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EDITORIAL BOARD

Quarterly magazine of history and sciences

SCIENTIFIC DIRECTION

Sabina Pavone History

Severino Salvemini Economy

Giorgio Vallortigara Neuroscience

Stephen Alcorn, Roberto Battiston, Gianluca Beltrame, Giacomo Berchi, Carlo Boccadoro, Piero Boitani, Umberto Bottazzini, Patrizia Caraveo, Pier Luigi Celli, Luisa Cifarelli, Rosita Copioli, Luca Fezzi, Chiara Franceschini, Antonio Lucci, Nunzio La Fauci, Alberto Oliverio, Mariagrazia Pelaia, Giorgia Serughetti.

MAGAZINE EDITOR

Gabriella Piroli direttore@prometeoliberato.com

CHIEF EDITOR

Caterina Moretti redazione@prometeoliberato.com

COVER ARTIST

Stephen Alcorn

ENGLISH REVIEW

Stephen Alcorn and Jorge M. Benitez

www.prometeoliberato.com

FOUNDERS AND INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Francisco Rodríguez Abrados ( greek philology, Universidad Complutense, Madrid ) - Marc Augé ( anthropology, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Parigi ) - Maurice Aymard ( history, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Parigi ) - Carlo Bordoni ( sociologist and writer ) - James Beck ( art history, Columbia University ) - Peter Burke ( history, Emmanuel College, Cambridge ) - Valerio Castronovo ( history, Università di Torino ) - Antoine Danchin ( biology, Università di Hong Kong ) - Marcel Detienne ( antiquity, École pratique des hautes études, Parigi ) - Ernesto Di Mauro ( molecular biology, Università di Roma ) - Umberto Eco ( semiology, Università di Bologna ) - Irenäus EiblEibesfeldt ( ethology, Max Planck Institut für Verhaltensphysiologie, Seewiesen ) - Lucio Gambi ( geography, Università di Bologna ) - Giulio Giorello ( filosophy of science, Università di Milano ) - Maurice Godelier ( anthropology, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Parigi ) - Jack Goody ( anthropology, Cambridge University ) - Françoise Héritier ( anthropology, Collège de France, Parigi ) - Albert O. Hirschman ( economy, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton ) - Gerald Holton ( history of science, Harvard University ) - Albert Jacquard ( genetics, Università di Ginevra ) - Jürgen Kocka ( history, Freie Universität, Berlino ) - Jean-Dominique Lajoux ( visual anthropology, Centre National de la recherche scientifique, Parigi ) - Vittorio Lanternari ( ethnology, Università di Roma ) - Jacques Le Goff ( history, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Parigi ) - Edmund Leites ( moral philosophy, Università di Queens ) - Richard C. Lewontin ( biology, Harward University ) - Giuseppe O. Longo ( information theory, Università di Trieste ) - Claudio Magris ( german literature, Università di Trieste ) - Vittorio Marchis ( history of technology, Politecnico di Torino ) - Paolo Maria Mariano ( theoretical mechanics, Università di Firenze ) - Francesco Marroni ( english literature, Università di Chieti-Pescara ) - Predrag Matvejević ( Slavic literature, Università di Roma ) - William H. Newton-Smith ( philosophy of science, Balliol College, Oxford ) - Alberto Oliverio ( psychobiology, Università di Roma )- Alexander Piatigorsky ( School of Oriental and African Studies, London University ) - Carlo Poni ( economic history, Università di Bologna ) - Tullio Regge ( physics, Università di Torino ) - Jacques Revel ( history, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Parigi ) - Ignacy Sachs ( economy, Centre international de recherches sur l’environnement et le développement, Parigi ) - Vittorio Strada ( russian literature, Università di Venezia ) - Keith Thomas ( ethnohistory, Corpus Christi College, Oxford ) - Nathan Wachtel ( ethnohistory, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Parigi ).

JOHN ALCORN

Original graphic design

Prometeo is a highly-regarded cultural and scientific magazine, Since it was founded in Italy in 1983, it has disseminated ideas and scientific findings through articles that are intellectually rigorous, but accessible to non-specialists. As it is evident from its Scientific Committee, Prometeo’s identity is deeply rooted in the European cultural, academic, and intellectual tradition. The original impetus of Prometeo, which remains valid today, was to break down existing fences between the humanities and the sciences, as well as between the different disciplines within each.

In the three decades that have passed since its first issue was published, the intellectual landscape has significantly changed. Yet, Prometeo remains a point of reference for those among us who seek high-quality sources for what we call “cultural updating.”

These three decades have also seen a radical change in the way we access information and in the emergence of English as the lingua franca of our time. Therefore, while the print edition will remain available exclusively in Italian, we are launching a digital version in English (American English, to be precise).

With the aim to make the digital, English version of Prometeo known, we have created a special, digital-only, completely free issue.

This March 2024 issue is freely available on our website www.prometeoliberato.com (also in dual language) – also in Italian. As link suggests, we have added a new word to our original name: liberato. In English it should be translated with “unbound.” It is a direct reference to Aeschylus and his trilogy, but we also like to think that we are unleashing a new, great energy.

This is a very unique issue, starting with the front cover. Created by Stephen Alcorn, it shows Narcissus trying to see an image of his beautiful self but this time the water returns to him the image of a robot. What will this new and fast-evolving generative world look like? How will our lives, and human civilization itself, change? We have worked assiduously on this topic, and by mid-April we will make freely available a series of essays on our website.

In this issue you will find pieces on history, from archaeology to Roman, from modern to contemporary; talks on physics, astrophysics, neuroscience and experimental research; forays into art (including an exclusive production for our journal) and the humanities. We have decided to republish some reviews from the recent past that are particularly adherent to the horizon that the journal wishes to embrace with regard to national and international nonfiction.

We hope we have succeeded in adequately conveying the polyphony that is typical of Prometeo and the wealth of content that our readers will find in each of our issues. We also hope that browsing this special issue will encourage you to subscribe to Prometeo’s digital edition. Prometeo is a labour of love. Our goal is, to say it with Nussbaum, to cultivate humanity. Therefore, Prometeo’s subscription is far from expensive (details can be found on page 180-181).

With are entering this new phase of Prometeo’s life with courage, commitment, and industriousness. We are making gamble, and we hope you will gamble with us. Comments and suggestions are welcome: direttore@prometeoliberato.com.

I conclude with an appeal: for three months we will be online for free, please help us to publicize this possibility of perusal.

Dear readers, thank you and happy reading!

Gabriella Piroli

David

Patrizia

Gianfranco

Sara

Stephen

Giorgio

Sabina

Carlo

Corrado

Luca

The East India Company, the Hartog’s philosophy, a very corporeal God. And then, our tribute to Bob Dylan, the memory for Marías. An interview with Peter Godfrey-Smith. A fable by Oscar Wilde.

THE SOLITUDE OF THE REFORMIST

The figure of Walther Rathenau traces an arc from Weimar to us. Entrepreneur and minister, Jewish and German, he cast the idea of the turning point in a wounded and impatient Germany. Assassinated in 1922, he remains an emblem of power, fragility and isolation in Europe old and new.

David Bidussa

The “loneliness of the reformer” is an expression I take from Federico Caffè [1982]. Caffè uses it to indicate the social and relational condition of those who try to propose changes in democratic political regimes encountering substantial mistrust from all the collective actors (political, but especially social) involved in their proposals.

“The derision is justified,” he writes, “insofar as the reformist, after all, is merely reweaving a web that others systematically destroy. And then—perhaps not forgetting that, like Camus’s Sisyphus [1980, p. 119], the strength of the reformist consists in not giving up and therefore “to try again”—he adds, “Being generally a man of good readings, the reformist knows perfectly well what distant roots have hostility to any intervention aimed at creating institutions that can improve things.”

Walther Rathenau’s story is not far from this profile.

FIGURES OF LONELINESS

“The day when the parliamentary state collapses under our blows of dictatorship, it will be the day of the most beautiful celebration.” Thus, in July 1925, Ernst Jünger [Breuer 1995, p. 99] vindicates

the long trail of bloodshed that marked the early years of Weimar Germany at the hands of the “Free Corps” (Freikorps).

At the center of that re-enactment is the scene of June 24, 1922, the day Walther Rathenau, Minister of Foreign Affairs is killed by two former German army officers who are members of the “Frankish Corps.” Rathenau is not their only victim: in August 1921, it also happens to Finance Minister Mathias Erzberger (1875-1921). Their deaths immediately take on a symbolic character. Both - Erzberger and Rathenau - staunch supporters of the path inaugurated with the Treaty of Versailles; both considered traitors to the German soul by their murderers. Thus both “alone,” albeit with two different profiles.

Erzberger’s loneliness descends from a condition of decline and thus appears more the consequence of isolation. Minister of Finance (1919-20), Erzberger is accused of corruption and suspended by the party from all political activity, and thus at that time he finds himself no longer defended “by his own” (a condition that has been repeated other times in transitional phases in which systems of protection are lowered to the point of leaving undefended those at the center of public scandals that delegitimize their figure).

Rathenau’s loneliness has a different nature: it stems from symbolically deeming him Germany’s traitor. His loneliness calls into question the ideology and deep-seated beliefs of a part of German public opinion. It is not just about what he has done, but who he is, that is, his identity and the judgment of his political action as a consequence of his identity.

In Italy, the day after his killing, Benito Mussolini [1922], who as a journalist in March 1922 in Berlin interviewed him, wrote: “Extremist circles on the German right could not forgive Rathenau two things. First, his foreign policy directive to do everything possible to fulfill the obligations of the Treaty of Versaille. Second, his Semitic origin. For right-wing German extremists, who considered themselves to be of pure Aryan stock, it was intolerable for a Jew to lead and represent Germany in the face of the world.”

So loneliness is that condition that allows the “Frankish Corps” to strike. That loneliness descends from a double profile: on the one hand, it is consequent to the political choices of Germany that emerged defeated from the war; on the other hand, it is the image that a society has of itself, of those it considers citizens or those who are called upon

to give extra proof of loyalty in order to enjoy the trust of their countrymen. As Hobsbawm [2021, pp. 29-41] has not failed to call to attention many other times in contemporary history, that dual condition is connected both with the intellectual and political choices that are made and are a consequence of the image that, in a given historical time, is constructed around the idea of identity and belonging.

THE NECESSARY TRANSFORMATION

“Only in the hour of responsibility, when after the military collapse, in 1919, the hardest task was imposed on him, to make the devastated state viable again by wresting it from chaos, the unheard-of forces that existed in him potentially suddenly turned into unified energy. And he created for himself the greatness innate to his genius, lavishing his life on a single idea: to save Europe.” This is how Stefan Zweig describes Rathenau in his book The World of Yesterday [2014, p. 158].

Around that project Rathenau has already been working since before the war, as director of AEG, the family business producing electrical equipment. He began to shape the project in 1917, when he was in charge of the Department for the Procurement of

The economy in Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). The German inflation rate after World War I reached the hyperbolic figure of 662.6 percent per year.

Raw Materials for war use at the Ministry of War, and which he systematized in written form in his notes devoted to the “world to come” [Rathenau 1917] and in the more famous The New Economy [Rathenau 1976], the latter book, which he drafted in 1917 and which would be promoted by Gino Luzzatto in 1919. Among his critical readers, interested in taking his proposals seriously, was Luigi Einaudi. “The past has fallen and will never rise again; if it was a paradise, it is now a lost paradise” [Rathenau 1976, p.19]. So it is necessary to think the future by producing an irreversible rupture. The war from this point of view was a watershed that obliges one to rethink the idea of being a community by maturing an organic vision of thinking of oneself as a collectivity, as opposed to an image of society based on opposition and division. The economic and social practices of nation-thinking during the war have thus marked not only the public vocabulary, now more sensitive to the idea of the nation, but also favored the idea of the organic unity of individual national groups.

Rathenau’s proposal is within the vocabulary of one who experienced war directly on the front lines, but without conceding anything to the ethos of the warrior. In this respect, his thinking is not comparable to the ideology of fascism. At the center is the producer, not the hero returning from the front.

This first fact is what makes him a die-hard enemy of those who return from the front and feel betrayed by “those who stayed home.”

A second front opens up here, which concerns the question of the forms of political and social representation of the labor worlds. The issue is: how to make the different labor actors cohabitate and cooperate in the name of recovery, ushering in an industrial paradigm different from the confrontational one that was dominant in the prewar era.

Reflection similar to those of the Laborites in England, with the form of industrial concertation on which segments of the Italian nationalist movement (e.g. Filippo Carli) and also of the trade union world (e.g. Rinaldo Rigola) thought and confronted themselves, but to which, at least in their reflections (the proposed solutions would be radically different if not opposite), the “workers’ councils” (a group for direct democracy) were also not foreign, and on which figures from the European socialist movement also converged (e.g. Otto Bauer). The theme, for

Walther Rathenau in Edvard Munch’s portrait, 1907. Bergen Kunstmuseum, Norway.

all, is the overcoming of orthodox socialism and the attempt to reconnect world of industry and its transformations with subjects and their sensibilities. It means making consultation the essential core of policy thinking. But it also means putting professional skills and technical knowledge at the center. That is, radically rethinking the previous industrial relations model. On this Rathenau, both in the pages of The New Economy as well as in an essay he published in early 1919, The New State, where he writes, “The state of the economy is in the first instance a professional state and a unitary state insofar as all those who act professionally—therefore, in the future, everyone—are represented in it” [1980, p. 32].

The war, therefore, Rathenau argues, dissolved many things already in the making before its outbreak, as he pointed out as early as 1913 [Rathenau 1979].

For example, the old distinction between heroes and merchants, figures on which Werner Sombart in 1915 had called German public opinion to task [Sombart 2014] and on which the myth of defeat as a consequence of the Fronde was being reconstructed. The postwar challenge, then, for Rathenau, was to banish the image of a Germany that had sold out

DAVID BIDUSSA

He is a historian of ideas, with a focus on those that developed in and about the twentieth century.

He has published: Il mito del bravo italiano (il Saggiatore 1994); La mentalità totalitaria (Morcelliana 2002); Dopo l’ultimo testimone (Einaudi 2009); La misura del potere (Solferino 2020), Siamo Stati fascisti (with Giulia Albanese and Jacopo Perazzoli, Feltrinelli Foundation, 2020); Benito Mussolini. Scrittie discorsi 1904-1945 (Feltrinelli 2022).

He has also edited Antonio Gramsci, Odio gli indifferenti (Chiarelettere 2011); Norberto Bobbio and Claudio Pavone, Sulla guerra civile (Bollati Boringhieri 2015); Zygmunt Bauman, Visti di uscita e biglietti di entrata (Giuntina 2015); Yosef H. Yerushalmi, Toward a History of Jewish Hope (Giuntina 2016); Benito Mussolini, Me ne frego (Chiarelettere 2019); Claudio Pavone, Gli uomini e la storia, (Bollati Boringhieri 2020); Victor Serge, La rivoluzione russa (Bollati Boringhieri 2021); George Orwell, Millenovecentocentottantaquattro (Chiarelettere, 2021).

and lost its soul and to argue that that soul was refoundable on a project to rebuild Europe.

Rathenau was killed precisely to oppose this project.

IN NO MAN’S LAND

But Rathenau’s loneliness does not descend only from this first element. It is accompanied by a second: his being a German Jew. The proud claim to his German-ness does not save him in the eyes of those who consider themselves “true Germans.” To them Rathenau is an “interloper.” A condition that indicates how that process that leads German Jews between the second half of the 18th century and the end of the 19th century to embark on the path of emancipation resolves itself only through apparent integration: a path that Zygmunt Bauman [2015] has clearly defined.

Emancipation has its antinomies. From one’s condition as a guarded minority, however marginalized, one perhaps exits collectively, but enters the new society individually. The story of that tortuous, complicated and troubled passage,” Bauman points out, however, does not end; on the contrary, it tends to perpetuate itself indefinitely. The mechanism of the most accelerated assimilation again produces detachment and, in the end, that path does not save them from the anti-Semitism of which they are victims and which often chooses them precisely as targets.

Compared to the previous generation, the one that started the emancipation process, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and which then the new post-Napoleonic season leads back to the condition prior to the opening of the ghettos, “they,” Bauman writes, “can no longer turn back and therefore fall back on their original identity. The process that begins in the mid-nineteenth century opens up a condition that represents a stalemate: their condition as marginal or outcasts from their group of origin makes them weak, that is, it places them in a ‘no man’s land’.” [Bauman 2020, p.121ff.]

The result is that at the end of the nineteenth century, the process of detachment stops. Exit from the original group does not produce entry. What was initially a liberating process becomes a condition of radical loneliness. Synthetically: if the assimilationist process alludes to the desire and the wish to escape or at least to undo the stigma of being a minority, then, Bauman concludes, it must be observed that that process has essentially missed its goal.

“The company does not exist to distribute dividends to lorsignori, but to run boats on the Rhine.” With these words Walther Rathenau had responded to the shareholders of Norddeutscher Lloyd, who were disappointed at the lack of profits. Since then, the Rhine boats have become a metaphor for collective interest and criticism of parasitic accumulation.

CONCLUSION

The denouement of Walther Rathenau’s story tells not only of the cultural difficulty of taking charge of the transformations that the war made inescapable and perhaps even fatal (his loneliness is not unlike that of Keynes in The Economic Consequences of Peace in the same years) or the difficulties of integrating.

That epilogue also indicates the real inability of European culture to measure itself, then, with the challenges it faces, freeing itself from those prejudices that have marked its history. A challenge that, then but also now, is about “rethinking itself” in order to shape the “European dream.” A content that still lacks a project or that is experienced as “nostalgia for the past” and not of “expectation and bet of the future” [Assmann 2021]. ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

W. RATHENAU, Von kommenden Dingen, S. Fischer, Berlin, 1917. L’economia nuova, Einaudi, 1976 - La meccanizzazione del mondo, in Tecnica e cultura. Il dibattito tedesco tra Bismark e Weimar, edited by Tomás Maldonado, Feltrinelli, 1979, pp. 171-201.

W. RATHENAU, Lo Stato nuovo, in id., Lo Stato nuovo e altri saggi, edited by Roberto Racinaro, Liguori, 1980, pp. 3-37.

A. ASSMANN, Il sogno europeo. Quattro lezioni dalla storia, Keller, 2021.

Z. BAUMAN, Exit Visas and Entry Tickets, Télos, 1988.

Z. BAUMAN, Modernity and Ambivalence, Cornell University Press 1991.

S. BREUER, Anatomie der konservativen Revolution, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993

F. CAFFÈ, La solitudine del riformista, in “il Manifesto,” January 29, 1982 [later in Id., La solitudine del riformista, edited by Nicola Acocella and Maurizio Franzini, Bollati Boringhieri, 1990, pp. 3-5].

