N.093 - ’O ssaje comme fa o core

From the collaboration and extraordinary friendship between Massimo Troisi and Pino Daniele came, among many masterpieces, an unreleased piece that entered the history of Neapolitan poetry and song: ‘O ssaje comme fa ’o core. Part of the 1990 album Sotto ’o sole, the song is a tribute to the complexity of the human heart: its contradictions, its passion, its pride. The central figure in Felicita La Peccerella’s illustration is the heart itself, which, in Troisi’s poetry set to music by Pino Daniele, moves through three phases in just a few lines: falling in love, living love, and finally its end. In the illustration, Massimo speaks to it, questions it, tries to understand it, perhaps even reason with it, sitting at the bottom of the staircase named after him, in the Chiaia district. The same staircase that in Scusate il ritardo became the stage for Lello Arena’s endless outpourings of love to Massimo. To the one who, like Pino, truly knew how the heart works.