“…qualcosa gli ha tolto le forze e velato gli occhi”: la malattia tra critica letteraria, terapia e poesia in Małgorzata Lebda

After a brief initial excursus on the topos of illness in literary criticism and the so-called “Narrative Medicine”, I analyse this theme as found in the work of Małgorzata Lebda, and particularly in the collections Matecznik (2016) and Granica lasu (2013), in which the poet tells her personal story, displaying a changing enigmatic nature which is a place of the soul both real and mysterious at the same time. Lebda describes the encounter with the disease in a clear, direct language style and by means of a narrative that gives a therapeutic meaning to her experience, and places it in a natural universe filled with multiple correspondences and resonances. The constant metaphorisation of the poetic images becomes a way to convey evocative, deep emotions which, thus mediated, can express themselves with all their evocative power.