain, irony and diffidence, where farewell is not only an end, but an act of rebellion against destiny, life, and perhaps even against himself.
During his short but intense career, Piero Ciampi released four studio albums, two live albums and sixteen singles, leaving behind an indelible mark on Italian music. But Ciampi did not limit himself to music alone: his poetic streak led him to write 235 poems, collected in posthumous volumes such as Canzoni e poesie (Songs and poems)and Ho solo la faccia di un uomo (I have but the face of a man). In these compositions, Ciampi offers a unique window into his vision of the world, often dark and complex, but always imbued with a profound truth. His end reflects the solitude that had always permeated his art. He died on January 19, 1980 at just 45 years old, in a corridor of the Umberto I hospital in Rome, consumed by esophageal cancer. At his side as he took his last breath were his doctor and his friend, the singer-songwriter Mimmo Locasciulli, who years later would pay homage to him by recording one of his most poignant songs, “Tu no” (“Not you”). Ciampi’s words, often broken and then reconstructed with almost surgical precision, seek to capture the complexity of human existence. In one of his most famous verses, he defined the figure of the poet as “un’elegantissima anima che va a cena sulle stelle” (“an elegant soul who dines on the stars”), a description that seems to portray himself, always suspended between poetry and self-destruction. This is the paradox of his existence: a refined and tormented soul, in constant struggle with himself, finding in poetry and music a way to express the malaise that never left his side:
Quanta gente
d’intorno
che non ci ama.
Gianni
quanta gente
che ci ama
e non può raggiungerci
(How many people
around
who do not love us.
Gianni
how many people
who love us
and cannot reach us)
(From a letter written by Piero Ciampi to Gianni Marchetti in De Angelis, Enrico, Piero Ciampi. Tutta l’opera, Milan, Arcana, 1992, p. 14)
Bibliography
De Angelis, Enrico, Piero Ciampi. Canzoni e poesie, Roma/Sanremo. Lato Side, 1980
De Angelis, Enrico, Piero Ciampi. Tutta l’opera, Milano, Arcana, 1992.
De Angelis, Enrico, Marcheselli, Ugo, Piero Ciampi. Discografia illustrata, Roma, Coniglio Editore, 2008.
De Grassi, Giuseppe Maledetti amici. Cronache di vita, amore e canzoni d’intorno a Piero Ciampi, Roma, Rai Eri , 2001.
De Grassi, Giuseppe, [a cura di], Ho solo la faccia di un uomo, GET, 1985.
Deregibus, Enrico, [a cura di], Dizionario completo della canzone italiana, Firenze, Giunti, 2006, ad vocem.
Gentile, Enzo, Lontani dagli occhi. Vita, sorte e miracoli di artisti esemplari, Laurana Editore, 2015; capitolo Una vita come un romanzo, pagg. 59-83
Marchetti, Gianni, Il mio Piero Ciampi. Pagine di un incontro, Roma, Coniglio Editore, 2010.
Reverberi, Gian Franco, La testa nel secchio. Tenco, Paoli, Lauzi, Ciampi, Dalla. Le mie «figiuate» in compagnia dei cantautori, Guidonia, Roma, Iacobelli editore, 2017.
Ripepi, Eugenio, La canzone teatrale di Piero Ciampi. Congetture e conversazioni sul poeta cantautore livornese, 2015, Zem Edizioni.
Scerman, Gisela, Piero Ciampi, una vita a precipizio. Il cantautore livornese raccontato dagli amici, Roma, Coniglio Editore, 2005.
Scerman, Gisela Piero Ciampi. Maledetto poeta, Roma, Arcana Edizioni, 2012. Testani, Gianluca [a cura di], Enciclopedia del rock italiano, Roma, Arcana, 2006.