A. CAMUS, The mythe on Sisyphus, Penguin Great Ideas, 2005.

E. HOBSBAWM, On Nationalism, Little Brown Book Group, 2021 .

B. MUSSOLINI, Rappresaglia, in “Il Popolo d’Italia”, n. 151, 25.6. 1922.

W. SOMBART, Traders and Heroes, Arktos, 2021

S. ZWEIG, The world of yesterday, Pushkin Press, 2011.

THE STARRY SKY ABOVE US

And also far beyond our sight. With JWST unveils images of a universe never seen before. And they are revolutionizing astronomical research.

Patrizia Caraveo

Two years after its launch, with a long list of discoveries already under its belt, James Webb Space Telescope is a revolutionary telescope. Astrophysicists compete to use it: there are so many requests for observing time that, on average, only 1 in 10 can be approved. Let’s forget about current events for a moment, to relive the excitement of the presentation of the telescope’s first images in July 2022. NASA had been concerned about the choice of targets well before JWST was ready for launch because they knew the stakes were very high.

Following the example of the Hubble Space Telescope, which entered the public imagination thanks to its spectacular images, which accustomed us to a Technicolor sky that is honestly more beautiful than the original, the first images of the new telescope had to be extraordinary, both in terms of scientific content and aesthetic value. The celestial objects to be observed had to be carefully chosen. They had to allow scientists to appreciate the depth of vision offered by the new telescope, but they also had to be appealing to the public, which had heard too many times about project delays, peppered with inevitable budget overruns.

The selection work had begun in 2016 when a group of science communicators had met with representatives of the three space agencies that funded the mission-NASA, ESA, and CSA (the Canadian space agency). In order to demonstrate the telescope’s

capabilities, the committee had prepared a list of seventy possible targets from which they would draw the final list once a launch date was decided. We would see images of two nebulae in our galaxy, a famous quintet of galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood, and a rather distant cluster of galaxies. Then, to demonstrate spectroscopic capabilities, there would be the spectrum of an exoplanet caught as it passed in front of its star.

To meet the public’s thirst for beauty, the images collected at infrared wavelengths, thus inherently colorless, would be colorized by graphics experts at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore (where both JWST and veteran HST are operated) who, thanks to years of experience with HST, knew how to combine filters to produce images with extraordinary colors.

I anticipated that I would see beautiful images that would allow us to perceive details hitherto hidden, but I could not phoresee that the presentation of the first images obtained by JWST would take on political significance. In a twist of fate, President Biden, an old friend of NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, decided to spearhead the preview presentation of the image of SMACS 0723: a cluster of galaxies that amplifies, multiplies, and distorts the more distant objects whose light must pass through it. It is a well-known effect called gravitational lensing, but JWST’s extraordinary sensitivity has taken it to unprecedented levels. Of course, the image that best represents the telescope’s ability to go back in

The Ring Nebula is a beautiful example of a planetary nebula created by gas ejected from a dying star. The right image of the Ring Nebula in the mid-infrared reveals a surprise: there are two stars in the center. On the opening double page, splendid view of part of the Carina Nebula, a constellation in the southern sky. JWST’s infrared eye reveals hundreds of newly formed stars within the cloud of gas and dust

time and see very distant objects was chosen, but neither Biden nor Nelson commented on the scientific content of the image. Instead, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were keen to give it a distinctly political interpretation, saying that JWST’s success is proof that America can do great things. Noting this fundamental truth, I would like to dwell instead on the image because it is worthwhile, since it is the deepest available in infrared. Indeed, the comparison with the image of the same field obtained by Hubble is revealing. The nearly three times larger diameter mirror and the ability to observe in infrared make all the difference. For those interested in some astronomical tidbits, I invite you to follow the ray of the central

star, pointing to the right at the top (these rays are artifacts produced by the hexagonal structure of the mirrors). You can see a reddish galaxy wrapped around a lighter roundish one. This is the gravitational distortion produced by the elliptical galaxy belonging to the cluster, which is able to bend the light produced by the reddish galaxy, which is a much more distant spiral (colors have been added to allow appreciation of the different distance of the objects, viewed with different filters selecting different wavelengths).

The gravitational lensing effect of the cluster is crystal clear: look at the countless little circle arcs drawn around the group of galaxies, whose mass deflects the light. The distorted image of each “lensed”

Nella doppia pagina di apertura, splendida visione di parte della Nebulosa della Carena, costellazione del cielo sud. L’occhio infrarosso di JWST rivela centinaia di stelle appena formate all’interno della nube di gas e polveri.

Beautiful vision of Stephan’s Quintet. It is a mosaic of a thousand pointings. The image is the combination of near and mid-infrared.

galaxy appears again and again, in a cosmic play of mirrors. The faintest sources emitted their light more than 13 billion years ago. Indeed, thanks to the gravitational lensing amplification effect, it is possible to see intrinsically very faint objects, and the race to find the most distant galaxy has already begun. First there was talk of galaxies being seen 300 million years after the Big Bang, then it went to 280 and finally to 250. These are rough estimates, because they are based only on comparing the emission in the different filters; we will have to make the spectrum to try to measure the redshift It will certainly be more difficult than getting the spectrum of WASP 96-b, a Jupiter-like planet, but very close to its star around which it orbits in just 3.4 days. The (rether unspectacular) spectrum shows the presence of water vapor absorption in the atmosphere of this hot Jupiter, certainly interesting though certainly not habitable.

Easier to appreciate are the images reproduced on page 14 of the ring planetary nebula whose beautiful shell of expanding gas has been ejected from the “dying” central star.

There are actually two stars, and the MIRI instrument, which is sensitive to emissions from lower-temperature objects, clearly reveals, for the first

PATRIZIA CARAVEO

She was director of the Institute of Space Astrophysics and Cosmic Physics in Milan and is involved in several missions: NASA Swift, Agile and NASA Fermi, as well as the Cherenkov Telescope Array project. In 2009 she received the President of the Republic National Award. In 2017, she was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic.

In June 2021, she was awarded the Enrico Fermi 2021 Prize of the Italian Physical Society (Sif). She is a member of the “2003 Group” for scientific research and of the “100 women against stereotypes”.

Among her latest books: Sidereus Nuncius 2.0 (Mondadori University, 2021) and Europe in the Global Space Economy (with Clelia Iacomino, Springer, 2023).

time, the presence of the second star, which is the source of the gas shell.

Still in the Milky Way, even more spectacular is the image of the Carina Nebula (the double-page image that opens this article), a star-forming region in the plane of our galaxy. Although, it looks like a

picture, but it will give a lot of work to those who study star formation processes because the infrared allows us to see newly born stars, when they are still shrouded by interstellar dust.

As we leave the galaxy, let us enjoy the image of the Stephan quintet, a quintet of galaxies that interact with each other 300 million light-years away from us. It is the kind of cosmic dance that determines the evolution of galaxies. For lovers of spiral galaxies,

there is a fantastic image of IC5332 in this page (posted by Judy Schmidt to show her treatment to MIRI images), while on page 19 shines the wagon wheel. Neither is part of the first set of images, but I find it fascinating to see how the gas and dust trace the spiral structure. Without detracting from the beauty of the images, I stress that the colors are “false”—or if you prefer “added”—because these are images collected at various infrared wavelengths,

SMACS cluster 0723 was pointed at for 12.5 hours using NIRCAM, the near-infrared instrument. It covers a very small portion of the sky but contains thousands of galaxies. The oldest ones are the faintest. On the opposite page, below: mid-infrared view of galaxy IC 5332, showing the spiral structure traced by dust. The graphic treatment was done by Judy Schmidt.

Two views of the cartwheel galaxy. The image above is the conbination of near and mid-infrared, the one below shows only the mid-infrared where dust can be seen tracing the cartwheel spokes. Opposite page: collage of 72 images collected by the Fine Guidance Sensor during the procedure of focusing the mirror segments for a total of 32 hours of exposure. The image, which is very deep, has not undergone any aesthetic treatment. The credit for all the pictures goes to NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI (for the spiral on p. 16, however, the credit of Judy Schmidt should be added). These and other images are available at https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

that is, well beyond red, but the color treatment makes them easier to appreciate.

To get an idea of what a real image looks like, without cosmetic treatments, look on the opposite page at this collage made with the Fine Guidance Sensor, the instrument that is supposed to control the aiming stability of the telescope. During the long procedure of aligning the mirrors, about seventy “engineered” images were collected: no beautiful celestial object had been chosen, but it was a test field.

The image is extraordinarily deep and is extremely rich in detail. Everywhere you look there are bright specks that are distant galaxies. JWST works even better than expected and certainly lives up to the astronomical costs. ■

THE POWER OF THE WOMEN OF POWER

Whomen in charge. They do not have the trappings of dynastic investiture, they are modern and interchangeable, and their success turns out to be the result of normal electoral competitions. The real news is that there are so many of them. Women holding premiership positions in governments and presidency in institutions are the consequence of fifty years of women’s empowerment?

If yes, do they constitute a “different” lever in national or community political life? If not, what is responsible for this gender successful, which is particularly massive in Europe?

But perhaps the most interesting questions are others. For example, understanding what traces come to us from historical studies. Or what symbolic order is being favored in contemporary fiction. What are the real rights that are affirmed (and which ones are denied instead).

Below are four interventions to try to grasp some crucial aspects of the issue.

Giorgia Serughetti, Sabina Pavone, Daniela Brogi, Sara Farris

THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSAL LAW

The success of female leaders who promise more rights for women but appeal to exclusionary ideologies.

Giorgia Serughetti

There is a “Hall of Women” in Montecitorio, a place of tribute to female figures who have made the history of the Republic. At its inauguration in 2016, three mirrors, accompanied by the plaques of President of the Senate, President of the Republic and President of the Council of Ministers, were also posted alongside portraits of the first women in high-profile institutional roles. They represented the gaps of the three offices yet to be held by a woman, and the message in the space below was an invitation to come forward: “it could be you.”

Today, just a few years later, two of the three gaps from that time have been filled. Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, in 2018, was called to preside over the Senate. Giorgia Meloni, in 2022, won the role of Prime Minister. It was since 1946, since Italian women gained the right to vote, that such an achievement was expected.

And yet this step forward, like Casellati’s election before it, raised great questions and discussion in the very feminist public opinion that had worked for decades to bring it about. For the first woman to lead the Senate was openly conservative on civil rights. Whereas today the first woman to head an executive is the leader of the radical right, the one who described herself first and foremost as “mother,” “Italian,” and “Christian.” These are women who are not only distant from women’s movements, but hostile to some of the most defining battles of those movements, such as defending the freedom to have an abortion and fighting against traditional gender roles.

How, then, should such success stories be treated? Is one woman’s “victory” an achievement for

all, whatever her history, her political outlook, her relationship with feminism, her model of power management?

Only when the “glass ceiling” is broken does it become possible to really come to terms, all the way through, with complex knots such as the relationship between gender membership and women’s transformative capacity with regard to the forms, languages and content of politics, or the link between women’s empowerment and the promotion of social justice in all its forms.

THREE RECURRING ISSUES

I try here to address three recurring issues in feminist debate, which the election of Giorgia Meloni, in particular, has brought to the fore. The first relates to the apparent paradox that those benefiting from the push to break male dominance in politics may be women who are indifferent or hostile to the women’s rights agenda, to which the question is linked: should women feel more represented in politics when it is a woman who gains the levers of leadership?

To answer this, we need to dwell on what it means to “represent.” According to Hanna Pitkin’s study The Concept of Representation (University of California Press), a crucial distinction is that between “standing for” and “acting for,” which corresponds to the two German words darstellen and vertreten. In the first meaning, that of representing is a relationship based on the correspondence or connection between representative and represented: the ability to “stand for” is linked to a similarity or reflection. In the second meaning, on the other hand, the substantive

dimension of the needs, demands, and interests of the represented comes to the fore, and the ability to represent is identified with “acting for” individuals or groups, aimed at actively pursuing certain goals.

The election of Giorgia Meloni, we might conclude, marks a step in the direction of a greater presence of women at the top of institutions and improves gender balance with regard to representation in the meaning of “standing for,” but it does not guarantee an advancement in responding to women’s demands, an “acting” to achieve collective goals, particularly those that find expression in the feminist lexicon of liberation from patriarchy.

A second issue that often comes up when confronted with the policy positions of women leaders of the radical right is the relationship between women’s rights and other categories of rights, or the intersection between gender and other dimensions of discrimination. Because in reality Giorgia Meloni, like Marine Le Pen in France and others, does not fail to give attention to some actual problems that affect large portions of the female population: from low employment to the problem of day care, from parental leave to violence. The problem here is that the solutions put forward respond to a non-universalist logic, because they are accompanied by a vision of the “natural” family and the “native” people from which significant segments of the resident population are excluded, such as those without citizenship or same-sex unions. The banner of women’s rights is mostly waved against supposed “enemies”: the danger of the foreigner and “the Islamization” of Europe, or the “gender” ideology that threatens to “erase” mothers.

Twenty-first-century feminism, which is increasingly sensitive to the complex relationships that bind sexism, racism, homotransfobia, and classism, cannot ignore the discriminatory and anti-egalitarian implications of such an agenda, even when it takes on some of the major issues of gender justice that women’s politics itself has worked to bring to the fore and force to public attention.

The third issue to be addressed concerns the relationship between women and the patterns of conquering and exercising power. In her inaugural speech as Prime Minister delivered before the chambers, Giorgia Meloni expressed thanks to the women who, before her, “have dared out of impetus, out of reason, or out of love,” and listed a series of illustrious names that have demonstrated over time “the value of Italian

women.” The neo-premier then placed herself, as an ideal continuation, in a history of national excellence.

However, it is not to other women that she believes she owes her success, nor to a collective history of emancipation from centuries-old forms of domination, such as that of the feminist movement. On the contrary, in her autobiography Io sono Giorgia (Rizzoli, 2021), the leader of Fratelli d’Italia claims her rise as a personal success, to be attributed to her own ability to compete with men, without political relationships with other women. And she points to this as the high road to power. Hers is a strictly individualistic model of empowerment that promotes no gender empowerment.

In the Berlusconian power crisis, faced with the dissolution of the “father” figure, Giorgia “took command of the sinking ship,” writes Franco Berardi Bifo in his review of Meloni’s book on the Not website (https://not.neroeditions.com/padri-figlie-e-fratelli-ditalia/). Command to do what? To re-found patriarchy “starting from the fraternization of women.”

From that ship, Ida Dominijanni notes in turn in L’Essenziale, “the sisters have disappeared: she is the only one in charge, and she also decides their fate, which is neither more nor less than the traditional maternal fate, however corrected with the salt and pepper of competence and competition, within a traditional family” (https://www.essenziale.it/notizie/ ida-dominijanni/2022/08/26/meloni-femminismo). So if the glass ceiling has shattered, it seems that its splinters are bound to cause wounds: in groups destined to become targets of the identity politics of the radical right, but also in all and sundry who have believed, and still believe, in processes of collective liberation, for women and beyond. ■

Researcher in Political Philosophy at the University of Milano-Bicocca. She works on gender and political theory, serves on the Editorial Board of Prometeo and is a columnist for Domani. Among her latest books: Il vento conservatore (Laterza 2021), Democratizzare la cura/Curare la democrazia (ebook Nottetempo, 2020); Libere tutte. Dall’aborto al velo, donne del nuovo millennio (with C. D’Elia, minimumfax, 2019); La società esiste (Laterza, 2023).

GIORGIA SERUGHETTI

THRONE AND ALTAR

BETWEEN RELIGION AND POLITICS

The ambiguous power of women in the modern age provides valuable insights to grasp female matrices and paths.

Sabina Pavone

What did it mean in the early modern age to be a woman of power? Through what roles was such power exercised? These are legitimate questions because such a condition did not always manifest itself according to today's common categories. Embodying a woman of power, depending on the contexts, could mean different things. The most obvious category was those who held positions of government: queens and regents held this role but could respond to very different models from one another.

Queens such as Elizabeth I (known as the virgin queen) or Catherine II, reluctant to have their agenda dictated by male figures in their entourage (political or sentimental) were counterbalanced by weaker figures, often at the mercy of their own feelings and incapable of making autonomous political decisions such as the regent Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV and succubus to her favorite minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Women in government roles were in any case exceptions, and the management of power obeyed essentially male canons. Being a woman was not in itself a guarantee of specificity in government except in very rare cases. Sometimes, however, especially in the contexts of noble lineages, a gender specificity could be grasped due to the use of different mechanisms such as women’s networks (networks) that acted through horizontal ties and that, with less fanfare, were able to condition government choices. In this sense, as several scholars who have dealt with gender history have shown, correspondence played a prominent role.

Women’s networks also functioned in the management of economic power, traditionally entrusted to men but sometimes also to women. A case in point is that of the Portuguese Jewish community that moved to

Italy after the Lusitanian Crown passed to Spain (1580) and anti-Jewish legislation was adopted in that empire as well. Figures such as donna Beatrice de Luna—also known as la Señora—inserted themselves into Italian social and economic life. Beatrice, a 26-year-old widow and sole heir of the wealthy merchant Francisco Mendes, settled in Ferrara after a passage in Venice. She not only played a key role in the management of the Mendes family fortune but also helped to make the city of Hercules II d’Este the important crossroads of one of the main trade junctions of the time, which, starting from London and passing through Antwerp, crossed the Alps to reach Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Constantinople from the port of Ancona. Beatrice also traveled with her sister Brianda and their respective daughters, thus building an all-female family network that soon saw disagreements arise between the two sisters in the management of the family fortunes. After a few years in Ferrara, Beatrice finally landed in Constantinople where she took the name Gracia Nasi and maintained the authority that many now recognized in Europe. And besides, her journey, like many others of women in those years—think also of the English Quaker women Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, who landed in Malta and were imprisoned there in the Inquisition prison for three and a half years—demonstrate, if

SABINA PAVONE

She teaches History of Christianity at the University of Naples L'Orientale. She's a member of the Executive Board of the Italian Association of Public History (AIPH) and of the Scientific Direction of Prometeo

there was still a need, that since the early modern age following tortuous paths, some female figures expressed through their “ability to act” (Mazzei) a different way of understanding women’s power. A case such as that of the United Provinces (equally a destination for Portuguese Jews) where women, from the seventeenth century onward, exercised economic power by managing family enterprises at home while their spouses moved across oceans, clearly shows that we do not rest on certain clichés. Other female models still had a way of being tested.

THE CHURCH AS A POLITICAL INSTITUTION

To provide another example, when one thinks of the Catholic Church, it is often regarded the male quintessential institution in the Western world. Even today, despite some tentative pushes in this direction, the idea of the female priesthood is rejected by the Roman Church hierarchy, and women are reserved for secondary roles.

It is difficult to think of a definition of powerful women in that particular context, but if we understand the Church not only as a spiritual, but also as a political one, as it effectively was, in the centuries of the modern age, then it is also possible to reason in terms of women’s power. The role played by the new women’s congregations from the sixteenth century onward was in fact fundamental for the consolidation of Catholicism not only in Europe but also in mission lands where more space was also given to women’s management as happened, for example, in Japan where they were protagonists of the Christianization of those islands, engaged in the role of preachers, catechists, participants in the management of the confraternities founded by the Jesuits.

