Vocation and Evocation: Faith and Poety in Father David Maria Turoldo, Italy's Foremost Religious Poet

Abstract

Today in drawing your attention to the work of the poet father David M. Turoldo I would like to explore the theme of religious poetry in the perspective that all true poetry and art - in so far as they are an expression of man's search for meaning and response to beauty - are by their nature religious, ie they are an harmonizing and integrating activity, and quite literally, "poiesis". I have chosen father David, (a Servite priest with an impressive record of religious essays, dramas, and especially poetry) not only because he stands as the foremost contemporary Italian religious poet, but also because his work is emblematic of the intimate merging of the religious and poetical experience.