(By Daniele Rocca, Independent Scholar)
Piero Ciampi, a native of Livorno, is unique among the great Italian renegades for truly having told his life story without any filters. He was born in 1934. After dropping out of college, where he had set out to study engineering, he quickly learned to play the piano and double bass. In 1957 he moved to the Paris of Vian and Sartre, where he frequented the bohemian circles and became known as “Piero Litaliano.” He then traveled to Spain, England and Ireland, where he married an Irishwoman with whom he had a stormy relationship. He finally settled in Genoa, where he stayed with Gino Paoli and Luigi Tenco, spending much of his time in bars and taverns. He read prolifically and developed a sort of combative melancholy, the source of a poetic language partly in the tradition of the old love song, and partly in line with surrealism, existentialism, and the poetics of everyday life. The songs on his debut single (“Conphiteor/La grotta dell’amore” [“Conphiteor/The Grotto of Love”], 1960)—composed in collaboration with Gianfranco Reverberi, Piero’s comrade from their time in military service—are dedicated to a beloved woman now lost. We find memorable inventions such as the woman who forgot her smile at home (“Hai lasciato a casa il tuo sorriso, Forse sopra un libro / o nel vetro del tuo specchio” [“You left your smile at home / perhaps on a book / or in your mirror”], from “Hai lasciato a casa il tuo sorriso”), or the rhetorical candor of “L’ultima volta che la vidi” (“The Last Time I Saw Her”), so sincere as to be entirely convincing:
Fu una lacrima candida e lunga
mi fece ricordare
che se bianco è bianco e nero è nero
che cadendo sopra un fiore
in questa vita io sono uno straniero.
Senza di lei il giorno non ha né alba né tramonto
e l’arcobaleno e il canto degli usignoli sono cose perdute
[…]
Ed ogni sera ritornano sulla spiaggia
processioni di stelle e di comete
come l’ultima che la vidi.
(It was a long, white tear
that, falling on a flower,
made me remember
that if white is white and black is black
I am a stranger in this life.
Without her the day has neither dawn or dusk
and the rainbow and the nightingale’s song are lost things
[…]
And every evening they return to the beach
processions of stars and comets
like the last time I saw her.)
Ever since the early years, Ciampi’s approach to singing reflects his irreducible personality, which he would endeavor to develop on a razor’s edge. When Gino Paoli, fresh from the triumphs of “Il cielo in una stanza” (“The sky in a room,” 1960), introduced him to the RCA music label where he received a very hefty paycheck, Ciampi vanished with the money for three years, perhaps heading off to Northern Europe in search of a woman, as Paoli himself would recall much later in an interview. Piero, however, would eventually return and begin to write again. The lyrics from this period are heavily focused on illusion and disenchantment, on an ego bruised by the chronic desire to escape. The leitmotif of wine as a source of this escape comes to the fore in his hit “Il vino” (“E in mezzo all’acqua sporca / godo queste stelle / questa vita è corta / è scritto sulla pelle” [“And in the middle of the dirty water / I enjoy these stars / this life is short / it is written on the skin”]), and in the passionate “Tu no” (“Not you,” 1971), which evokes Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas” (“Please don’t leave me now”) in similar terms:
Tu no, aspetta, no
se non so farti felice
anche se continuo a bere
tu no, amore, no
tu mi devi star vicina
perché ormai io sono fuori…
(Don’t, wait, no,
if I don’t know how to make you happy
even if I keep drinking
just don’t, love, no
you need to stay close to me
because now I’m out…)
This influence is not so different from the equally direct inspiration that produced “Non chiedermi più” (“Ask me no more”), a piece written in 1963:
Sono anni che guardi con quegli occhi grigi
e non ti dico niente
sono anni che sento, che penso
e piango e non ti dico niente
forse era il destino
ed è finita così.
