Francesco Guccini
L'ultima Thule

Once, my ex-, in one of her frequent moments of obvious clarity, told me: All your heroes are dead. I was driving and almost didn't pay attention to her, but that sentence stuck with me, and over time, I started to consider it one of the few and best compliments I’ve ever received. Yes, because the dead don't betray you: Bolaño can no longer write a terrible novel, de André can't compose an album that disgusts me — what you see is what you get, nothing more and nothing less.

With Guccini, though, it's different, and maybe that's what puts him, in my head, a cut above the rest, because I place trust or something very similar to trust in him... or at least I’d like to say so. The problem is that it might not be so: for example, it might be that, no matter what they do, I judge it as something I cannot dislike just because I greatly appreciate their artistic background, everything that came before. It's the fan's dilemma, and what makes this preamble to the review necessary, which is only a fan's review, moreover not even that in-depth. I wanted to write it, that's all. I hope someone can do better than me; yesterday I bought the album and listened to it all day, but I’m sure that by listening to it repeatedly, I will discover things I have missed so far: it's merely a tribute, all of it. My way of thanking Guccini for accompanying me in life: I grew up on bread and Guccini, and Guccini has always been there for me (when the aforementioned girl dumped me, when my grandmother died, and so on). I've been to more than a dozen of his concerts, I know the songs by heart, and in my life, many memories bear the names of those songs, and unfortunately, with this record, we have come to the end, and the end of something, whatever that something is, has a lot to do with death, or at least that's always how I've seen it. When a girl leaves you, when your dog dies, when you graduate, or when the sun sets. We deal with death daily, and some things (the passing of a new day, for example) are perceived as final only in particular circumstances because we are kind of immunized against them, and a subtle sensitivity is necessary to grasp all this and manage to express it — sensitivity which, in my opinion, is the Maestro's strong point; so, “L'ultima Thule” has all the characteristics to be considered a testament, right from the tracklist, where words like last, testament, night, that (indicating distance, separation) occur, and thus it won't seem strange that the first (and, knowing who we’re talking about, maybe the only) single of the record is indeed “L'ultima volta”, which weaves a theme that is now dear to the artist, namely the passing of time, its incessant flow that at least partially deposits in the reservoir of memory.

When the day of the last time 

you see the sun at dawn 

and the rain and wind blow 

the rhythm of your breathing 

which slowly stops and disappears. 

How is it possible to create such a sweet, romantic, tender, clear image of death, far from anguishing and almost dreamy? Together with something by Pessoa, it's one of the most beautiful things I've heard/read about death. And then that couplet

something left for tomorrow, 

a wait of dream and darkness,

with that final oxymoron that, in itself, tends to be overused like an ERASMUS student in Perugia but which Guccini reinvents as a synesthesia, is chilling, especially as it seems to echo the end of "Culodritto" when it says

Fly, fly you, where I would like to fly 

towards a world where everything is still to be done 

and where everything or almost everything is still to be wrong. 

It's clear enough, in short, that from here to the artistic testament (“L'ultima Thule”) the step is short, but first, there is a rummaging within one's life, a digging into it halfway between the illusions extinguished by time and the nostalgia of other times. Exemplary, in this case, the opening of the album, where Guccini's parents tell a Guccini-child but with the voice of today's Guccini, almost to join the two existences of the person, to stop reading and turn off the light — Guccini, now older than his parents. It's “Canzone di notte n. 4”, where the uncertainty that brings the thought of death (“And then night that you will bring me / regret, quiet, boredom or truth? / Or indifferent to everything will you go away / without pity?”) is anticipated by the pantheistic feeling of nature, personification (not by chance does he address it through apostrophe) of our Pavane childhood hero.

Hey night that lets me imagine,

between darkness and lights, when everything is silent,

the days for quiet and for struggle,

the time of storms and calms.

Quiet night that makes me find

perhaps, peace.

But the night is not just this, indeed. The night is also the sum of one's life, the contemplative moment that shines, yes, an uncertain light on the future but manages to give meaning to the rest.

With recklessness you will 

spend them all in dream

to drown the regret

and give voice to your time,

or perhaps you will forget them,

or perhaps you will listen to them.

There is no need to bother Epicurus, saying that the afterlife becomes a problem only when one thinks of it, and that when life is there, death is not and vice versa because, beyond logic, death is frightening — it means separation, loss, nonsense. Thinking about leaving oneself, I mean: why? But what would happen if we had eternity ahead, if a love were infinite and we didn’t have to fight every day to conquer a piece of ground?

Turn back surprised,

for you have not even begun.

