Le nevi risplendono di bianco. Infantilismo e natura nei versi a Veronika di Gennadij Ajgi.

My essay focuses on the analysis of the Russian writer Gennadij Ajgi’s avant-garde poetic language. In particular, by investigating some texts included in the collection of poems Tetrad’ Veroniki (Paris, 1984), I will show the connections of Ajgi’s poetry with children language and the voices of nature. These two elements play a fundamental role in the verses of the author: first of all, Ajgi’s identity is deeply related to his childhood memories of his native land, the Chuvash Republic. The pagan pre-Cristian religion of this territory is based on the worship of the elements of the landscape (the trees, the field), to which the Chuvash people feel closely connected. Secondly, the pre-linguistic voice of the landscape is related by the writer to the pre-verbal language of childhood. Following the path opened by the Futurists, he investigates the literary value of lallation by listening to the rough sounds produced by his newborn daughter Veronika. In the book devoted to the child’s first experiences of the world, Tetrad’ Veroniki, Ajgi identifies the very origins of language in the interrelation between the pure sounds of infants and the wordless voice of his childhood’s pristine forests.