(For years you have looked with those gray eyes
and I say nothing
for years I have felt, I have thought
and I cry and I say nothing
maybe it was destiny
and it ended like this)
The fundamental cipher of these love lyrics is perhaps the constant pain of disillusionment. Suffering, instability, the acute and urgent desire for peace are what drives it:
Stasera ti confesso
che sono entrato in un porto
ed ho cercato una nave
che mi portasse lontano
non voglio più vedere le cose
che mi hanno fatto sentire questo silenzio…
(Tonight I confess to you
that I entered a port
and I looked for a ship
that would take me far away
I don’t want to see the things anymore
that made me feel this silence…)
(“Confesso” [“I Confess”], 1963):
Perhaps love is the only cure:
Qualcuno tornerà
per sentire la tua voce
per dirti che la vita
è un gioco in mezzo ai prati
che il tempo non ha fine
se vivi per qualcuno
qualcuno tornerà
per amarti tutti i giorni…
(Someone will come back
to hear your voice
to tell you that life
is a game in the middle of the meadows
that time has no end
if you live for someone
someone will come back
to love you every day…)
(“Qualcuno tornerà” [“Someone will come back”])
Her birth is magic:
Quando t’ho vista seduta accanto a me,
le labbra aperte ai suoni del mattino,
volevo tacere, porre fine al ricominciare
ma mi chinai e colsi tra le foglie
il suo sorriso tornato dal passato.
Si volse veloce, pose il viso nel centro del mio cuore.
Quando la vedo seduta accanto a me,
le lunghe gambe distese e felici,
ripenso a quel giorno
quando sedemmo per caso vicini.
(When I saw you sitting next to me,
your lips open to the sounds of the morning,
I wanted to be silent, to put an end to starting over.
But I bent down and caught among the leaves
her smile returned from the past.
She turned quickly,
placed her face in the center of my heart.
When I see her sitting next to me,
her long legs stretched out and happy,
I think back to that day
when we sat next to each other by chance.)
(“Quando ti ho visto” [“When I saw you”], 1971)
Beyond a few rare exceptions (“Cosa resta” [“What remains”], “Tu no,” or the enveloping “Quando ti ho vista,” the satirical “Andare camminare lavorare” [“Go, walk, work”]; or “Sobborghi” [“Suburbs”], on the wild fantasies of unrequited love, or “40 soldati 40 sorelle” [“40 soldiers 40 sisters”], dedicated perhaps to the American soldiers who intervened in Italy during WWII), Ciampi, who performed at the “Derby” in Milan and at the Tenco awards, limited himself to spoken word songs. Considering the Italian music of the period, which was dominated by pop (Mina, Edoardo Vianello, Adriano Celentano, the Pooh), his style was not exactly a pathway to the top ten radio hits. And yet it was with one of Ciampi’s songs (“Ho bisogno di vederti” [“I need to see you”]) that Gigliola Cinquetti and Connie Francis achieved success at Sanremo in 1965; Lucia Rango also performed some of his songs (they sang a duet in “Non chiedermi più”), as did Dalida on Senza rete (No Signal)with the song “La colpa è tua” (“It’s your fault”) which, according to some, is a reworking of a previous song by Ciampi entitled “Cara” (“Dear”). RAI dedicated an evening to him after the brilliant album Andare camminare lavorare e altri discorsi (Go, Walk, Work and other conversations, 1975). Thanks to the help of composer Gianni Marchetti, the 1971 album Piero Ciampi was also praised by critics. Marchetti wrote for Ciampi the magnificent jazzy finale of “Raptus” among other things; the singer-songwriter had additional collaborations with Miranda Martino and Pino Pavone. Though an extraordinary performer, in his few concerts he was almost always drunk and capable of ruining everything by insulting his audience. But these outbursts merely hid a thorny existential solitude. For example, in the famous “Ha tutte le carte in regola per essere un artista” (“He has all the credentials to be an artist”):
Ha un carattere melanconico
beve come un irlandese
se incontra un disperato
non chiede spiegazioni
divide la sua cena
con pittori ciechi, musicisti sordi
giocatori sfortunati, scrittori monchi
preferisce stare solo
anche se gli costa caro
non fa alcuna differenza
tra un anno ed una notte
tra un bacio ed un addio.
(He has a melancholic personality
he drinks like an Irishman
if he meets a desperate man
he doesn’t ask for explanations
he shares his dinner
with blind painters, deaf musicians
unlucky gamblers, handless writers
he prefers to be alone
even if it costs him dearly
it makes no difference
whether it’s a year or a night
a kiss or a goodbye.)