They are banal questions, seeking answers forever and pretending to find them in theologies of some kind or who knows what, things that never manage to exhaust the pain that death brings. The point is that there is not only this, and if “L'ultima Thule” is a goodbye — like every goodbye — it is filled with life. So, here's the diptych “Su in collina”/”Quel giorno d’aprile”. The first is a memorial of the partisan resistance written by Gastone Valdelli (“Mort en culleina”, here in literal translation), which Guccini started to propose at concerts since 2006. Unlike the other songs on the album, it doesn’t even seek a hope's foothold, so forget Leonard Cohen when, about the French resistance, he sang

freedom soon will come

because, although the following song speaks of it, it’s even pointless to mention it here; it's the least baroque piece of the album, the text that, in its raw realism, tells an anecdote, a slice of our history, without ideologies or sophisms.

The second piece, “Quel giorno d’aprile”, is the closure of this story, the celebration of the liberation that shows a common joy (that of the Italian people) composed of various solitudes, mourning, fragmented and fragmentary lives (those of Italians).

If the war is over why is it clouding with tears

this April day?

The heart of the song, in fact, is a sharp folding of the self on itself, where, in the festive frame of 25/04, mother and son realize that the head of the family will not return home.

And Italy singing now spreads over the streets,

waving in the sky flags crazy with light,

and your mother taking you in her arms crying smiles

while around someone mends a story or a life.

And who knows if he has on a coat

or if he sleeps in a warm barn,

under the wisteria you wait for your father

with the April sun.

The finale, then, brings everything back to today, to the oblivion to which we have condemned that piece of Italian history thus condemning ourselves as well

because inside of us too quickly

moves away this April day.

Memory returns, and more than ever does the need to have awareness of it, not to forget, etc., etc.

Alongside this diad, another is also noticeable, even if intermixed by the already mentioned “Notti”, namely “Il testamento di un pagliaccio”, a caustic and ironical reflection on the role of art today, and “Gli artisti”, where the artist, humanized, is seen in his ambivalence, on one side for his fortune of living in utopia and on the other in his fleetingness.

I make chairs and songs,

bitter herbs, chicory,

or a bunch of illusions

that fade from memory,

and do not remain in memory.

Everything closes with the piece that gives the album its name, “L'ultima Thule”, this (perhaps mythical) island of ice and fire. It is Guccini’s testament, the true sum of his life and career.

And here alone I think about my past,

I go back and search my life,

a lost and endless saga

of what I have done, of what has been.

The story of one who has rounded Cape Horn three times and is in search of Thule, an obligatory, accepted quest.

But still I will sail and depart

on my own, and even if exhausted,

the bow I steer toward the infinite

that sooner or later, I know, I will reach.

The extraordinary Celtic evocation music (written by Guccini himself) accompanies the advance of the verses in an incessant acceptance of one's destiny: the captain is ready.

...Okay, I’m exaggerating & magnifying. But such a closure — of an album or a career, take it as you like — for a fan, is the apotheosis. There are no more Odysseus or Christopher Columbus, but the sea, the journey topos is taken up again — this time the last and perhaps the first (Dante's Odysseus was driven by the obsession with curiosity, Homer’s was doomed to maritime wandering and Columbus's crossing was marked by uncertainty) to be made on one’s own will, for the awareness of having accomplished what was to be accomplished and for the senselessness of delaying.

L’ultima Thule awaits in the extreme North,

kingdom of eternal ice, without life,

and up there this of mine will be over

in the cold where we will all end.

It is the song that necessarily must come last and not only by virtue of chronological factors but also because it is the one that sheds new light on all the others, at least those present in the album in question; in this sense, what precedes it is a kind of preparation, a testament before the final journey. It has something to do with the mystical, but far from me to interpret the number like this: it is simply the story of a man who is ready and makes a testament following a long analysis of himself through memory and remembrance, then departs, and all that is left for us to do is to greet him and toast at least once to him, to what he has given us, that he has transmitted to us: Guccini is the quintessential human artist, he is the kind of person you listen to not only because he does his job excellently but also because, having listened to one of his albums, you end up enriched, sad or relieved however you feel finally. And you need them, artists like this, because every day the sun rises and then dies, and every day is an eternal dying I wouldn't be able to face without my Guccinis, my von Triers, my Nick Caves, or my Pessoas. You’d want to thank them, Guccini and all those who, day by day, stay close to you with their works, making life a little less sad, a little more bearable; once my ex told me that she preferred Guccini to de André because in Guccini she found the voice of a distant relative, aged, telling you stories that make you grow, make you feel safe or something like that.

I believe there is no better definition.

The last Thule awaits and inside the fjord

all my passion will die out,

will be lost in a final song

of me and also the memory of my ship.