The issue of female power within the Catholic Church then had implications of ambiguity in the area of mysticism and visionary ability of some leading figures in the religious life of the time. The aptitude for visions and ecstasy, an element contiguous with prophecy, made some of these women true “living saints,” respected and sought after and, therefore, in their own way, expressions of power within their community. These phenomena, especially after the Council of Trent, were viewed with some fear within the ecclesiastical institution, yet in some cases, such as that of St. Teresa of Avila, founder of the Discalced Carmelites (a new branch of the Carmelite order), because of the charismatic role they had played, they were incorporated into the official pantheon of the Church, even rising

to canonization. Even after her death, St. Teresa’s charism continued to play an important role in the spread throughout Europe and other continents of the new congregation she founded. It is equally true, however, that the dividing line between saint and damned was then very thin: the “living saint” could easily fall under the meshes of the Inquisition and be condemned to death. Teresa herself, moreover, was accused of diabolical possession and suspected heresy, as was her most important confessor, St. John of the Cross. Let us also think of St. Ignatius of Loyola and his seven inquisitorial trials, which indicate how the phenomenon was not exclusively female. The question then arises as to the criteria by which certain figures managed, albeit with difficulty, to be recognized as saints and others, accused of “simulated sanctity,” were punished as dangerous individuals. We cannot always understand the choices that guided the Catholic Church, but perhaps it is precisely politics that should guide us rather than reference to orthodoxy. Let us take one last example related to the saint Rose of Lima: unlike so many other indigenous figures in the odor of sainthood who were rejected by Rome, the canonization of Rose of Lima was a success of the Creole community in Peru, due to a real negotiation of the local elites with Rome, which was closely linked to the fate of the Iberian empires in the New World. Similar negotiations could also happen in Europe, especially within aristocratic or otherwise affluent circles (recall that Teresa of Avila was the daughter of a wealthy Spanish family of conversa origin, an additional danger factor). It was thus often the context of origin that made it so that a woman’s fate could be one of sanctity or damnation. This was not a general rule, of course, but it is something we must always take into account when we reason about women and power in the modern age ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

R. MAZZEI, Per terra e per acqua. Viaggi e viaggiatori nell’Europa moderna, Carocci, 2013.

S. ARCARA, Messaggere di luce: storia delle quacchere Katherine Evans e Sarah Cheevers, prigioniere dell’inquisizione, 2007.

B. BORELLO, Annodare e sciogliere reti di relazioni femminili e separazioni a Roma (XVII-XVIII secolo) in “Quaderni storici” 111/3, 2002, pp. 617-648

H. NAGATA WARD, Women Religious Leaders in Japan Christian Century,1549-1650, Routledge 2009.

J. BLINKOFF, The Avila of St. Teresa: Religious Reform in a SixteenthCentury City, 1989.

PUNK PRINCESSES AND ABSOLUTE QUEENS

Almost never ordinary women. Cinema also tends to reproduce clichés. And examples of female empowerment flow on the screens as the (splendid) exception that confirms the rule.

Daniela Brogi

For some years now, movies and TV series have been telling the story of queens more often than usual. One of the most recent examples is Corsage (2022), the film directed by Marie Kreutzer and starring the very talented Vicky Krieps as Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary Elisabeth of Bavaria (1854-1898), known as Sisi (Sissi) and consort of Franz Joseph. Also released in 2022 was the Netflix miniseries The Empress (Die Kaiserin), thus surpassing the number of more than forty adaptations inspired by “Sissi.” Dozens of works, then, followed in quantity by the many films inspired by British queens (Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II, Victoria).

It is a phenomenon that confirms the persistence of a cultural habit inclined to narrate and imagine women of power by drawing inspiration mainly from glamorous aristocratic figures, rather than less distant political leaders lacking illustrious blazons. This is not so strange, if we consider the gender gap ( gender gap ) still so high, particularly in leadership positions. Like a lung, the cinema, in the same way as literature and all the arts, absorbs reworks and throws back out, formalizing them, the surrounding political, cultural and symbolic arrangements—even betraying them, disproving them, attacking them, possibly, but in any case establishing a dialectic.

Thus, in the common imagination, and in the fictions that reinvent it, the female faces of power have been recurring even more for a while now, but, on the other hand, they continue to be pre -

dominantly princely figures: extraordinary, that is, uncommon, precisely, remaining, in short, on a paradigm of exceptionalism that somehow confirms a system of asymmetries.

With three main modes of treatment. We meet, in fact, either queens who have renounced themselves, even their own bodies, in order to transfigure themselves into the power of which they are the symbol ( Elizabeth , 1998, by Shekhar Kapur, played by Cate Blanchett); or rebellious princesses with a punk soul ( Marie Antoinette, by Sofia Coppola, 2006, played by Kirsten Dunst; the recent protagonist of Corsage ): restless girls, told, in each case, as protagonists of an existential rather than a political crisis (as is also Lady Diana in Spencer , by Pablo Larrain); or thirdly, you have strong-willed queens depicted grotesquely, such as Anne Stuart, first ruler of the Kingdom of Great Britain (from 1702 until her death in 1714) played by Olivia Colman in Yorgos Lanthimos’ fine work The Favourite (2018), where the queen’s face and her awkward body become the deformed theater in which the signs and symptoms of the most diverse passions are expressed, because power, in a context historically unfavorable to women, is as much about control as it is about vulnerability, about conquest and loss.

GAME OF THRONES AND THE CROWN

R eturning, however, to the starting question, namely “the power of powerful women,” the two queens who in the film and serial narratives of the

1910s represented more original ways of staging women in leadership are, I would say, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), the protagonist of the fantasy series Game of Thrones (2011-2019), who is a true leader and strategist, finally a queen acting (at least in a fantasy) through a symbolic system made of power relations and public conflicts; and then the protagonist of the first seasons of the series The Crown (2016-2022), dedicated to the reign of Elizabeth II. Indeed, the title of this series is already interesting because it immediately testifies to a particular choice of narrative. It is taken from a line by Shakespeare, taken from Henry IV (Part II, Act III, Scene I; 1597): ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ The Crown is, first and foremost, the staging of a myth of transformation, for it is the tale, accomplished also through the actorly interpretation of an increasingly expressionless and depersonalized facies , of the path taken by Elizabeth of Windsor to become “Elizabeth, the queen.” The various episodes unfold the steps through which the “illusion” of the crown as Elizabeth’s absolute “identification” with power is achieved and perfected; but the illusion applies as well in the symbolic and visual sense of illusio , that is, of an all-pervasive fiction—the fifth episode of the first season, not for nothing, lingers on the strategic efficacy of sending live on television, for the first time and at Philip’s initiative, the coronation ceremony, in 1953. The theme of mass-media amplification of power, and thus the dialectic between power, success and consensus, make The Crown one of the most interesting narratives about women in leadership, because, finally, at the center of the representation there is no longer a single queen extrapolated from history.

PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES

I t is precisely this last point, in fact, that is one of the two passages on which it is worth stopping the discourse around how, even outside of fictions, biographies of successful women are written or portrayed, accompanying or helping the emergence of cultural models favorable to female affirmation ( women empowerment ). It is not enough to proliferate narratives devoted to women if we do not break out of a way of telling stories that, in fact, keeps biographies within enclosures that remain patriarchal, because they give space to the narrative

and presence of women, including cases of leadership , only as emblematic bearers of exceptional, spectacular and self-contained heroism. In fact, it emphasizes fictional protagonism, but keeping it away from public history and turning off the gaze on the conflicts, i.e., also on the contradictions and inequalities in the midst of which women’s power has, or has not, made its way—often also through relationships (even with other women) that remain completely obscured if one looks only at the exceptional singularity.

Intertwined with this first problem is then a second problem, which by the way clearly does not only affect women, but certainly may risk further disfavoring the memory of their presence in history, namely the increasingly strong and storytelling culture-induced overlap between narrative consciousness and historical consciousness: of facts as well as biographies. To transform the (political, cultural) power of women, both past and present, only into large, compelling, fictionalized, confidential narratives (as also happened to Fernanda Wittgens, with the film Fernanda inspired by her); to reduce more and more of the connections, so essential to the work of analysis (and so important also as a verifiable critical form), into fascinating personal entanglements: all of which is not necessarily shifting and improving, in terms of political quality and cultural awareness, the recognition of the ways in which women, including queens, have belonged and in many cases have precisely chosen to belong in public history, even if the cost their own life. ■

DANIELA BROGI

She is a historian of modern and contemporary literature and visual critic. She teaches at the University for Foreigners of Siena. She contributes to several scholarly journals and cultural publications. She regularly writes about cinema in the online magazine doppiozero and in magazine Domus His most recent books are: Altri orizzonti. Interventi sul cinema contemporaneo (Artemide, 2015); Un romanzo per gli occhi. Manzoni, Caravaggio e la fabbrica del realismo (Carocci, 2018); Lo spazio delle donne (Einaudi, 2022).

IL TETTO DI CRISTALLO (DELLA MIDDLE CLASS)

THE GLASS CEILING IN THE HOUSE OF POWER

Current female success at the top is of little relevance to the majority of women at the lower levels of the “social house.”

L’attuale successo femminile ai vertici è poco rilevante per la maggioranza delle donne, ai piani bassi della “casa sociale”.

Sara R. Farris

Sara R. Farris

LThe increasingly significant presence of women at the top of political and economic institutions has been hailed by several international commentators as a momentous culmination of feminist battles for gender equality.

a presenza sempre più significativa di donne ai vertici delle istituzioni politiche e politico-economiche è stata salutata da diversi commentatori internazionali come punto di arrivo epocale delle battaglie femministe per la parità di genere.

The election of van der Leyen to the European presidency, Christine Lagarde to the presidency of the ECB, or Giorgia Meloni to the presidency of the Council of Ministers in Italy is in part symptomatic of a fundamental shift that has taken place within the feminist movement over the past four decades. If the women’s rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s fought primarily for the development of public welfare services and access to the labor market – in a context where most women in Europe were engaged mainly in unpaid domestic work – the gradual increase of women’s labor force in all productive sectors since the 1980s has also changed the nature of the feminist claims for economic equality. Campaigns for free daycare, or better conditions for maternity allowances, have been joined, and increasingly dominated, by battles for equal pay, equal opportunities in the public sphere (with the inclusion of so-called pink quotas) and denunciation of the implicit and explicit obstacles that prevent especially women seeking a career from reaching leadership positions.

L’elezione di van der Leyen alla presidenza Europea, di Christine Lagarde alla presidenza della Bce, o di Giorgia Meloni alla presidenza del consiglio dei ministri in Italia, è in parte sintomatica di un passaggio fondamentale che si è consumato all’interno del movimento femminista negli ultimi quarant’anni. Se i movimenti per i diritti delle donne negli anni Sessanta e Settanta lottavano soprattutto per lo sviluppo dei servizi di welfare pubblico e l’accesso al mercato del lavoro – in un contesto in cui la maggior parte delle donne in Europa era impegnata prevalentemente nel lavoro domestico non retribuito –, l’aumento progressivo della manodopera femminile in tutti i settori produttivi a partire dagli anni Ottanta, ha anche modificato la natura delle rivendicazioni per l’uguaglianza economica. Alle campagne per asili nido gratuiti, o migliori condizioni per gli assegni di maternità, si sono aggiunte, e sono diventate egemoniche, le battaglie per la parità salariale, le pari opportunità nella sfera pubblica (con l’inserimento delle cosiddette quote rose) e la denuncia degli ostacoli impliciti ed espliciti che impediscono soprattutto alle donne in carriera di raggiungere posizioni di leadership.

The latter battles, on closer inspection, reflect mainly the desiderata of institutional feminism, which has increasingly focused on the needs of middle-class women committed to breaking the famous “glass ceiling.”

Queste ultime battaglie, a ben vedere, riflettono soprattutto i desiderata del femminismo istituzionale che si è concentrato sempre di più sui bisogni delle donne della classe media, impegnate a rompere il famoso glass ceiling

Giorgia Meloni herself, in her inaugural speech as the new Italian PM, framed her election as Italy’s first female premier as the result of that glass ceiling finally being broken.

The presence of an increasing number of women at

La stessa Giorgia Meloni nel suo discorso inaugurale da neo-presidente del consiglio, ha inquadrato la sua

the head of key institutions, then would seem to testify to the success of this climbing exercise to the top ranks of the house of power by female white-collar workers.

elezione a prima premier donna in Italia come il risultato di quel tetto di cristallo finalmente infranto.

IS SISTERHOOD A MYTH?

But what happens on the lower floors of that house?

La presenza di un numero sempre maggiore di donne a capo di istituzioni chiave, allora sembrerebbe testimoniare il successo di questa operazione di vera e propria scalata verso i piani alti da parte dei colletti bianchi al femminile.

Is it possible to imagine that from the attic of this metaphorical abode of power the women who occupy it benefit all others?

LA SORELLANZA È UN MITO?

Ma cosa succede ai piani bassi della casa? È possibile immaginare che dall’attico di questa dimora metaforica del potere le donne che lo occupano portino beneficio a tutte le altre?

In un bel libro del 2011, la teorica femminista americana Kathi Weeks sosteneva che la maggior parte delle donne (negli Usa, così come altrove) non è tanto preoccupata di rompere il tetto di cristallo, quanto di non scivolare tra le faglie di un pavimento strutturalmente instabile.

In a fine 2011 book, American feminist theorist Kathi Weeks argued that most women (in the U.S., as elsewhere) are not so much concerned about breaking the glass ceiling as they are about not slipping through the faults of a structurally unstable floor. Instead of throngs of women lining up to climb the ladder that will take them to the upper floors, the house of power seems overcrowded especially on the ground floor. It is here that we find the largest number of women, engaged not only in the business of not slipping, but also in the arduous and unrecognized task of keeping that floor clean and safe for the frail ones in particular.

Invece di stuoli di donne in fila per salire sulla scala che le porterà ai piani alti, la casa del potere sembra sovraffollata soprattutto al piano terra. È qui che troviamo il numero maggiore di donne, impegnate non solo nell’impresa di non scivolare, ma anche nel compito arduo e poco riconosciuto di tenere quel pavimento pulito e sicuro per le più fragili.

I dati dell’ultimo rapporto Inapp 2022 in Italia parlano chiaro. Il lavoro domestico e di cura non solo rappresenta il pilastro dell’assistenza in Italia, ma è anche il comparto economico di importanza chiave nella crescita dell’occupazione femminile “sia per la delega alla cura da parte di donne occupate, sia per la percentuale significativa di donne occupate nel settore”. Con più di due milioni di lavoratori e lavoratrici tra regolari e in nero, il lavoro

Data from the latest INAPP 2022 report in Italy speak for themselves. Domestic and care work is not only the mainstay of care in Italy, but is also the economic sector of key importance in the growth of women’s employment “both because of the delegation of care by employed women and the significant percentage of women employed in the sector.” With more than 2 million men and women workers between regular and undeclared, domestic and care work employs the largest share of employed labor in the Southern European country. Although it is a critically important job, domestic and care work is also one of the lowest paid and least

secure, the latter aspect of which seems to characterize sectors that employ women more generally. But there is more. While we have so far paid attention mainly to the abode of power, the reality is that a very large segment of women are not inside that house at all, but outside of it.

domestico e di cura impiega la quota maggiore di lavoro subordinate nel nostro paese.

Sebbene si tratti di un lavoro di importanza cruciale, il lavoro domestico e di cura è anche uno dei meno pagati e sicuri, aspetto quest’ultimo che sembra caratterizzare i settori che impiegano le donne più in generale. Ma c’è di più. Se finora abbiamo prestato attenzione soprattutto alla dimora del potere, la realtà è che un segmento molto numeroso di donne non sta affatto dentro quella casa, ma fuori.

According to the Gender Policies Report compiled by INAPP in 2022, the female unemployment rate in Italy (at 9.2 percent) is higher than the male unemployment rate (at 6.8 percent), and the gap is even higher among the 15-24 year old population with unemployment rates of 32.8 percent for girls, and 27.7 percent for boys. Women are also those most often employed in part-time jobs, on precarious contracts or in low-paid, low-strategy sectors.

Secondo il Gender Policies Report redatto dall’Inapp nel 2022, il tasso di disoccupazione femminile (al 9,2%) è più alto di quello maschile (al 6,8%), e il divario è ancora più alto tra la popolazione tra i 15 e i 24 anni con tassi di disoccupazione del 32,8% per le ragazze, e del 27,7% per i ragazzi. Le donne sono anche quelle più spesso impiegate in lavori part-time, con contratti precari o in settori poco remunerati e poco strategici.

But the most striking figure is related to inactivity rates, which are almost double for women (43.3 percent) than for men (25.3 percent). And if so many women are officially ‘inactive’-that is, not employed and not engaged in job search-it is largely due to the fact that unpaid care work falls mainly on their shoulders. In a country where daycare centers for children under three, or nursing homes for the elderly, are predominantly private or inaccessible due to high costs, it is women (including many immigrant women) who take charge by providing a vital and yet unrecognized, or socially devalued and underpaid service.

Ma il dato più eclatante è legato ai tassi di inattività, quasi doppi per le donne (43,3%) rispetto agli uomini (25,3%). E se tante donne sono ufficialmente “inattive” – ovvero non occupate e non impegnate nella ricerca di un lavoro – lo si deve largamente al fatto che il lavoro di cura non-pagato ricade principalmente sulle loro spalle. In un paese in cui gli asili nido per i bambini al di sotto dei tre anni, o le case di cura per anziani, sono prevalentemente private o inaccessibili per via dei costi elevati, sono le donne (incluse tante immigrate) a prendersene carico fornendo un servizio vitale e tuttavia non riconosciuto, o socialmente svalutato e sotto-pagato.

We must ask ourselves, then, whether really the fact that several women now occupy positions of power, and even the premiership of the country, is an advantage to those who instead continue to occupy the lower echelons, or who rake in the backyard of unemployment and unpaid care.

Dobbiamo chiederci allora se veramente il fatto che diverse donne ormai occupino posizioni di potere, e addirittura la premiership del Paese, costituisca un vantaggio per quelle che invece continuano a occupare i piani bassi o che razzolano nel cortile della disoccupazione e della cura non pagata.