After all,
Una vita a precipizio
l’esistenza senza un senso
e la discesa niente ritorno
poi la salita viene crudele
come un miraggio
mentre il giorno tramontando
lascia un solco.
(A life in a precipice
an existence without a meaning
and the descent with no return
then the climb comes cruel
like a mirage
while the day at its end
leaves a furrow)
(“L’assenza è un assedio” [“Absence is a siege”])
Sometimes, in the midst of a prosaic, everyday context, resentment and nostalgia take on a quality somewhere between existentialism and surrealism, as in the torments of “Barbara non c’è”
Ma Barbara non c’è
ha chiuso casa e se ne è andata ed ora
provo smarrimento
tutte le sue scarpe sono qui
il mio amore è scalzo
(But Barbara isn’t here
she has locked up the house and left and now
I feel lost
all her shoes are here
my love is barefoot)
Or in “Uffa che noia”:
uffa che noia, non è ancora finito
questo squallido imbroglio tra la vita e la morte,
[…]
La giungla comincia in famiglia,
sono anni che combatto in quella foresta.
La vera guerra non si fa con le armi,
si fa con il cuore, per questo sono un eroe.
Ma uffa che noia questa notte piovosa,
mi sembra una madre che ha perso suo padre,
uffa che noia.
Uffa che noia, che importanza può avere o maestro o buffone?
Questo sole cala sulle sere…
(Ugh, how boring, it’s not over yet
this squalid deception between life and death,
[…]
The jungle begins in the family,
I’ve been fighting in that forest for years.
The real war is not fought with weapons,
it’s fought with the heart, that’s why I’m a hero.
But ugh, how boring this rainy night is,
To me it seems like a mother who has lost her father,
ugh, how boring.
Ugh, how boring, what does it matter whether teacher or clown?
This sun sets in the evenings…)
The reflection on the relationship between dreams and reality produces sometimes comical but always profoundly bitter results. In “Te lo faccio vedere chi sono io” (“I’ll show you who I am,” 1973), Ciampi is indignant at the way his lover is forcing him to live. He promises her a fairytale house (“una pelliccia di leone / con l’innesto di una tigre” [“a coat made of lion’s fur / with a tiger grafted on”]) and even a submarine, on the condition that she’ll lend him a thousand lire for a taxi, so as to solve their “tawdry problem.” We find a similar approach in “Il lavoro” (“Work,” 1973), where the details of everyday life stand out, in tune with certain currents of contemporary Italian poetry:
Il lavoro? Ancora non lo so
mi hanno preso? Non mi hanno detto niente
e allora? Ti ho detto, non so niente
e allora? Allora non lo so
ti ho portato qualche cosa che ti piacerà
ecco il giornale e un pacchetto di sigarette
e dietro a me c’è una sorpresa
un ospite, un nuovo inquilino
c’è la mia ombra che chiede asilo
perché purtroppo anche stavolta
devo dirti che è andata male.
(Work? I don’t know yet
have they hired me? They haven’t told me a thing
so what? I told you, I don’t know anything
so what? So I don’t know
I brought you something you’ll like
here’s the newspaper and a pack of cigarettes
and behind me there’s a surprise
a guest, a new tenant
there’s my shadow asking for asylum
because unfortunately once again
I’ve got to tell you that it went badly)
Here too, it is the dream in love (or of love?) that allows us to withstand the shock wave of reality, in one of those typical Ciampi outbursts:
Fai finta di niente, non è successo niente
accendi una sigaretta, chiudi la finestra
e spogliati
io ti porto a nuotare
ti faccio vedere la schiuma bianca del mare
niente suoni, io e te soli
(Pretend nothing has happened,
nothing has happened light a cigarette, close the window
and undress
I’ll take you swimming
I’ll show you the white foam of the sea
no sounds, just you and me).
