The verb ‘'to tweet'' means ‘'to chirp'' like a bird, to produce a short, high-pitching, chirping sound. The noun ‘'twitter'' refers to the cheep of a bird and moreover the substantive ‘'twit'' means ‘' to tease someone'' or it can be used as an adjective to offend somebody, like ‘'stupid'' or ‘'idiot''.
After discovering the meanings of the word ‘'twitter'' the reader understands better and with another meaning the title of the book Tweet di un discorso amoroso by Roberto Cotroneo and the same social network twitter.
Both names ‘'twitter'' and ‘'the-book-of-faces'' give an immediate idea of speed, short duration, superficiality, easiness and impersonality. On one hand it is stupid to generalize the phenomenon of social networks considering them bad and dangerous. On the other hand it is truth that this phenomenon has its ‘'bad'' magnetism on people. I say ‘'bad'' firstly because if you don't have facebook you feel out of the group, secondly because people waste their time on social networks deluding themselves to be updated or to ‘'monitor'' their friends.
Strangely enough when people write a status on facebook or twitter they are writing a kind of fake monologue, because they speak with them selves but they know other will read it sooner or later. Usually there's no dialogue (dia-logos) so that a person can even write a dramatic monologue in poetry if enough imaginative.
The title Tweet di un discorso amoroso reminds the reader of Roland Barthes's book A lover's discourse fragments . For those who have read the book of Barthes (entirely, in alphabetical order, or ‘'in fragments'') the word ‘'tweet'' doesn't have a negative or superficial meaning, as it seems it has for the writers Manila Benedetto and Elisabetta Stefanelli. It is interesting that Manila Benedetto in her argumentative text states that ‘'Leggere il libro è come sedersi a sbirciare dalla finestra un uomo che parla da solo, in cui pero ci riconosciamo. E non è forse questo, ora, l'era digitale? ‘'.
I would say ‘' Perhaps is this not a monologue''?.
But there's a problem, if Prufrock's dramatic monologue is written down on paper and included in the collection Prufrock and Other Observations , a status on facebook is ‘'lost in the network'' says Manila Benedetto or better ‘'Ora il vento li disperde come coriandoli e finiscono in mare, galleggiando fra le onde'' writes Cotroneo in his book.
Elisabetta Stefanelli in her argumentative text quotes Roland Barthes: ‘' Qualcuno che parla dentro di se, amorosamente, di fronte all'altro (l'ogetto amato), il quale invece non parla''.
Furthermore Barthes wrote that ‘' L'unica assenza è quella dell'altro: è l'altro che parte, sono io che resto (...) L'altro è in stato di perpetua partenza, sempre sul punto di mettersi in partenza (...) io che amo sono invece, per vocazione inversa, sedentario, immobile, a disposizione, in attesa, sempre nello stesso posto, in giacenza''.
Barthes also said that for his A lover's discourse fragments uses a ‘'dramatic method'' or better: ‘'La descrizione del discorso amoroso è stata percio sostituita dalla sua simulazione, e a questo discorso è stata restituita la sua persona fondamentale, che è l'Io, in modo da mettere in scena non gia un'analisi, ma un'enunciazione''.
To tell the truth both A lover's discourse fragments and Tweet di un discorso amoroso seem dramatic monologues where the speaking voice, like Prufrock, is a dramatis personae that speaks in first person through a flux of though studded with quotations.
In an interview, Barthes, at the question ‘'Who says I in this fragments?'' (referring to lover's discourse fragments) he answered ‘'He who says I in the book is the I of writing (...) I am and I'm not (...) The subject I am is not unified''.