Lexicon of Affinities

A prowl through words reveals the unstable character of the cosmos.

With entries as varied as ‘elbow’, ‘Ophelia’, ‘progress’, the painter Giorgio Morandi, ‘chess’, ‘Eulalia’ (a friend of the author’s aunt), and ‘unicorn’, Ida Vitale constructs a voice and a worldview that takes the reader by the arm, inviting us to become a confidant in her memories and what she calls ‘the juicy life of language’. Like every dictionary, Lexicon of Affinities seeks to impose order on chaos, even if in its joyful, whimsical profusion it lays bare the unstable character of the cosmos.