The sentiment recalls that of “Mia moglie” (“My Wife”):
La casa mi sembrava una trincea
il tempo mi pesava, cercavo di reagire
sparavo alle illusioni,
dormivo sulle spine
vivevo alla giornata come un tempo
per telefono un uomo mi disse: “Licenziato”
neppure gli risposi, sai quanto me ne fregava
la ruota era girata, non mi importava niente
non avevo rimpianti, provavo indifferenza
se ho perduto tutto, dunque ti ho amata tanto
tu precipitasti nella mia anima,
ricordi che ti chiesi: “Ma tu chi sei? Ma tu chi sei?”
e tu mi rispondesti: “Non hai capito”
tu mi rispondesti: “Io sono te”.
(The house seemed like a trench to me
time was weighing on me, I tried to react
I shot at illusions,
I slept on tenterhooks
I lived day to day like I used to
on the phone a man said to me: “Fired”
I didn’t even answer him, you know I didn’t give a crap
the wheel had turned, I didn’t care at all
I had no regrets, I felt indifferent
if I lost everything, therefore I loved you so much
you fell into my soul
Do you remember when I asked you: “But who are you? But who are you?”
and you answered me: “You don’t understand”
you answered me: “I am you”)
Although so fragile, and often the child of an illusion, love is still a support for those who encounter setbacks in life, as in “L’amore è tutto qui” (“Love is all,” 1971): “Tutte le cose che non hai / accanto a me le troverai / nel mondo dell’illusione” (“All the things you don’t have / you’ll find them beside me / in the world of illusion”), or in “Viso di primavera” (“A Face of Springtime”) from Ciampi’s last album Dentro e fuori (Inside and Out,1976): “Hanno distrutto le tue speranze / viso di primavera / questi lunghi tramonti senza una sera” (“They have destroyed your hopes, / face of springtime, / these long sunsets without an evening”). Preserving this love is difficult: “Cara, la tua mano è così piccola / mi sfuggirà sempre / amore, però ti amo / sempre di più, anche così” (“Dear, your hand is so small / it will always slip away from me / my love, but I love you / more and more, even like this”; from “Cara”). And yet it anesthetizes the ferocious indifference of the world:
Forse comincerò a prenderti la mano
poi non saprò come continuare,
farò di tutto perché tu non capisca
l’indifferenza che in questo mondo ci perseguita
(Perhaps I will start holding your hand
then I won’t know how to continue,
I will do everything so that you don’t understand
the indifference that haunts us in this world)
(“L’incontro” [“The encounter”])
The same struggle that sustains him also consumes him:
Noi per nutrire l’amore
ci sfidiamo a duello,
sarà sempre così
(To nourish love
we challenge each other to a duel,
it will always be like this)
(“Va” [“Go”])
This reckoning shatters dreams, memories, nostalgia, as in the sad “In un palazzo di giustizia” (“In a courthouse”). Here too, in just a few verses, crude realism combines with that view from above on things so characteristic of Ciampi:
Siamo seduti in una stanza
di un palazzo di giustizia
tu sei pazza, vuoi spiegare
una vita con due frasi.
(We are sitting in a room
of a courthouse
you are crazy, you want to explain
a whole life in two sentences)
What remains is sullen desperation, pushing Ciampi to say what marks—for a poet as he considers himself, more so than for others—surrender in the face of pain:
Questo nostro amore è una cosa
una delle tante della vita
noi stiamo rovinando tutto con le parole
queste maledette parole
(This love of ours is a thing
one of many in life
we are ruining everything with words
these damned words.)
(“Tu con la testa, io con il cuore” [“You with your head, I with my heart”])
Yes, words: like the furious words of “Adius,” a song with a strong musical structure that, amongst the infinite sentimental songs of the ‘70s, had an effect similar to Guccini’s “L’avvelenata” (“Poisoned”). It starts with images that are as always phonetically crafted, surrealistic suggestions, and metaphors, along with the usual theme of indifference:
La tua assenza
è un assedio
ma ti chiedo
una tregua
prima dell’attacco finale
perché un cuore giace inerte
rossastro sulla strada
e un gatto se lo mangia
tra gente indifferente
(Your absence
is a siege
but I ask you
for a truce
before the final attack
because a heart lies inert
reddish on the road
and a cat eats it
among indifferent people)
Then he unexpectedly launches into insults:
Ma vaffanculo
te e tutti i tuoi cari, ma vaffanculo
ma come?
