Blooming

We are not used to reading poetry, too demanding, too difficult and obscure, but even so each of us holds in their heart some verses, fragments that were able to sneak into the remote corners of our souls, and that sometimes emerge on the surface and talk to us.

I was in high school, during my English literature classes, and the teacher was explaining the Romantic poets. They were a bit too dramatic and heart wrenching according to my tastes, but as you all know, every rule has its exception, and mine was called Daffodils.

William Wordsworth used a simple language to write about simple things, a true revolutionary for his times. In this poem, we walk with him in a softly windswept landscape, and we are surprised and amazed by a crowd of golden daffodils dancing in the breeze.

I started this film with the idea of dedicating myself to flowers: in their beauty and simplicity, they never cease to fascinate me. In my mind, loyal leitmotiv of my naturalistic wanderings, were Wordsworth’s immortal verses.

It’s winter now, the temperatures dropped below the zero outside, and the wood crackles in the stove. These photographs are my emotions recollected in tranquillity, they bring me back to the places where I shot them, to muddy paths after the rain, to timid blossoms and delicate explosions of whites and roses, to late September evenings with the last precious gifts from the garden.

I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.