In this interview by Massimo Cappitti, MicheleRanchetti (1925-2008) discusses various interests he was involved with all along his life.Ranchetti was a poet, an essay writer, a translator from German to Italian, and a painter. Hestudied the history of Catholic Church and of religions, a discipline he taught at the Universityof Florence from 1973 to 1998. In particular, Ranchetti studied, among others, Sigmund Freud,Ludwig Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Celan, and edited and translatedmany of their works. In this interview, conducted three years before his death, Ranchettitalks, among other things, of some aspects of his life, of his way of writing poetry, of religion,of his interest for psychoanalysis, W. Benjamin, R.M. Rilke, and so on.
Keywords: Poetry,Christianity, psychoanalysis, Walter Benjamin, Ludwig Wittgenstein