martedì 22 dicembre 2015

La condanna e la salvezza di Adelchi

Godi che re non sei, godi che chiusa
all'oprar t'è ogni via: loco a gentile,
ad innocente opra non v'è: non resta
che far torto, o patirlo. Una feroce
forza il mondo possiede, e fa nomarsi
dritto: la man degli avi insanguinata
seminò l'ingiustizia; i padri l'hanno
coltivata col sangue; e ormai la terra
altra messe non dà.
(Alessandro Manzoni, Adelchi, atto V, scena VIII)

martedì 17 novembre 2015

L'ambulanza

La metafisica passò in secondo pianno, e l'etica, divenuta ora individualistica, acquistò un'importanza fondamentale. La filosofia non è più il pilastro di fuoco che fa da segnale ai pochi intrepidi ricercatori della verità: è piuttosto un'ambulanza, che procede nella scia della lotta per l'esistenza e raccoglie i deboli ed i feriti.

C.F. Angus, Cambridge Ancient historym Vol VIII, pag 231. (età ellenistica)

giovedì 5 novembre 2015

Politica di scala

La scala delle organizzazioni politiche è direttamente proporzionale alla capacità del singolo di farsi soggetto politico. Tanto maggiore è la maturità civile e umana dell'individuo, tanto più si potrà atomizzare l'organizzazione senza perdere d'efficacia; tanto più l'individuo rifiuta e si spoglia della sua funzione civile e umana tanto più massificata sarà la forma di governo.

lunedì 2 novembre 2015

Several Questions Answered

William Blake
XVII

1
[Eternity]
HE who bends to himself a Joy
Doth the wingèd life destroy;
But he who kisses the Joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.
2
The look of love alarms,
        5
Because it’s fill’d with fire;
But the look of soft deceit
Shall win the lover’s hire.
3
Soft deceit and idleness,
These are Beauty’s sweetest dress.        10
4
[The Question answered]
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
5
An ancient Proverb
Remove away that black’ning church,
        15
Remove away that marriage hearse,
Remove away that man of blood—
You’ll quite remove the ancient curse.

sabato 26 settembre 2015

Pasolini e il sesso

Ora tutto si è rovesciato.

Primo: la lotta progressista per la democratizzazione espressiva e per la liberalizzazione sessuale è stata brutalmente superata e vanificata dalla decisione del potere consumistico di concedere una vasta (quanto falsa) tolleranza.

Secondo: anche la «realtà» dei corpi innocenti è stata violata, manipolata, manomessa dal potere consumistico: anzi, tale violenza sui corpi è diventato il dato più macroscopico della nuova epoca umana.

Terzo: le vite sessuali private (come la mia) hanno subito il trauma sia della falsa tolleranza che della degradazione corporea, e ciò che nelle fantasie sessuali era dolore e gioia, è divenuto suicida delusione, informe accidia.

P.P. Pasolini, ‘Abiura dalla Trilogia della vita’, in Lettere luterane, Einaudi, Torino, 1976

martedì 28 luglio 2015

The symphony



It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep. Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.
But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion—most seen here at the Equator—denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.
Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven.
Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.
Ahab turned. "Starbuck!" "Sir."
"Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day—very much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first whale—a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before—and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!—when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I
wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow—wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years' fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!—crack my heart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board!— lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!"
"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck's—wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!—this instant let me alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."
"They have, they have. I have seen them—some summer days in the morning. About this time—yes, it is his noon nap now—the boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to dance him again."
"'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!"
But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.
"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swaths—Starbuck!"
But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail.

venerdì 10 luglio 2015

Donare, deridere, annullare

Il primo effetto della felicità è il sentimento della potenza: esso vuole estrinsecarsi, sia verso noi stessi che verso altri uomini, idee o realtà immaginarie. Le modalità più consuete del suo estrinsecarsi, sono: donare, deridere, annullare - tutte e tre con un comune istinto fondamentale.

F. Nietzsche, Aurora, IV, 356.

venerdì 3 luglio 2015

Un inestricabile supplizio

And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg—"Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!"

E questo tatuaggio era stato opera di un defunto veggente e profeta della sua isola, che con quei geroglifici gli aveva tracciato addosso una teoria completa dei cieli e della terra , e un trattato misterioso sull’arte di raggiungere la verità. Sicché Queequeg era nella sua stessa persona un enigma da sciogliere, un’opera meravigliosa in un solo volume, ma i cui misteri neanche lui sapeva leggere, per quanto pulsassero con gli stessi battiti del suo cuore: questi misteri erano perciò destinati a sgretolarsi alla fine assieme alla viva pergamena su cui erano tracciati, e così a restare insoluti per sempre. E doveva essere questo pensiero che suggerì ad Achab una fiera imprecazione, una mattinata, nel voltarsi via dopo aver osservato il povero Queequeg: Ah diabolico supplizio di Tantalo degli dei!

H. Melville, Moby Dick

venerdì 15 maggio 2015

Dio è morto?

« Dio è morto? È da vedere. Una buona novella come questa avrebbe dovuto produrre effetti solari di cui si aspetta sempre, e invano, la minima prova. Al posto di un campo fecondo scoperto da una simile scomparsa si constata piuttosto il nichilismo, il culto del niente, la passione del nulla, il gusto morboso del notturno tipico di civiltà che finiscono, il fascino per gli abissi e i buchi senza fondo nei quali si perde l'anima, il corpo, l'identità, l'essere e ogni interesse per qualunque cosa. (...) Dio infatti non è né morto né moribondo - contrariamente a quanto pensavano Nietzsche e Heine. Né morto né moribondo perché non mortale. Una finzione non muore, un'illusione non trapassa mai, un racconto per bambini non si confuta. Né l'ippogrifo né il centauro subiscono la legge dei mammiferi. Un pavone e un cavallo sì: un animale del bestiario mitologico no. Dio appartiene al bestiario mitologico, come migliaia di altre creature registrate sotto uno degli innumerevoli lemmi dei dizionari, tra Demetra e Dionisio. (...) L'ultimo Dio sparirà con l'ultimo uomo. E con lui spariranno il timore, la paura, l'angoscia, macchine per creare divinità. Il terrore di fronte al nulla, l'incapacità di considerare la morte come un processo naturale, inevitabile, col quale è necessario venire a patti, davanti al quale solo l'intelligenza può essere efficace. (...) La morte di Dio presuppone l'addomesticamento del nulla. Noi siamo lontani anni luce da un tale progresso ontologico. » (Trattato di ateologia, Parte prima - Ateologia §1.1)

martedì 28 aprile 2015

The Eternal Mildness


And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy. 

Moby Dick, Chapter 87

lunedì 19 gennaio 2015

The Tree of Life

"The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree... As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications."
C. Darwin

giovedì 15 gennaio 2015

Il destino del filosofo

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

H.Melville