L’esempio di Giorgia Meloni è piuttosto chiaro. Salutata da tante come un esempio e una fonte di ispirazione per le donne italiane, la sua elezione alla più alta carica dello stato in realtà rischia di mettere a repentaglio molte conquiste dei movimenti femministi degli ultimi cinquanta anni. Nella regione Marche guidata dal partito di Meloni, il diritto all’aborto è praticamente negato e la regione si è opposta all’introduzione della pillola abortiva. Di più, sebbene Meloni parli di introdurre misure pro-natalità e abbia promesso di proteggere il meccanismo che consentirebbe più flessibilità in usicta per le donne che vanno in pensione, Fratelli d’Italia da una parte minaccia di eliminare il reddito di cittadinanza che consente a molte donne povere di pianificare una

Giorgia Meloni’s example is quite clear. Hailed by so many as an example and inspiration for Italian women, her election to the highest office of state actually risks undermining many achievements of the feminist movements of the past fifty years. In the Marche region led by Meloni’s party, the right to abortion is virtually denied and the region has opposed the introduction of the abortion pill. What’s more, although Meloni talks about introducing pro-birth measures and has promised to protect the mechanism that would allow more flexibility for women retiring, Fratelli d’Italia on the one hand threatens to eliminate the citizenship income that allows many poor women to plan a pregnancy, and on the other hand makes Opzione Donna more difficult especially for women without children.

That the Melonian invocation of women’s centrality was purely instrumental in a fundamentally nationalist and anti-immigration framework, after all, was well understood the very moment Giorgia Meloni set foot in parliament as head of government. As soon as she ascended to the penthouse of power, she surrounded herself with men in key ministries, naming very few women to lead ministries considered secondary; she omitted the last names of the women she said built the ladder that enabled her to break the glass ceiling (thus denying the public sphere of these women and relegating them to anonymity); and insisted that she be called president with the masculine article, as if to reassure the party’s entourage and base that her gender poses no threat, but rather reinforces patriarchal symbols of leadership.

The reality is that Giorgia Meloni, as well as Ursula van der Leyen, Christine Lagarde, or before them Theresa May for instance, do not represent a generic female united by the same interests for all. These ‘leaders’ actually represent the political interests of the political formations that brought them to power, as well as the interests of the classes to which they belong. It is not they who are betraying women, it is the myth of universal sisterhood already denounced by African American women and socialist and intersectional feminism that should no longer be taken seriously in our discussions. As Angela Davis, or Gloria Wekker put it well, the myth of sisterhood among women only reflects the needs and claims of middle-class white women. To believe that women at the top can extend a hand, or benefit women at the bottom, would be to re-propose a form of essentialism and naturalization of women’s roles that the feminist movement has struggled against since its inception. ■

gravidanza, e dall’altra parte rende “Opzione Donna” più difficile soprattutto per le donne senza figli. Che l’invocazione meloniana della centralità femminile fosse puramente strumentale in un quadro fondamentalmente nazionalista e anti-immigrazione, del resto lo si era capito bene nel momento stesso in cui Giorgia Meloni ha messo piede in parlamento come capo del governo. Appena salita sull’attico del potere si è circondata di uomini nei ministeri chiave, chiamando pochissime donne a guidare ministeri considerati secondari; ha omesso i cognomi delle donne che a suo dire hanno costruito la scala che le ha consentito di rompere il tetto di cristallo (così negando la sfera pubblica di queste donne e relegandole nell’anonimato); e ha insistito perché la si chiami il, e non la, presidente, quasi a rassicurare l’entourage e la base del partito che il suo genere non rappresenta una minaccia, ma anzi un rafforzamento dei simboli patriarcali del comando. La realtà è che Giorgia Meloni, così come Ursula van der Leyen, Christine Lagarde, o prima di loro Theresa May, non rappresentano un generico femminile accomunato da interessi uguali per tutte. Queste “leader” rappresentano in realtà gli interessi politici della formazione che le ha portate al potere, così come gli interessi della classe media e agiata cui appartengono. Non sono loro a tradire le donne, è il mito della sorellanza universale già denunciato dalle donne afro-americane e dal femminismo di ispirazione socialista e intersezionale, che non dovrebbe più essere preso sul serio nel nostre discussioni. Come dicevano bene Angela Davis, o Gloria Wekker, il mito della sorellanza tra donne non fa che riflettere i bisogni e le rivendicazioni delle donne bianche di classe media. Credere che le donne in cima possano tendere la mano, o beneficiare le donne che stanno più in basso, sarebbe come riproporre una forma di essenzialismo e naturalizzazione dei ruoli femminili contro cui il movimento femminista ha lottato dai suoi albori.

SARA R. FARRIS

She is an associate professor at Goldsmiths University of London, working on immigration and gender issues, nationalism/racism, theories of care and social reproduction. In Italian, she has written for Jacobin, the magazine of Il Mulino, Il Manifesto, and is the author of Femonazionalismo. Il razzismo nel nome delle donne (Alegre, 2019). Other books: Class in Catherine Rottenberg This is not a Feminism textbook, Goldsmiths University Press, 2023. With Mark Bergfeld Low skill no more! Essential workers, social reproduction and the legitimacy crisis of the division of labour, in Journal of Social Theory. 23 (2-3), 2022.

SARA R. FARRIS

È professoressa associata alla Goldsmiths University of London, si occupa di immigrazione e questioni di genere, nazionalismo/razzismo, teorie delle cura e della riproduzione sociale. In italiano ha scritto per Jacobin, La Rivista de Il Mulino, Il Manifesto, ed è autrice di Femonazionalismo. Il razzismo nel nome delle donne (Alegre, 2019).

DRAWING FROM LIFE AT THE SPEED OF SOUND

Reflections on the Mystic Union of Measure and Abandon in the Art of Figure Drawing

Stephen Alcorn

The Blot and the Diagram may be taken to express opposite poles of our faculties: arguably, the connection between the two has produced what we call art. This concept reflects the aesthetic ideas expressed in the writings of Benedetto Croce, particularly, the belief that art is connected with our rational rather than intuitive faculties. It represents a reversion to a very old idea.

Long before Leonardo had advised the artist to draw inspiration from the stains on walls, men had admitted the Dionysian nature of art. The Chinese produced some of the finest landscapes ever painted without any systematic knowledge of perspective. Greek figure sculpture reached its highest point before the analytic study of anatomy. Is it not the illogical totality, the mystic union of the blot and the grid, or the instinctive and the rational, which has given true art its significance? The exploration and implementation of this marriage of seemingly exclusive yet complementary mental faculties has been my primary objective since I was invited to teach at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts in the fall of 2010.

Analysis requires time, diligence, and patience. Inevitably, the process of gauging and transcribing one’s observations onto a two-dimensional surface necessitates innumerable interruptions of one’s eyehand coordination—the very coordination upon which spontaneous artistic expression depends. Such are the mechanics of observational drawing.

Unfortunately, excessive gauging and transcription, once championed in Beaux Arts schools around the world, can suffocate intuitive impulses in the name of precision and accuracy, especially in students drawing a live model. Rather than engaging in the centuriesold practice of life drawing, the students are forced to practice a sort of death drawing. That great intellectual achievement known as perspective, by which figures can be related to one another in some plausible and measurable spatial system, can also paralyze visual intuition and vividness. Without a proper balance of analysis and intuition, there is a danger that an impersonal, diagrammatic coldness will prevail at the expense of human tactility and warmth.

DRAWING AT THE SPEED OF SIGHT

As an instructor, I strive to provide my students with a healthy alternative to this dichotomy in art education. By dedicating the beginning of each semester to the fundamentals of gauging and transcription, I provide students with a foundation that serves as a precursor to the more interpretive approaches that follow—the elements of space, light, and time. The semester-long, incremental transition from analytical processes of transcription to increasingly intuitive mark-making practices culminates with a visit to the Department of Music where students are challenged to draw music majors as they train and rehearse— where they draw the human figure in continuous motion. They thereby experience the antithesis of the inanimate, static approach that has come to define conventional figure drawing instruction. Instead, they are introduced to drawing at  the speed of sound.

Such a practice precludes an interruption of the linemaking process. The use of a single,  continuous line is one of the means by which one can achieve a level of fluidity commensurate with the kinetic spirit of such subjects. By not lifting the drawing tool, a calligraphic rhythm is more readily achieved: a line becomes the embodiment of the figure in motion. The inability to pause and ponder the marks encourages students to act swiftly and decisively. The resulting economy of means fosters an awareness of the value in the creation of a graphic shorthand that expresses with few lines the essence of the subject.

Da Vinci, Tintoretto, El Greco, Rembrandt, Hokusai, Degas, Cezanne, Picasso, and Kollwitz demonstrated that it is possible to achieve a coherent and complete manner of drawing with a degree of definition no greater than that of a prehistoric drawing. The history of drawing demonstrates that eloquent expression may be achieved through the power of suggestion, rather than description, and that a few spontaneous hints may be as revelatory as an accumulation of careful, graphic statements. The drawings featured in this article are emblematic of my desire to celebrate the ties that bind music and drawing. Although they are different disciplines, drawing and music share a need to achieve a union of analysis and intuition. Like a musician, through these drawings I have sought to foster and celebrate a flow of consciousness rather than its interruption. I am immensely grateful for the privilege of drawing from life within the Department of Music’s vibrant learning environment. ■

Stephen Alcorn is a Professor of fine art in the Department of Communication Arts, School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University.

The studies reproduced herein are among the hundreds that Stephen Alcorn created directly in the spring of 2022, at the height of the pandemic. Drawing inspiration from the Chinese brush and ink drawings of Rembrandt and Hokusai, Alcorn sought to create a vivid record of his periodic visits to the Music Department’s vibrant and stimulating learning environments conducted by Professors Susanna Klein, Rex Richardson, Antonio Garcia and Twaylor Barnett. and in so doing, to experience and explore the indelible ties that bind the universal, timeless disciplines of music and drawing.  All drawings measure 11 x 14 inches (27.94 cm x 35.56 cm); the black-and-white images were created employing Chinese brush and India ink on rice paper, while the polychrome images were created employing oil pastels on 100 percent cotton rag paper. The works are on permanent display at Virginia Commonwealth University, James W. Black Music Center.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF WORMS

Elementary nerve circuits, organisms capable of movement. Some studies and solid observation lead to a radical hypothesis: Consciousness is a different phenomenon from thought.

Giorgio Vallortigara

Contro te povero verme le lagnanze sono eterne

(Toti Scialoja)

When wondering about the presence of consciousness in other organisms, people usually refer to mental abilities—reasoning, problem solving, decision making—as inferred from behavior. The assumption seems to be that if an animal exhibits sophisticated mental abilities then it must be conscious, with the corollary that the ability to exhibit sophisticated mental abilities is related to possessing complex brains.

Many theories that enjoy wide acceptance in the scientific community seem to share the same assumption, namely, the idea that the complexity of the nervous system somehow explains the emergence of consciousness. It seems to me, however, that this idea is wrong.

Mental activity is not consubstantial with consciousness. One of the most important acquisitions of modern neuroscience has been precisely the realization that much of our mental life is unconscious. The cognitive unconscious is not limited, as one might believe, to automatic and instinctive

responses, but operates in the more refined aspects of our mental life.

CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS

The examples are countless. I will just briefly illustrate a couple of them. Cognitive psychologists employ a technique known as Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) to investigate conscious and unconscious mental processes.

It works like this: one eye is shown an easily recognizable stimulus, say a well-known face, while simultaneously the other eye is presented in rapid sequence, say every 100 milliseconds, with a series of images, always different, consisting of variously colored rectangles inspired by those Mondrian painted. What happens under such conditions is that the face is not seen. Better said: it is not consciously seen, because it can be observed that cognitive processing, even deep processing, is nevertheless conducted in the presence of the suppression caused by the continuous succession of images a là Mondrian. This can be proved by measuring reaction times to perceived stimuli. Suppose you observe a simple subtraction with three numbers, 9 - 3 - 4. Since the stimulus was presented under CFS conditions you had no consciousness of seeing the three numbers and the symbols of the subtraction, much less therefore of

having calculated the result of the equation, which is 2. Subsequently, however, you are asked to read numbers aloud, responding as quickly as possible: what you observe is that you are faster at reading 2 than, for example, at reading 3. Everything takes place as if an inner calculator of whose operation you are unaware has taken it upon itself to carry out the equation and make the correct answer readily available to your lips.

In this example, the dissociation concerns the performance of a high-level cognitive skill, such as solving an arithmetic equation, and the psychological reference to being aware or unaware of having perceived the stimuli. But the same dissociation can be observed between the execution of a skill and the neural correlates that are usually associated with the execution of that skill.

RECOGNIZE THE STIMULI

A couple of years ago the case was reported of a patient with corticobasal syndrome, a rare neurodegenera-

tive disease, who showed an inability to read Arabic numerals 2 through 9, although he was able to read the letters of the alphabet normally. When shown a number, say 8, the patient was unable to recognize it and asked to draw what he was looking at he produced a jumble of graphic marks whose shape resembled a chaotic tangle of spaghetti. Curiously, the deficit did not manifest for 0 and 1 (perhaps because they resembled letters). But what is important to note here is that the inability to recognize stimuli also applied to what was shown in or at a dip of the numbers 2 to 9. For example, a face embedded in the graphic sign of the number 8, depicted prominently and recognizable under normal circumstances, was found to be non-experienced by the patient. And yet the electroencephalographic examination showed that the characteristic signature of face recognition, a negative signal known to specialists as N170 was observable in the electroencephalographic trace.

All this reveals that high-level mental processes are distinct from consciousness; one can observe the former

Artistic representation of brain cells.

PIXABAY.COM

in the absence of the latter. Conversely, consciousness can be observed in the absence of high-level mental processes. Intuitively, we know this very well because we have adjusted our consideration of those suffering from even major cognitive deficits to prudential criteria: we believe that being deprived of intelligence and reasoning is not the same as being devoid of sentience; one can feel something, for example pain, even when mental abilities are severely impaired.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS EXPERIENCE

In short, being conscious, in its primeval manifestation, that is, feeling something, experiencing something -- such as, for me right now, experiencing the hardness of computer keys, the black and white in the screen where I type, and the vague whiff of disinfectant in the freshly cleaned office -- is not identified with thinking, reasoning or paying attention. Consciousness is first and foremost experience.

Through studies of a variety of animals with miniaturized brains, we have learned in recent years that the most basic cognitive operations can be conducted with a handful of neurons. Bees, whose encephalic ganglion has less than a million neurons, are capable of discriminating human faces, abstractly categorizing the equal and the different, conducting approximate arithmetic operations, and recognizing after brief training on a limited number of specimens the graphic style of Picasso versus Monet in images never previously seen. The limitations of miniature brains relate, if anything, to memory stores or the ability to conduct perceptual analyses in parallel rather than

GIORGIO VALLORTIGARA

Professor of Neuroscience at the Centre for Mind-Brain Sciences at the University of Trento, of which he was also director, he is the author of more than 300 scientific papers in international journals and of several popular books including Born Knowing (MIT Press 2021) and Divided Brains (with L.J.Rogers and R.J. Andrew /Cambridge University Press 2013).

In 2016 he received the Geoffroy Saint Hilaire International Prize for Ethology and an Honorary Degree from Ruhr University, Germany. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. He writes for the cultural pages of newspaper such Il Sole 24 Ore and popular journals such as Le Scienze. He is part of the Scientific Direction of Prometeo.

sequentially (in fact, the latter is the mode by which usually moving insects actively explore visual scenes).

Whether or not reasoning, deciding, or problem solving requires large, complex brains is, however, irrelevant to the issue of consciousness. The idea that consciousness emerges spontaneously as a result of the complexity of the nervous system, particularly the cortex, seems to me to be magical rather than scientific thinking, and above all, it collides with well-established facts.

The dogma of the cortex (or its equivalents in other species) as the generator of consciousness is challenged by the classic findings of the Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, who had noted how excision of even large portions of the cortex, performed under local anesthesia to treat intractable forms of epilepsy, left patients conscious and communicative (even while

Bees have far greater cognitive skills than the modest amount of neurons would suggest.

the surgery itself was being performed). Even a radical surgery such as a hemispherectomy (the complete removal of an entire cerebral hemisphere) does not cause consciousness to fail, but merely damages certain discriminative abilities and motor or language skills of the patient. Of course, we know that massive bilateral damage to the cortex gives rise to a persistent vegetative state condition but, as neuroscientist Bjorn Merker has noted, this does not prove that cortical function is essential for consciousness, because cortical damage inevitably destroys the many circuits in the brainstem that under normal conditions receive inputs from the cortex.

THE BRAIN STEM

Even more dramatic is the evidence gathered by Merker himself in favor of the fact that children with hydranencephaly, a rare condition in which the prosencephalic hemispheres are largely and in some cases completely missing and the corresponding

cranial cavity is filled with cerebrospinal fluid, would be conscious (albeit severely damaged in terms of sensory, motor and intellectual abilities). Primary consciousness, the fact of feeling something, would be sustained according to Merker by structures in the brainstem.

But when and why in the evolutionary history of organisms did it happen that it was necessary to feel something? After all, we know that under various circumstances behavior would seem to be able to take place fully in the absence of conscious accompaniment. One can observe in this regard the impressive footage of subjects (both human and non-human) suffering from a condition called “blindsight” who move with ease in the environment without bumping into objects or even manipulating them correctly even though, as a result of a more or less extensive lesion to some portions of the primary visual cortex, they are cortically blind and declare (the human patients) or show in appropriate tests (the monkeys) that they

Possession of tiny brains does not prevent the faculty of feeling something.

do not experience anything.

The essay reproduced here summarized some of the content of the book The Origin of Consciousness. Thoughts of the Crooked-Headed Fly that will be available in English by Routledge, London.

a second carbon-copy signal (known as the “efferent copy” or “corollary discharge”) is sent to a system that provides a comparison with the sensory signal that is about to occur, as if in a kind of prediction about the possible sensory outcomes of the action. I have argued recently that if, as theorists such as the evolutionary psychologist Nicholas Humphrey have argued, the initial response to sensory stimuli was to take the form of a bodily reaction, the carbon copy (the efferent copy) of this signal is precisely what gives authorship to the bodily reaction, that is, the fact that it is felt, that it is one’s own, namely, that it is conscious.

Some videos on the behavior of subjects with “blindsight” can be seen at these links:

https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=rDIsxwQHwt8

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0960982208014334

Little or nothing do we know at present about the specific contents of feeling of other organisms, which may be incommensurate with our own (as philosopher Thomas Nagel observed, what might a bat feel when it experiences the shape of an object with its sonar?). However, I believe that we can usefully address the question why experiencing something was necessary at a certain moment in evolutionary history. In particular, I believe that the important transitional moment occurred when organisms took to moving in the environment actively, and consequently faced the problem of recognizing in sensory stimulations what turns out to be happening as a byproduct of their own movements. To grasp the point, imagine stimulating a mole out of its burrow with a throw of soil to hit its flanks: the animal will respond with an appropriate defensive maneuver. However, the same defensive maneuver will not be enacted by the animal as it burrows underground, in spite of the fact that as a result of its movement it will happen that it is sensory stimulated by the topsoil.

