"Adone". Il poema del neopaganesimo

During the seventeenth century myth is dealt with from an ornamental or allegorical viewpoint, with the exception of Marino who, at least from his Dicerie sacre onwards, proposes a figural interpretation of myth which puts it on the same level as Biblical history. On the other hand, Adone is a poem based on metamorphosis, myth and metaphor, that is on inseparable features shaping a neo-pagan view of the world based on a rhetoric of metamorphosis which sets itself against the Christian rhetoric of conversion. The very basis of such an assumption is the absolute power of speech, its freedom from any system of values. Thus, following Ovid’s model, Adone aims at being a “divine poem”. Perhaps not intentio auctoris, this is undoubtedly intentio operis, the same which allows us to understand why the poem was censured by the Church, more concerned by its neo-pagan view of the world more than by the lewd lines it contained.