Introduction to El Vacio
by Stefano Donno

Marta Toraldo and the mysticism of nihilism Towards the end of the 90s the Salento area was the protagonist of a poetic renaissance, which rested its foundations on a tradition of paths that were not always simple, rarely homogeneous, almost always disjointed. Dystonic and dystopian peculiarities resulting from a constant work of flesh and blood, moods, existences sometimes at the limits of the pindaric, punctually at the borders of the beyond. The many still open scars of the history of contemporary Salento poetry (today more and more of value and which has nothing to fear compared to the rest of the national territory), have the ability to speak with the verses of the great Claudia Ruggeri, of the wild Salvatore Toma, of the visionary Antonio Leonardo Verri; the many still open scars of the history of contemporary Salento poetry have the power to build worlds by playing with the rhythm and the sense of saying, of denouncing, of resisting, of measuring existence step by step, as in the poetry of Simone Giorgino, Laura Sergio, Luciano Pagano, Vito Antonio Conte, Gianluca Conte, Alessandra Peluso, and the very young Anastasia Leo, just to name a few examples. And the liveliness of all this incandescent magma that poured into multiform public poetic appointments (in pubs, squares, palaces, exhibitions and which 8 9 found its explosion between 1998 and 2002) worked as an incubator for other experiences of great impact and pulsating clarity.

In my constant wanderings in the woods of Poetry, where you can easily get lost and almost never enough crumbs thrown to the ground to find the way back, while the shadows thicken dense and threatening, while you search with greed and a pinch of health selfishness the taste of verse and dream, here a dazzling, pulsating, irrepressible light blinds me, leaving me full of wonder and amazement. So suddenly I discover the verses of Marta Toraldo, then I know her. Two organic and intimately reciprocal passages essential to understand and read his dictation. I appreciated Marta’s first work “Vie fugitive” published by I libri di Icaro, then this second work of hers where the author seems to want to put on paper a whole sentimental and reasoned mapping of dreams, desires, instances that slowly build the mosaic of his identity. Perhaps more than a real manifesto, a compass, an indispensable tool for orienting yourself when you get lost, when the sense of life loses its contours and it seems that you only relate to ghosts, those that populate our sleepless nights, or that animate our deepest fears.

The author writes: «I wanted to understand the importance | of shares | of the objectives | of the same capabilities | to move forward | looking for a future path… | And every time they told me | to let go | my curiosity | flared with spasm ». The poem presented in this collection seems to have a life of its own or it seems that once nailed to the page by the author it tries to return to its form of totality, which by a whim of who knows what cosmic game can reveal itself both by substance and by spirit. . Space and Time are two categories that do not belong to this poet, who does not make romanticism melancholy and tear, but a destructive force of active nihilism, therefore irrepressible fury that she consciously chooses to destroy in order to build. Certainly the risks of becoming a priestess of the verse, Marta knows them well, she knows that the dangers are around the corner or rather she knows that the price to pay can be exorbitant, so much so that in transforming recurrent and persistent thoughts, doubts, images or impulses into lyricism. often a “short circuit” to rebellion becomes inevitable, uncontrollable, unstoppable: «Shaking hands | bated breath and absent mind | chaotic wireless radio connectors hear me | learn to better decipher my dreams! | Dark Oblivion | confusing vortex | I beg you to stop. | Tolerability to anger has gone beyond all limits | more total anarchy | take me for a while. | Fantasies dipped in front | a ghostly apathetic decline of colors | sensations recovery | catch me in a surprising awakening. | In this fake tolerance mask | at the mercy of unclear fears | how strong | take substance in combatable obstacles. | The power of desires seems to be the only way to overcome | an anarchic way of living | within a nihilistic and undifferentiated eschatological time | from any Dionysian foundation of ecstatic emotions ». 10 11 The result of all this being-for-domination can sometimes manifest itself in the poet in a momentary sense of exhaustion, or of mistrust in a future populated by stereotypes, homologations, sub-creatives born from a now sterile market for the spectacle. . The world that Marta Toraldo sees and that she presents to us in the pages of this book is a world made up of negations … to be exact, negations of the Self, of the body, of feelings. The denial in this case leads to a kind of fanatic and insane (in a good way of course) dogmatism that finds the solution in a lacerating mode because it is absolutely dichotomous! Good and Evil, Sin and Purity, Truth and Lie, are seen as not only monads not communicating with each other, but even galaxies fighting each other for survival. And then two all-encompassing solutions, two ancestral and all-encompassing methods turn out to be the essential keystones for Marta to become the queen of this part of the universe. The first plausible solution leads the author to abandon the suffocating ballast of sin and sense of guilt, and to declare herself ready for Life, to say her very personal Yes to Life. But to do this he must allow himself a further “luxury” which is that of the will to power (in German Wille zur Macht), that is an authentic paradigm shift that transforms this poetic work into a transvaluation of values, where they are instantly incinerated in a sublime and musical pyre purifying hypocrisy, discontent, doubts, bitterness and thanks to which everything is permeated with such and such clarity as to make everything absolutely intelligible and completely manifest.

In this latest work Marta Toraldo desires with all of herself, continuously, without taking a moment of pause or reflection, her own growth, her own empowerment as a woman, as a human being, as a poetic vision almost to feel as genomatic a push towards one’s own renewal, towards one’s own evolution. She feels she is looking beyond, seeing the beyond, feeling the beyond, and by now she has full confidence in her strength, so much so that she can take on herself the weight of this creative will, the weight of the eternal return of creative moment, who plays his game of dice with Destiny. But perhaps Martha knows the Truth, and wants to share it with those who will read her verses: the power of creativity punctually turns to its annihilation, in order to be reborn again. Once the Truth has been brought to the surface from the underworld of Lies, it already assumes a status of non-truth, so that every desire to reach a definitive goal must replace the goal itself, in order not to remain in chains in the forms that it itself produces. Marta Toraldo is now ready to enter the Beyond of Poetry with this brilliant proof of her verse.