THE CARBON COPY

The solution to the problem, which has had a long genesis both theoretically and experimentally, but which is related in particular to the research of the behavioral physiologist Erich von Holst, is based on the idea that each time the nervous system sends a signal to the motor system to generate a bodily action,

The presence of circuits that carry out the kind of feedforward mechanism that underlies what von Holst labeled the “reafference principle,” could thus represent a minimal but necessary condition for something to be felt to be a particular kind of creature, such as a worm. About the specific qualitative contents of this feeling something at the moment we can only say that we ignore them. But if we could faithfully reproduce the cellular circuitry that sustains them nothing would prohibit, in principle, making them our own, for example in a prosthesis, and knowing for the first time what it feels like to be a worm when the earth touches it or, if Maurice Merlau-Ponty was right when he noted that to see is to palpate with the gaze, to be a bee that feels the touch of ultraviolet light reflected from the petals of a flower. ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

MERKER, B. (2007). Consciousness without a cerebral cortex: A challenge for neuroscience and medicine. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30: 63-134. PENFIELD, W., JASPER, H.H. (1954). Epilepsy and the functional anatomy of the human brain. Little, Brown and Co., Toronto.

SCHUBERT, T.M. ROTHLEIN, D., BROTHERS, T., CODERRE, E.L., LEDOUX, K., GORDON, B., MCCLOSKEY, M. (2020). Lack of awareness despite complex visual processing: Evidence from event-related potentials in a case of selective metamorphopsia Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117: 16055-16064.

SKLAR, A. Y., LEVY, N., GOLDSTEIN, A., MANDEL, R., MARIL, A., & HASSIN, R. R. (2012). Reading and doing arithmetic nonconsciously. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(48), 19614–19619.

VALLORTIGARA G. (2017). Sentience does not require “higher” cognition. Commentary on Marino on Thinking Chickens. Animal Sentience, 2017.030 VALLORTIGARA, G. (2020). The rose and the fly. A conjecture on the origin of consciousness. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 2020 Nov 16; S0006-291X(20)32048-9.

VALLORTIGARA, G. (2020). Lessons from miniature brains: Cognition cheap, memory expensive (sentience linked to active movement?), Animal Sentience, 29 (17).

DAMIANO THE BLIND

He played the lyre and converted the Japanese. In that century and in that Far East where some adventurous Jesuits left a trace, but often also their lives.

Sabina Pavone

MODERN AGE AND CHRISTIANITY

On the night of August 19, 1605, at about midnight, “by torchlight,” two officers from Morindono, daymiō of Yamaguchi, put Damiano, the blind lyre player, on a horse and by the favor of darkness led him out of city. Upon reaching the river bank, even before dismounting from his horse, understood what the intent of his “guardians” was: he had long ago converted to Christianity through the preaching of Jesuit missionaries, but the advent of the Togukawa to the shogunate had led to a violent de-Christianization of Japan. The Jesuits had then been driven out of many cities, including Yamaguchi, and Damiano had found himself filling serving as a substitute for the community of Japanese converts (kirishitan) by “catechizing the Gentiles, preaching to’ the faithful, baptizing the children, burying the dead et procuring [...] to preserve them in the faith” (Life and Glorious Death of Damien, Japanese Blind). Morindono, however-”impelled on the one hand by the ancient and angry hatred against the faithful of Christ, and on the other stimulated importunately by the Bonzes and priests of the idols”-”resolved to drive Damiano out of the world,” so as to discontinue any enterprise of evangelization of his lands.

Like many other converts, Damiano’s fate could therefore only be death. The lyre player was well aware of this, and already along the way he had addressed the two officers reminding them that “though blind I know that you are leading me to the public place of justice to take away my life as a Christian,” but this fear had by no means discouraged him or prompted him to abjure the Christian faith. On the contrary, to use the passionate Baroque prose that Jesuit historian Daniello Bartoli attributed to Damiano, the lyre play-

er would have responded fiercely, “Here I am to die. Fry me, boil me alive, roast me, and if you have worse to do to me, do it” (L’Asia, 1825, l. III, p. 121). His executioners therefore cut off his head and also cut his body “into minute pieces, throwing part of them into the river and part into a nearby thicket, so that they might not come into the hands of Christians.” The shrewdness was not enough, however, and in the morning some of those Christians “with God’s help” retrieved his head and left arm, which were then taken to the Jesuit church in Nagasaki, then still active, to be venerated as holy relics.

THE UNEXPECTED ANTI-CHRISTIAN INVOLUTION

How was it possible for the situation to have deteriorated to such an extent compared to 1549, the year when Francis Xavier landed in Japan? “The Apostle to the Indies” had then written to Ignatius of Loyola that the Japanese could not be treated in the same way as the sparsely civilized peoples of the New World and that one had to have respect for their culture and adapt to the rules of their social living. Xavier’s lesson had been taken up by the next generation of missionaries, and Alessandro Valignano in the Ceremonial for Missionaries to Japan (1583) had formalized his proposal by eliciting significant adherence to Catholicism from some warlords. The great ambassadorship to Europe of some of these young converts (1585), received by Gregory XIII himself, had represented a further stage in the propaganda strategy of the Society of Jesus aimed at exalting the order’s missionary policy. This phase had been very short-lived, however. Having ascended to the shogunate, Toyotomi Hideyoshi had expelled the

Full professor at the University of Naples L’Orientale, she teaches History of Christianity and History of Missions. She is part of the Scientific Direction of Prometeo. Since 2011, she is in the Scientific Committee of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, the series of the publisher Brill Jesuit Studies, and since 2020 she is in the Executive Board of the Associazione Italiana di Public History (AIPH). She is involved in Digital and Public History projects and on the scientific committee of Digital Indipetae Database (Boston College). She wrote with Franco Motta Lessico della storia moderna (Carocci, 2024) and she coedited with Valeria Merola and Francesco Piran Personaggi storici in scena (eum, 2020), with Giuseppe Capriotti and Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Eloquent Images. Evangelization, Conversions and Propaganda in the Global World of the Early Modern Period (Leuven UP 2022). The story of Damiano the blind man is one of the conversion stories collected in Chiara Petrolini, Vincenzo Lavenia and Sabina Pavone’s volume Sacre metamorfosi. Racconti di conversione tra Roma e il mondo in età moderna, Viella 2022.

SABINA PAVONE

Jesuits for the first time in 1587. Yet in those very years conversions had been multiplying: between October 1589 and October 1590, 21,000 people had been baptized; then Valignano himself in 1591-when the great ambassadorship returned-was received at court, offering the shōgun a series of gifts. On that occasion Hideyoshi, while not revoking the edicts, had nonetheless allowed ten missionaries to reside in Nagasaki, which enabled the Jesuits to maintain some bases in semi-clandestine status that fostered conversions. The growth of the Kirishitan community (involved in some cases in local conflicts between warlords) exacerbated the hostility of the central power, between the 1610s and 1630s, so that at the time of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s shōgunate, a significant number of missionaries (Jesuits and Franciscans) and Japanese converts suffered martyrdom for refusing to abjure the Christian faith. Among the many cases of martyrdom (not only in mission lands, but also in Protestant states), that mission in Japan undoubtedly had the greatest resonance in Europe, not only because of the numbers and the heinousness of the punishments, but because as early as 1627 Urban VIII

beatified the first 26 martyrs (canonized, however, by Pius IX only in 1862), including Paul Miki, the Japanese convert who later joined the Society of Jesus. Among the best-known Japanese martyrs was Marcello Mastrilli, who, during his illness following a serious incident, had a vision of Francisco Xavier encouraging him to leave for the Rising Sun rather than die. It can be said that Mastrilli — eager to travel to a Japan now closed to Europeans and Christians — planned his own future martyrdom, which occurred in 1637. Among the Japanese converts who devoted themselves to martyrdom, the case of Damiano the Blind, whose profession as a lyre player and storyteller was adapted to Christian preaching, is a typical example of the hybridization and adaptation between cultures that the Jesuits used in the East. Moreover, this hybridization also involved art and architecture: if Valignano in the Ceremonial devoted a chapter to the construction of churches in the Japanese style, religious iconography was also affected by forms of syncretism between Renaissance and Japanese art, as in the famous Madonna of the Snows painted inside the Seminary of Painters founded by the Jesuit Giovanni

Martyrdom of Nagasaki, attributed to German painter Johann Heinrich Schönfeld. Above is another depiction of the same theme: Martyrdom of Nagasaki, 1622, kept at the National Heritage Board in Singapore.

Niccolò in the early seventeenth century.

At the time when the Jesuits began to be persecuted and were forced to abandon their residences in Japan, the converts, and in particular the lyre players who along with the local catechists were familiar with the language, exercised a role as a substitute for the missionaries. Indeed, if a part of the Christian community, not yet sufficiently established, melted away like snow in the sun, those who persisted in the new faith had to adjust to living in hiding and relying on the few rudiments of the Christian faith learned up to that time. Some kakure kirishitan communities, lacking proper religious leadership, established a hybrid form of Christianity that saw Christian dogmas paired with aspects of pre-existing Japanese culture. This did not save them from persecution, however. The Japanese inquisitors devised a foolproof system for detecting converts: those suspected of crypto-Christianity were asked-often forced-to step on certain tablets engraved with crucifixes or other sacred images (fumi-e). Those who refused were denounced incurring terrible torture and sometimes an actual death sentence. The story of the Japanese martyrs has also recently been brought to the cinema by Martin Scorsese with the film Silence (2016) – based on the novel written in 1966 by Shūsaku Endō – where the film’s greatness lies precisely in posing, without easy solutions, the problem of the meaning of evangelization where conversion becomes the certainty of persecution as in the case of Damiano the blind.

In his case we are indeed in in Yamaguchi (Amanguci, in the sources of the time), near Fukoshima, where daimyō Mōri Terumoto (1553-1625), grandson of the better-known Mōri Motonari (1497-1571), reigned in the early seventeenth century. The opening of a Jesuit residence had aroused the hostility of the local bonzes, and when Motonari, hostile to Christians, conquered Yamaguchi, all property belonging to the Jesuits was confiscated and given to the Buddhists. Between 1586 and 1587 the mission was then temporarily restored, and Morindono (as it is called in Jesuit sources Terumoto) made some concessions to the Society fathers, who reopened their houses between 1599 and 1602, when the mission finally declined. Still in 1601 the provincial of Japan, Francis Pasio, wrote from Nagasaki to General Acquaviva of the good state of that community and of Morindono’s willingness toward converts; but in those same months his confrere Valentim Carvalho recorded instead the first changes in the policy of the local lord, who had changed his attitude toward Christians by conforming to the policy of persecution carried out by the Togukawa clan who had risen to the position of shōgun.

THE PROSELYTIZING OF LYRE PLAYERS

The Japanese tradition of lyre-players (Biwa-Hōshi), comparable to Provençal troubadours in their talent for combining verse and music, was consolidated in the 13th century; it was not necessary to be blind, but very often these figures were, and although they mostly came from a disadvantaged social class, they had a recognized status within Japanese society. Upon their arrival in Japan, Francisco Xavier and his companion Cosme de Torres immediately sensed the potential that lyre players could represent for the evangelization of those lands, and it was in Yamaguchi, in 1551, that they converted the troubadour Ryōsai, who took the name Lourenço, later joining the Society of Jesus as a lay brother. He was the first to combine indigenous music with verses from the Bible to induce conversion and teach Christian doctrine not only in Latin but also in Japanese. His disciple was the very young Tobias, and then Damiano, “personaje bastante sui generis” (as Luís Fróis calls him in a letter dated September 20, 1589) as well as a multifaceted figure who succeeded in finding a harmony between the two cultures, the Christian and the Japanese. At the end of the 1580s, after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Yamaguchi, Damiano in fact found himself exercising a function

One of the fumi-e the converts had to step on.

as a substitute for the missionaries, not only preaching the truths of the Christian faith but also intervening publicly against the bonzes of the Shaka (Xaca) sect to reiterate that the only salvation could be had through Christianity. This costs him an initial denunciation with the “viceroy” of those lands, from which he managed, however, to emerge unscathed. Damiano maintained relations with the vice-provincial Alessandro Valignano, who was in Nagasaki and also exercised a typical function of missionaries in the East, that of exorcising the possessed and the possessed. Although there is no consensus on the exact date and place of his martyrdom, the most widely accepted hypothesis is that it occurred on August 19, 1605, near Yamaguchi, on the bank of the Fushinogawa River. His head and one arm were found by the Christian Bento and sent to Nagasaki as evidence of his torture, evidence that allowed Damiano to be included in the list of Japan’s 188 martyrs (almost all lay people) beatified in 2008 by Benedict XVI.

The story of the lyre player Damiano the Blind circulated in Italy within a few years of the events described, as evidenced by the numerous versions of his martyrdom. The original source is a littera annua from Japan, one of those letters that missionaries sent annually to Rome to report on their endeavors. The author of the letter was Portuguese

Jesuit João Rodrigues Girão but it carried the text of an additional missive written by the auxiliary bishop of Funai, Jesuit Luís de Cerqueira. The litteræ annuæ used tales of conversion as a tangible sign of the successes achieved in the most remote parts of the world both with the intention of fostering the intensification of vocations within the Order and to propagate such exploits to the wider European public. Very often, in fact, excerpts of these letters were given to print, especially in Rome and Venice, two of the main places of printing in early modern Italy. In the case of Damian, his story was published along with other epistles about Japan in 1608 but was later taken up by Giovanni Battista Jacobilli, an Umbrian surgeon close to the Vallicella Oratorian milieu, in a manuscript collection of lives of men and women in the odor of sanctity. In the late seventeenth century, the Jesuit Jean Crasset took it up in his history of the Church of Japan, and later St. Alphonsus de’ Liguori republished it once again, testifying to the attention that still surrounded the memory of the martyrs of the Rising Sun. Kirishitan literature of the time also emphasized the vocation to martyrdom of Japanese male and female converts, especially recalling the model of the ancient Christian martyrs in a further short-circuit between Japanese and European traditions. ■

The Twenty-six Martyrs of Nagasaki, engraving by Wolfgang Kilian Habsburg, 1628.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

RELATIVITY FROM BOLOGNA TO STOCKHOLM

In 1921, Einstein was visiting Bologna. Three lectures at the Archiginnasio, shedding light on a theory that was epoch-making for everyone (but not for the Nobel Committee).

Luisa Cifarelli and Raffaella Simili

ALBERT EINSTEIN

1. BOLOGNA

“We are here [with sister Maja] together in Florence,” Einstein wrote in a postcard to his friend Besso on Oct. 20, 1921, “tomorrow I am leaving [...] for Bologna where I have to give a lecture in Italian, poor things!”

It was his visit to Bologna, the only Italian city where Einstein gave three lectures on relativity open to the public. Einstein came there at the invitation of Federigo Enriques, the distinguished mathematician who was then a professor in Bologna, a dynamic organizer of cultural enterprises and the former editor of the journal Scientia. About these conferences Einstein and Enriques had written to each other at length. It seems, among other things, that their contacts dated well before the letter of greetings written by their mutual friend Heinrich Zangger in 1917, director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Zurich.

In any case, in 1920, Enriques apologized for not being able to reply to a postcard from Einstein because of “the unfortunate war” and hoped to be forgiven by expressing “consent and esteem” to “a superior spirit like his.” In continuing, Enriques, after some pleasantries, expressed, on the one hand, the most fervent admiration for Einstein’s last great achievement, general relativity. On the other hand, he confessed that he “had not well assimilated the spirit of his directive ideas,” wishing to be able to meet him “under conditions favorable to a restful conversation.”

The opportunity to fulfil this “most vivid aspiration” presented itself not even a year later. In a letter dated January 19, 1921, Enriques informed Einstein

LUISA CIFARELLI

Professor Emeritus of experimental physics at the University of Bologna, her interests of research have always been in the field of subnuclear physics at very high energies, with experiments at major European laboratories such as CERN in Geneva. She is also involved in publishing activities such as La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento, EPJ Plus, Scientific Reports, Il Nuovo Saggiatore, and she is on the Editorial Board of Prometeo. She has been president of the Fermi Center (2011-19), European Physical Society (2011-13), and Italian Physical Society (2008-19).

that it had been planned to have him (“No name has seemed equal to his and no subject so exciting to the scientific world as relativity”) inaugurate a series of meetings promoted by the University to invite foreign intellectuals of clear renown to our country.

Einstein replied in the affirmative, nostalgically recalling the “good memories of his youth,” namely, the periods he spent in Milan, Pavia, and Casteggio between 1895 and 1902. Enriques was also thrilled that the lectures would be in Italian, which would make his word even more “fruitful.”

At the end of September Enriques moved on to the organizational stage: “Dear and distinguished colleague, I receive with great interest your kind letter, from which I have confirmation of your coming to Bologna, in the second half of next month. Accordingly your three conferences remain set for the days: Saturday, October 22, Monday, October 24 and Wednesday, October 26. In this way there will be ease, as you kindly suggest, [...] to arrange some meeting en petit comité; since many of us are anxious to have many explanations from you, as you can well imagine [...]. In any case, I beg you to favor in my house, having tea, on the evening of Friday 21 at 9 o’clock (i.e. 21) [...]. It is understood that your son, who is just the age as mine, will come with you.”

Thus it was that Albert Einstein delivered three lectures on October 22, 24, 26, 1921, at the Archiginnasio, home of the ancient Studium, which were a great success with the audience.

Three memorable photographs remain of those lectures, one depicting Albert Einstein and Federigo Enriques in the loggias of the Archiginnasio; the

RAFFAELLA SIMILI

Passed away in August 2022, she was Professor Emeritus of History of Science at the University of Bologna. Her interests included the history of science and culture, scientific institutions in Italy after Unification, and gender perspectives. She was President Emeritus of the Italian Society for the History of Science and Life Member of Clare Hall (Cambridge, UK). She has been a Visiting Fellow in England and the United States. She edited, together with Sandra Linguerri, the volume Einstein parla italiano (Pendragon, 2008).

other, Einstein alone; the third Einstein, Enriques and a group of professors from the University, both taken, it seems, by Enriques’ young son Giovanni with a Kodak camera.

Later, he went to the University of Padua to pay tribute to the discoverer of absolute differential calculus, Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, and to personally show him all his esteem and deepest gratitude.

According to the local chronicle, Albert Einstein “spoke for an hour, slowly, accurately, in Italian, with a scientific precision that seemed almost to acquire relevance and perfection from the linguistic precision of the speaker, an absolute and gifted master of our our language”.

Welcoming Einstein and his son on their arrival in Bologna fell to Enriques’ second daughter Adriana, then a mathematics first-year student.

“Under the shelter of the Bologna station, Anselmo Turazza, Emilio Supino and I in our goliardic caps were waiting for the train to arrive. How will we recognize him? Will he travel first- or second-class? Will he speak in Italian? To us modest freshmen at the University, it seemed that the task of receiving Einstein was too much beyond our merits.”

