When my son Antonio asked me to write something for his exhibition, my thoughts immediately turned to Giacomo Leopardi and Luigi Pirandello.

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That's where my first reflections on "Everything and Nothing" begin. When I was in elementary school, even though I didn’t grasp the profound meanings of Giacomo Leopardi’s L'Infinito, I loved reciting the poem by heart. Its musical rhythm lulled me like a boat on a calm sea,drifting through the world. Later, when I could reflect on it, I realized how much Leopardi’s verses had influenced my development.

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This leads me to reflect on the meaning of the line "e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare" (and foundering is sweet to me in such a sea), which pushed me to abandon the "everything" I knew to discover spaces beyond the horizon, where "everything" met "nothing" and began to become a new being again, as if nothing had happened. For me, everything began where there was nothing. Later, my attention turned to the ideas of Luigi Pirandello, whom I encountered as an adult. Everything, in a specific reality, takes on the form of the person perceiving it. Every form continues to transform into others, even though we all insist on enclosing it within a single image, never erased.

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The phrase "Life is a continuous flux which we try to stop,to fix in stable and determined forms, inside and outside of us,"from Pirandello's essay On Humor (1908), prompted me to linger on the beauty of life. A breathtaking sunset. A sweet word spoken with sincere love. A cry that contains every feeling in a single outburst of passion for life. I was aware of the void that would come when I could no longer freeze those beautiful moments in time.

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In light of these reflections, and at my son’s invitation, I find the courage to join the thoughts of Leopardi with those of Pirandello. I wish to cast myself into the void. From the void, I find inspiration to pause and capture my love for everything in a poem.

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Pasquale Puleo