Mystic face of erotica in Mario Soldati

Examining Le lettere da Capri, this essay analyses the nature and forms of eros in Soldati's writing from the standpoint of that Seventeenth-century religiosity fostered by the writer from Turin in an effort to understand heuristically the phenomena of existence. Libertinism proves to be the flip side of mystic love, both bearing witness to an original lack, to an inacceptable and irreversible loss that constrains the individual to wander perpetually.