“But then”, as she continued her tale, “a prolonged whistle was heard: the train was entering the station. Emilio had to watch the second-class travelers, Anselmo the first-class ones. I wandered here and there lost and trepidatious. But when from a thirdclass carriage disembarked a tall gentleman with an

imposing appearance, a wide-brimmed black hat like those worn by artists, his hair falling down to his ears, we had no doubt. All three of us, breaking through the crowd that packed the station, rushed toward that gentleman. It was he. It could only be he, Albert Einstein. We did not even know him in photographs, yet we would have recognized him among thousands of travelers. The imprint of genius seemed to be written on his forehead.”

The soiree of the 21st organized at Enriques’ house in honor of the great scientist was also attended by a number of journalists: “Prof. Alberto Einstein arrived in Bologna today from Florence,” wrote the Corriere della Sera correspondent, recounting the reception offered at Prof. Enriques’ where the latter had gathered with wide and brilliant hospitality around his illustrious guest “the best of Bolognese intellectual elite [...]. A few minutes after arriving he had already engulfed himself in a discussion with two luminaries of Italian science, [Tullio] Levi-Civita and [Quirino] Majorana, a very strong mathematician the one, a very strong physicist the other.”

Reports of his lectures were widely echoed in major local and national newspapers.

To go by their accounts, Einstein’s impact on the audience was theatrical, similar “to that of a bel canto star on an opera stage.” At the first lecture, curiosity “among all those who want to be able to say on every occasion I’ve been there too” had been so heightened that the Stabat Mater, the Aula Magna of the

Archiginnasio, 1921. The professors are, from left: Tarozzi, Pincherle, Errera, Perozzi, Majocchi, Bortolotti, Burgatti, an unidentified person, Einstein, Bompiani, Enriques, Bianchi, Brini. Credit Zanichelli Archives

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Archiginnasio, proved to be completely insufficient. Even in the following days, interest in the lectures on relativity continued to increase, attracting the usual “large audience,” mostly of students, who had made a habit of spreading out in the Archiginnasio’s hallway and under the Pavaglione portico.

According to Adriana Enriques, hardly anyone understood the theory of relativity, yet the Archiginnasio was packed not only with scientists who had come from all parts of Italy, but also with students from all faculties, humble artisans, and workers. The emotionally moved populace made way for Einstein’s passage and followed him in long columns as if to show their gratitude to him for having chosen Bologna for a first contact with Italy after so many years of absence.

“Alberto Einstein does not need to be introduced to you,” so began Enriques pompously at the opening of his keynote address, in accordance with a deft staging of which he was now a consummate expert having experienced it successfully in his own time at the 1911 International Congress of Philosophy. He continued, “the fame that is, in this case, heralding glory, has already called out his name.”

His theories “among the most abstruse [...] today solicit the attention of the whole world, and not only of mathematicians or philosophers, but of the general public, since”, Enriques continued, “he subverts with his critique the common concepts of space, time and motion [....]. Reason has non necessarily defined limits, [...] it does not offer to experimental data a predetermined order, but finds in itself the power to enlarge the frameworks in which the familiar experience of close things is composed [...]. Certainly there is something surprising and almost fearful in this progress of thought that exceeds the limits of our own intuition [...].”

His “revolutionary” doctrine has offered “new occasion to cry the bankruptcy of science,” Enriques emphasized, reiterating polemical positions already taken in the past, but “those who judge in this way are far, not only from Einstein’s thought, but from the historical concept of science [...].” “Thus Einstein’s theory does not mean the death of Newton’s theory, rather the conquest of a truer truth [...].” Here, Enriques concluded in the name of that banner of reason and freedom that he always pursued throughout his intellectual iter, “is the real motive for the emotion aroused by Alberto Einstein. He restores our confidence in reason” or rather “invites us” to “turn to the contemplation of the order that

the mind manages to discover outside itself, in the marvelous work of art of nature.” This is why it was necessary to listen “reverently to the Master’s word: with that reverence which is due to free spirits and which wants to be a free discussion of ideas.”

Taking the floor in Italian, the Master first explained how the theory of relativity had arisen from problems related directly or indirectly by experience such as the concept of simultaneity given as self-evident as well as from the usual assumption that the shape of bodies is independent of their motion.

He then went into the illustration of the theory of special relativity starting from the principle of relativity in the narrow sense and the law of the constant speed of propagation of light in different directions, regardless of the motion of the light source, in order to show how these two valid laws derived from experience only seemingly conflict with each other.

In the second, while he briefly summarized the concepts of special relativity set forth in the first lecture, he addressed the problems related to general relativity by pointing out, among other things, how measurement methods provided by non-Euclidean geometry were connected to it and how it was possible to extend the results of the special theory of relativity to accelerated (or non-inertial) systems and come to the knowledge of the general law of the gravitational field. This law is not a new law

A rare photograph of Albert Einstein as a very young man. Credit Image Archive ETH-Biblioteck Zürich

compared to Newton’s classical law, but a broader one, in that it accounts for certain anomalies relating to planets that Newton’s law alone cannot explain.

In the third he dwelt on a consequence of the theory, subject to experimental confirmation, and went on to expose, on the basis of all the results obtained, the “relativistic” conception of the universe. At the end of this lecture, Einstein did not fail to add that the mathematical tool he used was derived from the calculations of Gauss and Riemann as well as Ricci-Curbastro and Levi-Civita.

The latter was interviewed at the end of the lectures by the correspondent of the Messaggero, who naturally mentioned the revolutionary character of the theory as well as the Italian contribution of Ricci-Curbastro and Levi-Civita, extended for the sake of patriotism to Guido Castelnuovo, Roberto Marcolongo, Gian Antonio Maggi, and Attilio Palatini.

Returning to the Bolognese days, the great scientist also bid farewell to the city with a meeting at the Academy of Sciences, where an extraordinary session was held to deepen some points of the theory of relativity. The president, Giuseppe Ruggi, gave a welcome greeting to Einstein, who had been elected a foreign member in April 1921, while Enriques exposed the lines of discussion. Burgatti, Ciamician, Majorana, Amaduzzi, Levi-Civita, Castelnuovo and, of course, Enriques spoke. All of them, according to the minutes, were brilliantly answered by Einstein, who thus earned the president’s warmest thanks.

A few months later, Enriques, who had been a scientific advisor to the Zanichelli publishing house since 1906, promoted the first Italian translation of Einstein’s 1917 work, On the Special and General Theory of Relativity, with a preface by Levi-Civita.

Shortly thereafter, two volumes by Roberto Marcolongo came out: the first, Relativity (1921), collected the lectures given at the University of Naples where he was a full professor; the second, A Synthetic Look at the Special and General Theory of Relativity (1922), aimed to explain in a concise and popular manner special and general relativity.

A year later, also published by Zanichelli, Castelnuovo’s extensive treatise on the foundations of relativity entitled Space and Time According to the Views of Albert Einstein came out.

Marking a continuation of Bologna’s interest in relativity came the lectures of Luigi Donati, professor of mathematical physics, given between December 1921 and February 1922, which were

followed a year later by those of Paul Langevin on the structure of the atom and magnetic properties, at the Archiginnasio and the Institute of Physics. A colleague and friend of both Enriques and Einstein, Langevin was invited as part of the initiatives of the same committee that had sponsored Einstein’s visit.

2. STOCKHOLM

1921 is also remembered as the year of Albert Einstein’s Nobel Prize in Physics. In fact, the prize was not awarded to him until 1922, and that year Einstein could not even travel to Stockholm to collect it. When the news reached him, he was in fact at sea, between the United States and Japan where he was headed, and it was absolutely impossible for him to attend the ceremony in Stockholm. But because in order to receive the prize money, not just the award, it was essential to give a Nobel Lecture, Einstein finally arrived in Sweden in 1923.

Invited by Svante Arrhenius (1903 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) to Gothenburg, he gave a famous lecture there on July 11, 1923, on Fundamental Ideas and Problems of the Theory of Relativity, a lecture that did not, however, illustrate the work for which he had been awarded the Nobel Prize. But since people were far more interested in the remarkable new theory of relativity than in the photoelectric effect (the official motivation for the prize), he was expressly asked to talk about it. What he gladly did in front of Sweden’s King Gustav V, in a packed lecture hall, at the 17th Scandinavian Natural Science Conference organized during the Göteborg Jubilee

Bologna, 1921. Albert Einstein and Federigo Enriques under the loggias of the Archiginnasio. Credit Zanichelli Archive

ALBERT EINSTEIN

World Exhibition (in Swedish Jubileumsutställningen i Göteborg), held on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the city’s founding.

This late lecture given in 1923 in Gothenburg, instead of Stockholm, on a topic unrelated to the prize, nevertheless became Einstein’s Nobel Lecture (and was published as such) for his 1921 Nobel Prize won in 1922!

Now that the papers of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Einstein’s case are no longer secret, finding out how difficult it was to award the multi-nominated and very famous theoretical physicist is almost surreal. The reason the Nobel Prize was suspended in 1921 and not awarded to anyone was precisely the heated controversy within the Nobel Committee over Einstein’s revolutionary theories of special relativity and general relativity (i.e., gravity). The problem was brilliantly solved by Carl Wilhelm Oseen, a mathematical physicist from Uppsala University who joined the Nobel Committee on Physics in 1922. He managed to propose a duo whose work was in his view related: Professor Albert Einstein, of Berlin, as the 1921 Nobel Laureate for the photoelectric effect (“regardless of the value that, upon confirmation, could be attributed to the theories of relativity and gravity”) and Professor Niels Bohr, of Copenhagen, as the 1922 Nobel Laureate for the structure of the atom. Einstein is the only Nobel whose citation for the prize also indicates what he was not a winner for. Perhaps it was a deliberate choice by the Swedish academics to leave him a chance to later get another one. Which, however, did not happen.

3. UNFORGETTABLE DAYS

A few months before Langevin’s lectures in Bologna, namely on February 8, 1923, Enriques had taken up his pen again to write to Einstein. This time, however, for serious reasons. Enriques, in fact, in recalling the “unforgettable days” in Bologna and informing him of his move to Rome, reminded him of the “desire that many would have in Italy to have you here permanently among us [...]” also because rumors were circulating that conditions in [Berlin] had changed and that, for anti-Semitic reasons, Einstein was no longer comfortable and was about to leave his positioin there and Germany as well. “If this is the case,” he continued, “there is reborn the hope that we can gain you, somehow to our country. [...] I merely spoke about it with the Minister of

P. Education, who is the idealist philosopher Prof. Gentile, and he authorized me – although in strict confidence – to tell you that he is for his part willing to welcome very gladly an initiative in this regard.”

Einstein, deeply moved, responded a few months later by declining the invitation:

“Dear Colleague, your letter moved me greatly, and I must openly confess that I would prefer your, and Levi-Civita’s, company to that of my colleagues here. But [...] I am very much attached to my present environment by family, friendship and business relations. At my age it is not so easy to change environment [...]. But if in the future I feel compelled, due to the aggravation of the situation, to leave this nest of mine, I will immediately turn to you with joy and confidence.” Great – in Adriana Enriques’ recollections – was the disappointment in the building of Via Sardegna, in Rome, where both the Enriques and the Levi-Civita lived; and yet it was necessary to inform swiftly – Enriques knew this well – Minister Gentile, a character not to be offended!

“Dear Minister, I hasten to communicate to you the response received from Einstein [...]. Einstein expresses the deepest gratitude for the idea you had regarding him and also the greatest sympathy for the colleagues with whom he would find himself here, but he says that he has now formed in Berlin a small circle in which he lives and which it would be difficult for him to leave. At his age it is generally not so easy to change environment, because one is no longer elastic enough to blend in with a new one. Einstein adds expressions of sympathy for our country and ends the letter by saying that – if in the future – he should think about changing environment, he will turn to me in complete confidence."

According to Adriana, the attempt to call Einstein to Italy was repeated ten years later. But this time –as she had to point out – it was Mussolini himself who opposed it. By then the political atmosphere had changed profoundly since the Fascist regime in 1925 had turned into a full-fledged dictatorship. In mid-October 1933 Einstein, persecuted by the National Socialist regime, emigrated to the United States never to return to Europe, not forgetting, however, Italy, as he had occasion to write to Benedetto Croce in 1944 wishing “that his beautiful homeland” that he “loved so much as a child would soon be liberated from the evil oppressors from without and within.” ■

Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein in 1925, Nobel laureates in physics in 1921-22.

“This is not a popular book intended for the general public; it is a textbook that grew out of my notes for the university course on introduction to the theory of relativity, which I taught for many years, first in the United States and then in France.

An introductory, concise little manual. It attempts to present its conceptual, philosophical, physical and mathematical foundations in a profound but simple way, and summarize its structure and most important results: gravitational waves, expansion of the universe, black holes--the extraordinary phenomena predicted by the theory, the verification of which in recent years has rained Nobel prizes on the research community of “relativists.” For me, general relativity has been a great love. But the effort to “understand” it was a long journey that never really ended. Like understanding a great love, on the other hand. The theory is a resounding leap forward in our understanding of the world, the kind that takes time to digest thoroughly. Einstein, after completing its equations in 1917, returned many times to the meaning of his theory, repeatedly changing his mind about how to understand it. In my opinion, the best version he gives of it is in a late writing from the 1950s. Today there is no longer a debate about what the theory preaches. But there is still debate about how best to think about it.

In summary, general relativity is the discovery that two entities we thought were different are actually

the same. One is the gravitational field, the little brother of the electric field, which transmits the force of gravity as the electric field transmits the electric force. The other is the space in which we are immersed. In fact, “spacetime,” which is kind of the house inside which reality lives. When it turns out that two things are actually the same, one can be eliminated. Many, including Einstein at first, have exclaimed, “Ah! But then the gravitational field is actually spacetime (which curves).” Some others, however, prefer to look at it from the opposite point of view, “Ah! But then spacetime, the house inside which things happen, is nothing but the gravitational field!” This includes Einstein in his more mature reflections. In my opinion, this second perspective, perhaps less common, is more forward-looking. Not because the two perspectives lead to different predictions. After all, they are just names. But powerful intuitive images are associated with names; names naturally attach themselves to other ideas, and direct thinking in one way or another. The great American physicist Richard Feynman wrote that a good scientist keeps in mind equivalent ways of understanding the same phenomena, because one among others will later prove more effective. My life’s work is to try to extend Einstein’s theory to include the quantum aspects of gravity as well. To do this, it is necessary to take the theory in the right direction.”

(Carlo Rovelli)

CARLO ROVELLI, GENERAL RELATIVITY (CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS)

UCHRONIAS OF ANCIENT ROME

Twists and turns, unpredictable turns and alternative scenarios. Many historians, ancient and modern, have been unable to resist the allure of a counterfactual exercise.

Luca Fezzi

With ‘ifs’ and ‘buts,’ history is not made,” goes a well-known proverb. Even Benedetto Croce, in La storia come pensiero e come azione (Bari, 1938), reasoning on the historical meaning of necessity, heavily criticized the “if” as anti-historical and illogical. It, in fact, divides “arbitrarily the one historical course into necessary and accidental facts,” like a “little game we use to play within ourselves, in moments of idleness or laziness, fantasizing about the course our life would have taken if we had not met a person we have met, or had not made a mistake we have made.” How would it be possible to make judgments about what has not been, perhaps by those who, as a result of different life experiences, would have made time to mature other sensibilities? To Croce’s reasoning one could more prosaically add that many judgments seem to change casually according to the individual and historical moment.

The philosopher’s stated target was the work of Charles-Bernard Renouvier. The French thinker, also a liberal, had given to print, in the climate of defeat of the early years of the Third Republic, Uchronie, or l’utopie dans l’histoire, whose eloquent subtitle read: Esquisse historique apocryphe du développement de la civilisation européenne tel qu’il n’a pas été, tel qu’il aurait pu être (Paris, 1876).

The historical fact arbitrarily altered, and placed at the basis of extraordinary outcomes, was the succession to the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius. It was to take place not with his natural son Commodus-who always enjoyed lousy “press,” moreover revived by the now 20-year success of Ridley Scott’s film The Gladiator, but with Avidius Cassius, actually a usurper killed in 175 AD by his own soldiers, but whom, it is said, Marcus Aurelius would have liked to pardon. Renouvier developed the latter possibility. The rebel explained to the emperor that he wanted to deal decisively with Rome’s many problems. These included the extinction of the plebs, the usurpation of the military element, and the anti-Roman fanaticism of the Christians. Avidius Cassius asked to be adopted, thus pushing aside Commodus, whom he accused of being the son of a gladiator. The emperor ended up accepting, and the two initiated major reforms. Among them were citizenship for every free or enfranchised man in the western provinciae, benefits for cultivators, compulsory military service with reduction of the term of service to only three years (for soldiers, then only professionals, it was more than twenty), introduction of civil rights for women, and revocation of citizenship for Christians. These, during the reigns of the successors, ended up being concentrated

in the eastern provinciae. The pagan religion itself was changing, from the worship of deities to the worship of the larii of the great emperors. When the empire finally dissolved, Christian “sects,” in perpetual conflict with each other, triumphed in the East. Meanwhile, barbarian invasions took place, and the Mohammedan religion developed. While the West, now divided into republics, maintained dominion over the sea, crusades of Christians, on this occasion allied with Muslims, set out against them from Asia. Then came the discovery of the New World, trade wars, and social clashes. Greek and Roman thought, however, never failing, shaped the West into the political form of federation.

Uchronia – a neologism created from ancient Greek to denote “non-time,” mirroring utopia, “non-place”—gave name to a literary genre, that of “uchronia,” now better known as “virtual,” “alternative,” or, in their less fictional and more historiographical declension, “counterfactual” stories. It also gave them a new impetus, although counterfactual reasoning had already been widespread in literature and historiography since Greco-Roman antiquity, and had found new fortune for at least a century. But let us recall that already in the second half of the seventeenth century another Frenchman, the philosopher Blaise Pascal had formulated two famous hypotheses in the Pensées. The first concerned Oliver Cromwell, who, if a grain of sand had not entered his urethra, would have had the better of Christendom and the English royal family. The second concerned the effects of love and vanity: “If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have changed.”

Renouvier’s target was, evidently, the deterministic, finalistic historical readings in vogue at least as long as the idea of “progress” still seemed viable. Some sixty years earlier, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, during university courses on the philosophy of history, published posthumously, had even shaped the image of a History moved by Reason, where Rome played, in the destinies of the world, a role as decisive as it was predetermined. And in turn, Croce, a liberal historicist influenced by Hegel, attacked Renouvier.

But early on, even before history itself challenged trust in Reason, Hegel had drawn criticism from two distinguished colleagues and countrymen, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. The former, believing human choices, compelled by the unmanageable individual will, clarified the tranquilizing function of the concept of “necessity”: “an evil that blames us is less tormenting than the thought of the circumstances in which we could have avoided it [...] there is therefore

no other consolation than fatalism” (The World as Will and Representation, Leipzig, 1819). The latter went so far as to write that “neither the events in the life of the individual nor those in history have a necessary course, the course, that is, of rational necessity” (Philosophical Notes 1867-1869) and that, as a result, “all history has been written so far from the point of view of success” and the “question, ‘What would have happened if this or that thing had not survived?” is almost unanimously rejected, and yet it is precisely the cardinal question through which everything is transformed into something ironic” (Posthumous Fragments, 1875-1876).

