Milan, 1931. Alda Merini is born in a house on the Navigli, those Navigli that would become her kingdom, her prison, her poetry. A happy childhood, marked by a love for reading: she devours books, discovers words, senses that they will be her salvation and her condemnation.

From a young age she begins to write verse. At sixteen Giacinto Spagnoletti includes her in the anthology “Poetesse del Novecento,” alongside names like Sibilla Aleramo and Antonia Pozzi. But the enthusiasm is shattered: her father does not understand, mental illness knocks at the door. In 1965 the calvary begins: confinement in an asylum, electroshock, ten years of forced silence. Experiences that deeply mark her life and her writing.

“La Terra Santa” (1984) is born from that hell. It is the book of rebirth, the account of one who crossed the abyss and returned to bear witness. Poetry as a painful and mysterious vocation, tied to faith and to the figure of the Madonna—a constant presence in her verses.

During the war she had faced poverty, fear, destruction. But from the war love had also been born: four daughters, tormented marriages, devouring passions. Alda Merini loved as she wrote: without measure, without protection.

In this documentary the poetess of the Navigli opens the doors of her home-temple, amid books, cigarettes, late-night phone calls, and verses written on anything at hand. Donatella Baglivo captures the essence of a woman who transformed pain into beauty, madness into lucidity, marginality into universality.

Alda Merini left us in 2009. Her husky voice, her eyes that have seen hell and paradise, remain imprinted in this unforgettable portrait. Photo: Giuliano Grittini