Posina

Posina is a mountain river and gorge whose presence in the novel is registered as much by sound as by geography. Its deep roar accompanies scenes of emotional crisis: at dusk it helps shape a silence that feels almost sacred, while elsewhere its remembered voice links distant landscapes to Lelia and La Montanina. The gorges also offer Lelia a solitary, exposed place in which to read a consequential letter.

Setting and Physical Presence

The gorges of Posina lie below the steep flank of Priaforà, where a military road cuts across the mountainside. The landscape around them is described through rock, shadow, and the river’s continuing roar. When Lelia leaves the road and climbs among flowering rhododendrons, she reaches a high, lonely stretch of broken ground above the gorge. The setting is not a settled refuge: its scale and exposed terrain place her alone amid a landscape that seems remote from ordinary domestic life.

Posina also enters scenes at a distance, through its sound. At La Montanina, the river’s deep noise is part of the evening atmosphere; later, Massimo Alberti recognizes an echo of that familiar sound while sitting at the pastures of San Rocco. The river therefore belongs both to a specific mountain environment and to the characters’ recollection of places they have left.

Dusk and Don Aurelio’s Departure

As dusk falls after Don Aurelio’s encounter with Marcello Trento, the faint sound of the Riderella and the deeper sound of Posina are the only sounds noted in the air. The two streams frame a quiet passage out from the house toward the gate. Around them, mountains, woods, and meadows seem to acquire a sacred significance, while faint lights appear in the evening sky.

That setting contrasts with Massimo Alberti’s inward state. Don Aurelio lays a firm hand on his shoulder, but Massimo is absorbed by his love for Lelia and takes the gesture as a warning. He feels the force of his attachment rather than the evening’s beauty. Posina’s roar thus accompanies a scene in which the external landscape appears charged with meaning, but its meaning does not reach every character in the same way.

Lelia on the Mountain Path

On another evening, Lelia leaves the church area and makes her way toward the gorges. She first considers going to the lake in the park, turns back after hearing women at a washhouse, and then sets her mind on the military road above Posina. The sun is already descending behind the ridge when she climbs onto the rocky slopes. Cold wind rises from the gorge across the stony ground, while the river’s persistent roar comes from below.

Lelia climbs among the rhododendrons and sits alone. She plucks Alpine roses mechanically, gathers a small bunch in her lap, and keeps her hands and gaze still before taking out the letter. Rather than search immediately for her own name, she makes herself begin at the start and read slowly. The sequence makes the mountain path part of the scene’s action: Lelia has sought a deserted place where she can confront the letter privately, and the open, unsettled terrain stands apart from the social spaces she has left behind.

Sound, Memory, and Loss

Posina’s sound also returns in Marcello Trento’s memory during a rainy night. From the veranda, he watches rain veil the mountains and the lights of Arsiero, and remembers the place where he used to take coffee with Don Aurelio after Mass at Santa Maria ad Montes. Don Aurelio has departed, and Marcello believes he will not see him again. The rain and the remembered association with Posina deepen the scene’s sense of absence; afterward, Marcello turns toward prayer and small acts of care, including putting his cyclamens back into their pots and carrying them outside in the rain.

Later, while staying in Dasio, Massimo Alberti hears the river’s roar from the pastures of San Rocco and recognizes in it the sound that filled his room at La Montanina when its windows were open. The sound draws his thoughts toward Lelia, though he does not dwell on a precise memory at first. Soon afterward, he stops to look at cyclamens beside the path and then reaches Pian di Nava. Across these scenes, Posina’s recurring roar joins physical places through memory: it can accompany solitude and grief, but also awaken the tender, painful recollection of a person who is absent.