Eironeía in the original Greek sense of “dissimulation,” because the relationship between history and destiny, one knows, is a problem to be taken seriously. This is also true in the case of Rome, although it is precisely its historical success in becoming the “eternal city” that makes counterfactuality particularly alienating, and for this reason useful, not only in understanding but also in enlivening a crystallized image.

Even in ancient times, Rome’s contemporary success had prompted reflections, often provocative, on the “turning points” that had determined the fortunes of the city and its empire. Let us try to review the major ones.

The accidental character of the very moment of “founding” was well highlighted in The Fortune of the Romans, a work by the Greek philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea, a sincere admirer of the Urbe. In it he counted, among the many positive cases experienced by the city of the seven hills, the survival of the founder Romulus from an attempted infanticide. However, as we said, it was a provocation. A world without Rome

was even then—and would be, all the more so, todayunimaginable. None of us would have come into being, at least in the same times and places. And this is a purely probabilistic, biological consideration. If we then take into account the cultural contribution, without the city of Romulus there would have been no Middle Ages, Renaissance, Modernity and much more.

If we reason as historians, however, we can say that a world without Rome would, in any case, be unlikely. The place where it arose, at the crossroads between the coastal route from Campania to Etruria and the Tiber, the major river of central Italy, and on the borders between the Etruscan, Latin, and Sabine worlds, lent itself well to accommodating a successful city. An alternative pole could have established itself still further inland on the Tiber, but without being able to rely on the ford of the Tiber Island and the natural fortress of the Capitoline Hill.

Another key-moment was the transition from monarchy to res publica, which happened, according to legend, in 509 BC, when the last king, Tarquin the Proud, was driven from the city. The rebellion, recalls Livy, had stemmed from violence carried out by Tarquin’s son against Lucretia, wife of the patrician Collatinus. But such violence, again according to the Latin historian, had come about because of a futile dispute between the two men and was also due to a few too many drinks.

In fact, the shift toward “democratic” orders was an ongoing trend in many cities in Italy and Greece.

During the Gallic sack of Rome in 390 BC, chance, at least according to Livy and Plutarch, played an even greater role. Then the Capitoline geese, awakened by

The Death of Caesar, by Vincenzo Camuccini (1806), National Museum of Capodimonte. In the opening image, The Battle of Ponte Milvio, by Giulio Romano (1520-1524), Vatican Rooms.

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL THEORIES

a group of Celts attempting, through a night climb, to seize the fortress, raised the alarm, saving the city and its honor.

Again, in reality, things were perhaps otherwise. The Celtic attack was a raid, not an invasion, and it is not even certain that the Capitoline Hill had managed to hold out or that the Urbe had not been recovered through a lavish ransom.

A further “good fortune” of Rome, again according to Plutarch, was the untimely death of Alexander the Great, who, had he not passed away in 323 BC, would have undertaken the conquest of the West after conquering the East. Livy, too, wondered what would have happened, patriotically concluding instead, that the Romans would have won.

From this famous “uchrony” the English historian Arnold Toynbee produced a full-fledged account (If Alexander the Great Had lived on, Oxford, 1969). Let us follow it. The Macedonian, having recovered from illness, would have embarked on maritime expansion while Alexandria became the capital. Carthage fell, after heroic resistance, in 319 BC. The advance in the West, however, encountered obstacles, and Alexander discovered an inconvenient truth: his early success had been “built” by the Persians, thanks to roads. India lacked them, as did the Iberian Peninsula. He then turned back, to invade the Italian Peninsula through the Strait of Otranto, which happened in 317 BC, with an attack on Samnium. This was—in Toynbee’s uchronia – the power that controlled the Peninsula, having trapped, in 320 BC, the forces of the Romans. Expeditions then set out for present-day Punjab; their success opened the way to the West for Buddhist missionaries. The Ch’in were then annexed, even further to the East; finally, in 308 BC, a fleet reached the mouth of the Blue River. By the time the entire world should have only been governed, Alexander’s health collapsed, leading to his death in 287 BC, at

the age of 69. However, world governance outlived him. Hannibal, born in Carthage under Macedonian rule, was not the general we all know, but an explorer of Africa and an oceanic navigator. Likewise, Heron of Alexandria, a scientist who actually lived in the first century AD, produced decisive inventions, such as the locomotive and the steamship. Thus a naval expedition reached the mouth of today’s Amazon River (discovering the Americas). The first railway was then built, from Alexandria to present-day Suez, alongside the ancient canal that connected the Red Sea to the Nile and, after a decade, the Nile-Euphrates line.

Beyond Toynbee’s fantasy, there are those among modern scholars who argue that the westward advance was in Alexander’s plans. This would have led him to war not only against Rome but also against Carthage, especially in the event that he attacked largely Punic Sicily. We do not know if he would have been up to the test, as he had never conducted sea battles. Moreover, Carthage would have allied itself with Rome, just as it did some 40 years later, when it would have been Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who would have set his sights on Sicily. And then Alexander would have had to enact a not-so-easy siege of the Urbs, a feat that not even Hannibal, more than a century later, would have felt able to undertake.

To the latter event Livy dedicated another famous counterfactual reflection. To the Carthaginian, on the very day of the victory of Cannae, August 2, 216 BC, the commander of the cavalry, Maharbal, proposed to march on Rome, which it would be possible to reach, he promised, in only five days. The commander took time to decide and the other, stymied, accused him of not knowing how to take advantage of the victory in the field. Again according to Livy, when Hannibal, five years later, actually marched against Rome but found himself at a loss, he admitted that the first time he lacked the will, the second time, the opportunity.

LUCA FEZZI

Professor in Roman history at the University of Padua, has to his credit numerous specialized contributions on topics in the history, economics and law of the Greek and Roman worlds, and the ‘reception’ of ancient models in modern and contemporary political thought. Among his publications: Cesare. La giovinezza del grande condottiero, Mondadori 2020; Pompeo, Salerno editrice 2019; Il dado è tratto. Cesare e la resa di Roma, Laterza 2017. His last book is Roma in bilico, Mondadori 2022.

But from Cannae, today Canne della Battaglia, in faraway Apulia, would it have been possible to reach Rome so quickly and, more importantly, would this have been worthwhile? As modern critics have pointed out, the feat could only have been accomplished by cavalry, which is unsuitable for laying siege to a city. Any surprise-effect, then, would have been thwarted by Roman relays. For this reason, there are those who place the project a year earlier, after the battle won by the Carthaginians on the shores of the much closer Lake Trasimeno. In any case, Hannibal’s enterprise would have been mired in a siege, made difficult by logistics and the loyalty of the Italic allies. In this regard, General Bernard Law Montgomery, in his History of Warfare (London, 1968), lets slip a sibylline “Maharbal was right,” not because the advice to march on Rome was good, but because the Carthaginian leader was not prepared for a siege. With a fleet now dramatically reduced, the Carthaginian had come overland from Spain to take the fight east, hoping that the local populations would rise up against the Romans. Some did, but the set of alliances, on the whole, held. Perhaps Hannibal was waiting for Philip V of Macedon, whose fleet could have created a naval blockade on the Urbe. But Livy again recounts that Alexander’s descendant, due to chance circumstances but mostly lack of courage, did not honor the agreements. And so Hannibal, after other attempts and events, finally found himself forced to abandon the Italian Peninsula.

Then as for civil wars, “uchronias” are wasted. Caesar himself noted that “fortune, most powerful in everything and especially in war, produces in a few moments profound upheavals” (Civil Wars, 3.68.1). The unstoppable leader went so far as to admit that at Dyrrachium, in 48 BC, he would have been defeated, if only the enemy Pompey the Great had used less caution. But Napoleon also argued that if Pompey had not abandoned Rome, he would have won against Caesar (The Wars of Caesar, published posthumously in 1835). Plutarch—followed by other authors—also assumes that the dictator could have escaped his assassins, the “republicans”) and won the battle of Philippi (42 B.C.), as Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII that of Actium (31 BC).

Mind you, from a historical point of view, the fate of the res publica, marked by clear institutional inadequacies, was sealed: some episodes simply accelerated the course. These included the unexpected defeats of Pompey in the plain of Farsala (48 BC) and of the “republicans” near Philippi.

Moving into the age of the principate, many ancient sources, again with the benefit of hindsight, point to the

governor Publius Quintilius Varus’ overconfidence in the Cheruscus Arminius, who—overcoming even the advice of friends —allowed, in 9 AD, the annihilation of as many as three legions in the Teutoburg Forest in Germany.

The consequences of the disaster were immense. The Roman reaction was rendered futile by a second disaster seven years later: the sinking of a fleet in the North Sea. At that point, the Emperor Tiberius decided to scale back Rome’s geopolitical ambitions, retreating its sphere of influence from the Elbe River to the more westerly Rhine. Had Varus heeded the advice, he would not have fallen into the trap. The problem, however, is: would this have been sufficient to guarantee Rome’s expansionism? The geography of Germany and its population favored traps and ambushes. So, if not Varus, another after him could have met the same end. Unless, of course, the “Romanization” of Germany had occurred, as one ancient source already observed, very gradually. This could have slowed down the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the emergence of the Romano-Barbarian kingdoms, the Lombard occupation of Italy, going on to put in jeopardy every subsequent historical phenomenon and event concerning Germany, up to the Second and Third Reich and cascading into the two world wars and the Cold War. The linguistic and cultural fallout would have been equally great. Much more likely, Tiberius’ irrevocable decision was, then and still for some decades to come, the most logical one.

Finally, many counterfactual arguments concern the decline of Western romanitas.

Several times the great English historian Edward Gibbon, in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) wondered what would have happened “if,” particularly regarding the errors of Maxentius before the Battle of Milvian Bridge (312 AD) and those of Valens before that of Adrianople (378 AD). Likewise, the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, in his Reflections on History (published posthumously in 1905), argued that without Constantine’s and Theodosius’ legislation, paganism would have survived to the present day. If one then considers the theories, ancient and modern, about the end of Western romanitas, they exceed the number of two hundred, making the counterfactual “game,” potentially, endless.

But this is not a bad thing, because, all things considered, the “what ifs” in history do not harm history much; on the contrary, they often confirm what happened, isolating the unrealized possibilities of a unique and unchanging past. ■

EVEN ANTS TEACH US

Italy is bubbling with stories of research and passion. Our country is indeed full of scientific excellence, often ignored by society and institutions. This column aims to become the place where readers can discover the stories of women and men of science and their questions. We begin with the ethologist Donato Grasso.

Elena Cattaneo

One of the most fascinating aspects of science is the incredible variety of research activities united by a single method. There are scholars grappling with deciphering ancient scriptures, others with artificial intelligence research, still others driven by an attempt to reach the farthest stars or understand the smallest insects, a disease or volcanic eruptions. Underlying it all is a question. But how does the spark that lights the first instant of a quest arise? And how does the evidence accumulate to answer that question with a “yes” or “no” and thereby come to know tomorrow what we do not know today?

“Ever since I was a child, I have shown a particular attraction to animal behavior, with an aptitude for research, a desire to understand the phenomena and mechanisms that generate and characterize them.” Thus answers Donato Grasso, ethologist, full professor at the University of Parma, author of the book Il Formicaio intelligente (Zanichelli, 2018), an expert in myrmecology (the branch of entomology that deals with the life and behaviors of ants) whose studies reveal to us individual and collective relational mechanisms at times translatable to human social organizations as well. Accompanied by his backyard (“which offers as much scope for research and exploration as the rainforest”), Grasso’s interest focused on insects, which account for more than 60 percent of the described species of the animal world.

“Ants are animals familiar to everyone, but unknown in many of their habits. Studying them is a way to experience a general principle of scientific adventure: investigating the unexplored, wherever it may be, at the frontiers of knowledge. According to the great biologist E.O. Wilson, one of my mentors, it would be possible to devote an entire lifetime to a journey, similar to Magellan’s, but around the trunk of a single tree.” Studying their diverse world, we learn that these small community insects are among the most widespread: billions of individuals distributed in the more than 14,000 species currently described, including 270 in Italy. Less widespread is the awareness of how much, in their own small way, they can teach us. But how do we “study” ants?

We try to imagine them in the nest, thousands of them, moving in and out. Will they sleep? How much? Who commands them and how? I thought a “monarch” commanded them, but instead scholars

have realized that this is not the case. The society of ants remains a matriarchal society. Males, useful almost only for reproduction, live a few weeks, and it is the (sometimes even random) decisions of a few individuals that produce a collective effect on the mass that then self-organizes. In fact, these insects combine the individual dimension with an extraordinarily advanced social one. In order to understand how their colonies function, it is necessary to literally “zoom” into the body, the brain of these individual organisms and study their mechanisms, penetrating the cellular and molecular worlds and then returning to the collective dimension that encompasses the individual. Thus it is possible to understand the rules that govern their societies and the important consequences even in ecological dynamics.

Like every researcher, Grasso too had “his question,” the question that plagued his days in search of an answer that, the moment it comes, almost makes his heart explode. “For me, it was a matter of understanding how certain ants organized their raids to pillage the colonies of other species in order to capture their offspring from which to obtain ‘slaves’; how they located the target nest and how they pillaged it without opposition from the residents. These were questions that no one had given a convincing answer to.”

This compelling story echoes the “predatory exploits” of so many peoples of our past. I asked Grasso to tell me about it.

THE AMAZONS

“Polyergus rufescens,” the Amazons (all female warriors), are slave ants (more technically “dulotics,” from the Greek dulos, slave). They move in thousands, well organized, in a compact array to form a red serpentine several meters long. Arriving at the target nest, they enter at once, suddenly disappearing; within minutes they re-emerge, each carrying in their mandibles the pupae of resident ants by the hundreds. The raided offspring are “reared” in the new colony: the workers who emerge, once adults, will be fully integrated into the new society and used as a labor force in the adoptive colony. They will perform domestic tasks to which the parasite workers are not suited: from caring for the offspring and queen to maintaining and defending the nest and collecting food. Thus, a mixed colony is formed from two different species: the warlike, parasitic raiders and their worker slaves “unaware” that their

FELIX SEARCH

cooperation has been tricked out of them.” I try to imagine him, Grasso, conducting his observations and experiments in the field, months in the wild getting his hands dirty, and then back in the lab working out hypotheses, conducting experiments, mathematical and chemical analyses, until he unravels the puzzle. He and his group spent years experimenting, along with scientists from different disciplines. First, they marked ants so they could identify them individually by color codes applied to their backs. Not an easy operation, and worthy of a miniaturist, one must literally capture individuals, one by one, hold them gently, then with non-toxic markers apply the identifying color combination (red-red, red-white and so on), all in a quick, precise, experimentally documentable way. By following their path even for 200 meters, recording their journey and manipulating their behavior, they have shown that Amazon colonies rely on scout workers (scouts) to choose which nest to raid. “These are,” Grasso explains, “workers with sensory endowments and uncommon perceptual and processing skills: they can assess the location of the target nest relative to home, the species and even the degree of responsiveness. They leave in the late morning for their very long explorations.”

Once the scouts have identified the nest, the Amazon raiders, in order to loot without being counterattacked, use a small gland located at the base of their mandibles that produces a “propaganda” secretion: the effect is to disorient the resident ants at the time of the raid. “Each raider produces small amounts; when there are thousands, the effect in the nest is a general stampede that encourages the looting of offspring left unattended by panicked residents.”

HOW DO I GET HOME?

Another curious aspect of the Amazon scouts’ morning explorations is that the route home is always shorter and straighter than the outward journey.

Here then is a second question: how do they know where “home” is no matter where they are? Amazons (Grasso and coworkers discover), like the desert ants of the genus Cataglyphis, return to the nest using an orientation mechanism called path integration that is based on a vector calculation: on the outward journey, the ant records and integrates into its central nervous system each move; each stretch can be considered as a vector (definable by the distance

traveled and the direction of movement). When the ant decides to return home, the integration of these vectors produces a “re-entry” vector that indicates the direction and distance to be followed in order to return to the nest in a straight line, regardless of how circuitous the outward journey was. To calculate the directions of travel, these ants use the position of the sun or, if not visible, a related parameter such as the polarization pattern of light in the sky. Regarding the length of the vectors, and thus the calculation of the distance traveled, the mechanism used by Polyergus is not yet known but may be similar to that evolved by other species. For example, the Saharan desert ants Cataglyphis fortis have been found to rely on a kind of internal pedometer to calculate distances traveled. The experiment devised by the scholars consisted of placing food about 10 meters away from the ants’ nest and then changing the length of their little legs. Some had them lengthened with “stilts,” while others had them shortened. Well, the ants with shorter legs stopped before reaching the nest: the strides were right in number but insufficient in length. Those with longer legs, on the other hand, passed the nest because they covered more distance with each step.

However, it seems that this is not the only way to calculate distances. A related species, Cataglyphis bicolor, relies not only on step counting but also on perceived optical flow during movements, basically the speed at which visual landmarks move around it. How has it been figured out? Sometimes it happens that some individuals transport others to a place where labor is needed, lifting them between their jaws (this is called social carrying). In this case, the

ELENA CATTANEO

“For about thirty years I have dedicated my life to research on a hereditary neurodegenerative disease, Huntington’s Còrea: many projects, many young people involved, many resultsachieved even after various failures – for which we feel, as every scholar feels, all the pride and responsibility. In 2013 I was appointed by the President of the Republic as a Senator for life for scientific merit. On these pages I will try to bring some light into the many ‘cones of shadow’ in which the extraordinary world of Italian research is confined.” Elena Cattaneo is editorialist of Prometeo. In 2021 she published Armed with Science, Cortina Editore.

transported individual, although not actively walking, still manages to calculate the distance thanks to this mechanism based on the flow of images. Indeed, in some experiments, it has been verified that, although separated from the companion who was carrying him, he manages to return home correctly without having “moved” (and thus counted) a single step during the outward journey.

A multiplicity of computational and orientation capabilities so sophisticated as to leave one astonished, for a brain smaller than the tip of a pin.

A NEW SPECIES OF ITALIC ANT

I t may seem strange that, even today, in our territory seemingly explored in every nook and cranny, there are species not known to man. Yet, not infrequently, thanks to increasingly sophisticated analysis techniques, researchers are discovering new ones. A 2021 paper, by the team led by Grasso at the University of Parma, deals precisely with the discovery and description of a new ant species in Italy. He proudly tells me how the discovery came about: “The starting point was ethology, which allowed us to highlight peculiar behaviors that had never been studied and described before. This lit the fuse. The hypothesis that it was a new taxonomic entity separate from another similar species present in Italy, and with which it had always been confused ( Colobopsis truncata ), was confirmed by ethological, morphological, ecological, genetic and biogeographical evidence. This new species has been named Colobopsis imitans . The specific name “imitans” is due precisely to some characteristics of these ants that mimic in color and behavior another very common arboreal ant species ( Crematogaster scutellaris ). They basically move along their foraging trails and follow their paths by sneaking between the ranks of foragers, perhaps to enjoy the protection of numbers (a dilution of the risk of suffering predation) or the advantage of resembling an aggressive pattern that is unappealing to a predator.”

