Flurin Darms

Poesia

«Vossas cazzolas, vossas cazzolas, salids che ardan en cuppas da mèsch.»

Nature, faith and the life of the people who live in the mountains – these are the motives of this poetry edition by Flurin Darms. While the earlier poems are characterised by a traditional style with rhymes, the freer metre of his later writing makes his poetry stronger and calmer. His protagonists are «ils pervesiders», the feeders: the ones who stay for weeks on end alone feeding hay to their cattle on the remote properties. Darms’ first book of poetry which came out in 1960 was already dedicated to these silent men. One of the most delicate and most mystical poems is «Pervesiders dils aults». The verse about the urban – rural opposition seems to evoke the usual cliché. Yet the poem goes beyond that, exudes peace and strength, and deepens the empathy with the farmer through a meditative repetition. In those poems, however, in which Darms decries the human vices he departs from his sublime language and the mystical is substituted by a kind of moralising (for instance in «Salid da quels el stgir», «La tresta canzun dil pauper galiot sur dils utschals»). The poems in their successful form create a world in between, hidden behind a veil: in these worlds there is a surreal and mysterious atmosphere, no eulogy but a deep admiration for the human being who comes face to face with the secret of life – an atmosphere one also encounters in Darms’ prose.
(Silvana Derungs, transl.by Anja Hälg)

Translation of title: Poetry

Renania, Chur 1986