Ma sono secoli che ti amo, cinquemila anni
e tu mi dici di no!
ma vaffanculo!
sai che cosa ti dico?
vaffanculo!
te, gli intellettuali e i pirati, vaffanculo!
(Fuck you
and all your loved ones, fuck you
are you kidding?
I’ve loved you for centuries, five thousand years
and you tell me no!
fuck you!
do you know what I say to you?
fuck you!
you, the intellectuals and the pirates, fuck you!)
Ciampi is brusque, haughty and sincere: like another great Tuscan Luciano Bianciardi, author of the incomparable novel “La vita agra”, he portrays himself as an author working outside the System (he declares that on TV everyone is “anchored to certain conditions of absolutely ridiculous respectability”), an unreliable life partner, a failed father. As we read in “Sporca estate” (“Dirty summer”), he sinks into anguish and reacts with alcohol, knowing he has taken a dead-end turn: his classic “Il vino,” a short and only seemingly joyful piece, already contains a premonition of the end.
After the beautiful but unsuccessful “Io e te abbiamo perso la bussola” (“You and I Have Lost our Heads”) (1973), in 1975 he reasserted himself with Andare camminare lavorare, an anthology (including two unreleased songs: the title track of the album and the visionary “Cristo tra i chitarristi” [“Christ among the Guitarists”], with a pacifist tone—“Un coro di chitarre infelici cantava per disperdere l’odio” [“A choir of unhappy guitars sang to disperse hatred”]) that attests, at least in part, to his greatness. But his path, marred by alcohol, was now reaching its end, even while in 1975 a very young Nada, the popular performer of “Ma Che Freddo Fa” [“How cold it is”], recorded an entire album of his songs, Ho scoperto che esisto anch’io (I discovered that I exist, too). We would meet him again in Tre uomini e una donna (Three Men and a Woman) by Ezio Alovisi, performed on the theater stage and then on TV with Paolo Conte, Nada and Renzo Zanobi (July 1976). Ezio Alovisi would dedicate a film to Ciampi in 2008, but, as the singer recalled, Conte’s chic charm made Ciampi madly jealous. And he appeared once again in a performance of “Ma che buffa che sei” (“You’re So Funny”) at the “Canto per la libertà!” demonstration on April 25, 1978 at the Palazzo dei Congressi in Bologna. Two weeks later, Ciampi gave an interview to Gianni Elsner for Radio Luna.
Ciampi died of esophageal cancer in January 1980, a few days after Piersanti Mattarella—brother of Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella—was killed in Palermo. The nation was preoccupied with other thoughts, too consumed to remember him. With him in his final moments was Mimmo Locasciulli, his doctor, who years later would pay homage to him by performing “Tu no.” It was a death that, to quote Pirandello, “does not conclude.” To quote Ciampi instead, “Niente risolto” (“Nothing is Resolved”):
Sete di non sentire più non avere non essere,
fuori senza sosta quel sole tramonta sempre.
La testa se ne va oltre la sera
non fa più parte del mio corpo, di tutto,
di questo giorno.
Niente sapere niente risolto.
(The thirst to no longer feel no longer have no longer be,
outside without rest, that sun always sets.
My head moves beyond the evening
it is no longer part of my body, of everything,
of this day.
Nothing gained, nothing resolved)
Or, to borrow the lyrics of Massimo Bizzarri, if Piero were still here, who knows… (Se ci fosse ancora Piero)
Bibliography:
Felice Liperi, Storia della canzone italiana, Roma, Rai Libri, 1999
Roberto Caselli, Storia della canzone italiana, Milano, Hoepli, 2018
Nada Malanima, Come la neve di un giorno. Una visione, Roma, Atlantide, 2023
Sito Ufficiale di Piero Ciampi: https://premiociampi.it/piero-ciampi/