The paper was published in the same journal in which in 1858 Charles R. Darwin and Alfred R. Wallace first published the theory of evolution by natural selection. “A milestone for modern biology,” Grasso comments, “also the foundation of the discovery we were protagonists of. Without that theory told to the whole world we would never have come to this discovery.”

THE DIFFUSE BRAIN

In reflecting on the unexpected social behaviors of ants, which are functional for survival of the group, it is natural to anthropomorphize the world of animals and these insects in particular. But Grasso warns me that it would be wrong to consider the world of ants a miniaturized version of ours, since humans base their relationships on mutual knowledge and emotional participation, and organize activities in a top-down and hierarchical manner. In the “world of ants,” on the other hand, the key word is decentralization. “Their collective activities,” he points out, “are carried out by individuals each of whom contributes to the whole with rule-driven action. The action of the individual influences the activities of others who in turn adopt the same or other rules. The final product has properties greater than the sum of the parts. But there is no one person who directs the work. The brain that governs the whole is the group. In any case, I think it is still possible to draw some useful insights from their peculiar social organization. For example, I am thinking of this extreme cooperation: the “struggle” for existence can also be won by cooperating with others.”

We agree that the time has come for us “Sapiens” to prove worthy of the appellation we have given ourselves. Nature offers compelling stories that have traversed time and space to reach us. For more than 3.5 billion years, biological diversity has been the result of unrepeatable evolutionary processes. Each species is a singular experience in the history of life that is worth knowing. It is our responsibility to cherish and safeguard them for future generations. ■

The service images are by Daniele Giannetti.

GLOBAL DANTE

Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante (2006), oil on canvas by Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi and Zhang An.

From Medieval Florence to the world: Dante’s poetics across space and time. What would a universal history of the “Divine Comedy” look like?

Giacomo Berchi

In the so-called epistle “To the Florentine Friend” (12), Dante refuses to pay money to be welcomed back to his beloved Florence after 15 years of exile: “Quidni? Nonne solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam? Nonne dulcissimas veritates potero speculari ubique sub celo, ni prius inglorium ymo ignominiosium populo Florentineque civitati me reddam? And what? Maybe that I will not see everywhere the light of the sun and the stars? Maybe that I will not be able to investigate the sweetest truths from anywhere under the sky, without first returning myself without glory and indeed with ignominy to the people and the city of Florence?”.

Dante addresses his homeland with words animated by deep love, exhaustion, and a wounded pride. His universal destiny is already here. The hopes of love and a successful political career of young Dante resulted in catastrophe, but his exilic condition allowed his specific vision to gain a universal dimension. Even more, the exile enabled his universal vision to play a seminal role in the lives and works of countless others. Ubique, everywhere under the skies, his works have been read, translated, rewritten. What would it be of the Commedia if Beatrice Portinari would not have died so prematurely or if Dante would have had a successful political career? These are pointless questions. In any case, the man who lived his life as “legno sanza vela e sanza governo; a boat without sails nor helm” driven to “diversi porti e foci e liti dal vento secco che vapora la dolorosa povertade; various harbors and rivers and shores by the dry wind of grievous poverty” (Convivio 1.3,5), such a man is also the man who wrote: “Nos autem, cui mundus est patria velut piscibus equor; But we, who have for home the world as fish have the sea” (De vulgari eloquentia, 1.6,3). The image comes from Ovid, another exiled poet. But it has nothing of the abstract allegory or didactic quote: Dante’s very soul shines through it.

TOWARDS A GLOBAL HISTORY OF THE COMMEDIA

For many years now, Dante scholars around the world have illustrated the various vicissitudes of the Commedia on “this globe” (Paradiso 22.134). Each one of these readings represents an important step towards a future global synthesis. While difficult to imagine, such a synthesis would be as close as one can get to giving due reason for the ubiquitous presence of Dante and his work – everywhere, in space and time.

In this sense, Dante never ceased to be in exile. But this very condition of his has made and still makes him an enriching and illustrious guest in the most diverse avenues of world literature. If ever possible, a true global history of the Commedia will have to follow unprecedented trajectories in space and time, chasing Dante through all literatures and languages – at least as many as possible. In his pyrotechnic Conversation on Dante (1933), the poet Mandel’štam, who learned Italian from the verses of the poem, hoped for a future hermeneutics that combined literature and natural sciences. Similarly, today, a comprehensive synthesis of the Commedia could only be envisioned through the cosmic awareness that images of Earth in space arise in us. Just as Mandel’štam goes pondering the geological truths of poetry, picking up stones on the shores of the Black Sea, so we, from Mars and even further afield, cannot help but see the Commedia and its history in a new way, as we look down and embrace with our gaze the many island-worlds in the black and luminous sea of the universe.

LIKE BORGES’ ALEPH

Alternatively, one could just go down to the basement. In the famous short story El Aleph (1945) by Jorge Luis Borges, the homonymous protagonist goes down the stairs and enters the underground room of a house in Buenos Aires. There he is confronted with a spectacle that goes beyond any word: “Arribo, ahora, al inefable centro de mi relato; empieza, aquí, mi desesperación de escritor; I arrive, now, at the ineffable center of my story; here begins my despair as a writer”. Borges finds before him an aleph. Discovered and jealously guarded by his friend Carlos Daneri, an aleph is a point of space that contains all the points of space seen from every possible perspective. These pages are among the most dizzying in Borges’ entire work. Maybe one such aleph would coincide precisely with this impossible global history of the Commedia – this synthetic vision of Dante in world literature, this synthetic vision of world literature through Dante. To immerse oneself inside this universal knot, this point, would be to cast a dizzying glance at the totality of all the traces and copies of the poem in all the libraries and desks of history.

Maybe, this is what one would see: in New England, on a table, there is a copy of the most important English translation of Dante’s poem in the nineteenth century: The Vision, or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, by Henry Francis Cary. A reader is transcribing in

pen on the opening page of Inferno 1a few lines from Alexander Pope’s translation of book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey. This reader is a careful one. He is catching the connection between the first descent into the underworld in Western literature, that of Odysseus, and Dante’s poem. That reader’s was Herman Melville. In a theater in Buenos Aires – the year is 1977 – an Argentine author named Borges continues the threads of that link by juxtaposing in genealogical relationship Dante’s Ulysses and the protagonist of another descent into the underworld of madness, Captain Ahab of Moby Dick. The point-aleph sparkles in its whirlwind. In the chapter 8 of the book 3 of the part 4 of Les Misérables, Jean Valjean is petrified along with Cosette, as he catches sight of the infernal procession of the wagons of condemned forced laborers through the streets of Paris. This is how Victor Hugo ends the scene: “Dante eût cru voir les sept cercles de l’enfer en marche; Dante would have thought he saw the seven circles of hell on the march”. In the Prologue of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man – let us keep staring into the bright spot – the narrator is listening to Louis Armstrong’s jazz song What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue: “That night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as well. I not only entered the music but descended, like Dante, into its depths”. This is not simply a generic statement of intensity, but an important moment in the relationship between African American fiction and not only Dante but the entire European canon as well. The passage in Les Misérables, on the other hand, says less about Valjean’s psychological reaction than about Hugo’s and French Romanticism’s fascination with Dante’s Inferno as a gallery of the grotesque. We thus see that understanding the function of Dante’s name in a sentence can be a fruitful gateway not only to a single scene but to an entire cultural moment in the history of “this globe.” The point-aleph continues to swirl. In his Historia de los Incas (1572), the Spanish navigator, cosmographer and poet Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa reports on Odysseus’ journey beyond the Pillars of Hercules: after destroying Troy and founding Lisbon, the hero “quiso probar su ventura por el Mar Atlántico Océano por donde ahora venimos a las Indias, y desapareció, que jamás se supo después qué se hizo. Esto dice Pero Antón Beuter, noble historiador valenciano, y, como el mismo refiere, así lo siente el Dante Aligero, ilustre poeta Florentino; [Ulysses] wanted to try his fate for the Atlantic Ocean through which we now

THE DIVINE TRILOGY: PARADISE

A specialist in Paradiso since her dissertation, Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi has been an influential Italian Dante scholar and is still one of the co-authors of this version of the third cantica of the Comedy just published by the Mondadori Draghi series. In addition to Giacomo Berchi, who signs this article, a

third co-author, Massimo Scorsone, a prolific author (and critic) of great fantasy, also participated in the collective writing of the volume. This edition of Paradise - The Divine Trilogy is accompanied by two other volumes devoted to the other two cantiche, with introductions by Jorge Luis Borges and Fabio Camilletti.

come to the Indies, and disappeared, since no one knew what happened to him after that. This is what Pero Antón Beuter, a noble historian from Valencia, says, and, as he reports, so does Dante Alighieri, a distinguished Florentine poet”. Perhaps, Ulysses lied to Dante and Virgil and was never shipwrecked but discovered a new continent. Poetry, history, and mystery intertwine, under the banner of the last journey of Inferno 26.

Like flotsam to cling to, some verses of this same canto resurface on the lips of an Italian Jew, prisoner in the black hole of the twentieth century, Auschwitz. This is Primo Levi’s testimony in Se questo è un uomo. And maybe the Inferno is precisely the canticle that most easily lends itself to endless refractions and rewritings. In canto 10 of the nineteenth-century epic poem Guesa by Sousândrade, pseudonym of the Brazilian poet Joaquim de Sousa Andrade, the wandering native protagonist arrives at the New York Stock Exchange only to discovers Hell. He must find a way out: “Orpheu, Dante, Æneas, ao inferno / Desceram; o Inca ha de subir... / = Ogni sp’ranza laciate, / Che entrate...”. The Caribbean poet Kamau Brathwaite – endless are the junctions of the pointaleph – titles one of his collections of poems Trench Town Rock, from a verse by Bob Marley, and in it he recounts the unrest and violence in the postcolonial world of Kingston in the 1990s as a Dantean hell. The fifth poem is precisely titled Short History of Dis, or Middle Passages Today. In the first poem, when three soldiers try to follow the perpetrators of a shooting (“two shatts - silence -”), here comes the line: “So many now - I had not thought death

had undone so many.” The same verse, and this is where Brathwaite most likely gets it from, describes T. S. Eliot’s unreal London: “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many” (The Waste Land). And this is how Dante describes his first encounter with the inhabitants of the underworld: “[...] sì lunga tratta / di gente, ch’i’ non averei creduto / che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta; so long a train of people, that I would not have believed death had undone so many (Inferno 3.55-57, Durling translation). Indeed, it is at the materially textual level of the single verse, word, rhythm, that Dante’s presence radiates everywhere. Starting with Petrarch’s Canzoniere and Trionfi. In madrigal 54, in verse 6, for example, the exclamation, “Ahi, quanti passi per la selva perdi!” immediately recalls, “Ahi, quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura / esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte” from Inferno 1.4-5. Sometimes it is the pure semantic rhythm of the verse that is imbued with Dante’s power. Depicting a Ticino summer, the Swiss poet Giorgio Orelli thus refers to a “servant girl” who sings as she washes ropes with water: “e dopo’l pianto ha piú gioia di prima; and after weeping she has more joy than before” (Estate). Nothing could be further from the infernal she-wolf in the dark forest. Yet, Dante said of her with terror: “e dopo il pasto ha più fame che pria; and after feeding she is hungrier than before” (Inferno 1.99, Durling translation). The structural force of the verse is the same. Equally, when in his endless fall into the void the protagonist of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics Qfwfq understands the curvature of space by admiring the feminine curves of his partner, the Dantean echo may not be limited to the fact of learning cosmological truths through the beloved woman, but may be traced in the same texture of the prose: “It was not by focusing on

He is a PhD candidate in Italian and Early Modern Studies at Yale University. His main research focuses on the relationship between cosmology and epic poetry in European literature between Dante and Milton. He has published articles on Dante and Leopardi and edited the introduction to Paradiso in the edition entitled La Divina Trilogia for the Oscar Draghi Mondadori series. This article is the last part of his introduction, entitled Dante on Mars.

myself that this idea came to me, but by observing with an enamored eye Ursula H’x, how beautiful she was even seen from behind” (The Form of Space). “Osservando con occhio innamorato; observing with an enamored eye”, a hendecasyllable. The first verse of Purgatorio 29 reads, referring to Matelda in the Garden of Eden: “Cantando come donna innamorata; singing as a woman in love.” But within this knot-aleph, again, we see how sometimes Dante and his poetry, though not mentioned, are present as echoes in the culture of the writers and in the very structure of their works. This is the case with the poem Primero sueño by the Mexican Baroque poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, an impassioned attempt to grasp synthetically the universe, and the novel The Dreaming Sky by the Korean Shin Chae Ho, who, in the early twentieth century, knows Dante as a patriotic figure of the Italian Risorgimento via Chinese texts and offers it to his country as a model of resistance to Japan’s domination. Also in South Korea, in 1926, Jeon Young-Taek published in a magazine a partial translation of the Paradiso, most likely based on a Japanese version. This is the first translation of Dante into Korean. In the Convivio (1.7,14), Dante had warned against translating poetry: “Nulla cosa per legame musaico armonizzata si può della sua loquela in altra transmutare sanza rompere tutta sua dolcezza e armonia; Nothing that has been harmonized through poetry can be translated from its original language to another without having its sweetness and harmony fully broken”. This is certainly true. But how many lives has a translation of the Commedia changed? How many times has it been translated? In 2000, the Brazilian Haroldo de Campos wrote A Máquina do mundo repensada, a poem in Dantean tercets where verses by Dante, Camões, and Drummond rhyme with space photographs from the Hubble telescope. In 1976, Haroldo himself translated six cantos of the Paradiso into Brazilian Portuguese. Translations and adaptations – thus the aleph-point teaches us – are an integral part of the Library of Babel. In 1515 the first printed edition in Castilian verse of Inferno by Pedro Fernández de Villegas appeared in Basel: “En medio el camino que va nuestra vida.” In 2018 the first Icelandic translation of Inferno (Víti) in verse by Einar Thoroddsen is published. In 1814, an Englishman named Henry Francis Cary, born in Gibraltar, the Pillars of Hercules, published a translation of the Commedia in blank verse: The Vision, or Hell,

GIACOMO BERCHI

Dante Alighieri’s face from the statue dedicated to him by the city of Florence, outside the basilica of Santa Croce. The monument was created by sculptor Enrico Pazzi in 1865.

Purgatory, and Paradise. In New England, a reader named Herman Melville, opens it, notes something on it, puts down his pen, and begins to read, “In the midway of this our mortal life...”.

The protagonist-Borges ends his vision of the aleph between giddiness and weeping, between veneration and compassion. In this very short story Borges measures himself directly with Dante. One thinks of the desired and unattainable Beatriz Viterbo, of Carlos Argentino Daneri’s attempt at a total poem, of the aleph itself. But, with El Aleph, Borges recognizes at the same time that there can be no equal relationship with the Commedia: only an oblique relationship made of refraction and distance, and nonetheless of truly deep admiration as well. No one has been a poet of the secular world like Dante Alighieri.

EARTH SEEN FROM MARS

As for the Library of Babel of the literature of “this globe” and the multifaceted presence of Dante in its infinite ways, this is only the beginning. This is what the vision of that bright dot, the Earth, seen from Mars invites us to do. Every element that one has tried to grasp by staring into the knot-aleph that is the presence of the Commedia on “this globe” could be the starting point of a global vision of the poem and thus of world literature. Not a 1:1 map of the world but a true global synthesis as a whirling motion of the mind that knows and grasps its inherent nature made for vastness and detail as history down there, “under the feet”, unfolds itself. We have many maps already. Many more are still missing. Many territories have been traversed. So many more are waiting to be discovered – or seen with new eyes. Certainly, there is no abstract scheme broad enough to pursue Dante in the literatures and arts. There is no theory broad enough to account for the knot-aleph. To account for the crowded oil on canvas by Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi and Zhang An titled Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante and the illustrations by Botticelli and Blake, the apostolic letters dedicated to the poem by the popes and Dante’s verses in the singers’ rap songs, Boccaccio’s commentary and the illustrated version between manuscript and graphic novel by George Cochrane – other endless junctions of the infinite knot-aleph. It is necessary to hold to another path. And as in Borges’ tale of the Library of Babel, it is precisely the traveling along a path to be the only possibility for us now to navigate this great open-ended sea. A never-ending voyage, among the shelves of the universe, among the libraries of life

and the world. A voyage that always begins whenever someone, wherever he or she may be under the sky, on Earth or on Mars – ubique – holds open in his or her hand the vast total fragment of the Commedia.

DANTE AND THE ESKIMO SHAMAN

There is a tale passed down among the Eskimo peoples of the area where the Yukon River flows into the Bering Sea. It is about the myth at the origin of the Yu-Gi-Yhik feast, when a wooden dummy is hung under the vault of the kashim, or assembly hall, attached to a system of woven branches and bird feathers, pointing to the celestial vault-or Qilak. It is a feast related to predictions for the hunting and fishing season. Thus goes the central part of the tale: a shaman came out of his village, climbed to the top of the hill, and fell asleep. In a dream, he saw the sky filled with falling stars and slowly sinking down. The sky fell until it stopped against the hill, so that the shaman could hardly move. From that close distance, the stars revealed themselves to him as round holes in the sky. A light filtered through them. The shaman approached one of these round holes, shoved his face into it, and saw above him new stars, never seen before. This new sky, like the first, began to slowly sink down. The shaman entered again another round crevice, another star. Above him, another immense starry sky, never seen before. This new sky began to slowly sink down. On the third time, the shaman entered another star, and with this third sky now at chest height, he found himself in a village similar to his own, next to the kashim. He got up, entered it, and saw things he had never seen before. The shaman awoke at first light on the hill where he had fallen asleep. He went down into the village and began to narrate his tale.

We cannot know how that first tale sounded like. But sure enough, this story was passed on again and again, till it came to be part of the endless stories of “this globe,” this point in space, our home. The only planet in the universe where the cosmic journey of the Eskimo shaman and Dante’s Paradiso were written.

The fire is lit. There is silence among the gathered people. There is silence in the library. The reader is about to open the book. The novelist is about to write. The bard is about to intone his song. Rumbles the verse in the poet’s mind. The astronomer has pointed his telescope. There is a bright spot in the sky: it is the Earth. The story that brought us here continues for the first time – again. ■

AN ARMENIAN REVENGE

OPERATION NEMESIS IN ROME

A striking political crime against the backdrop of a major international tragedy. Saïd Halim Pasha died at gunpoint. This was not an isolated act but a pattern that spanned Europe and Armenian history.

Marcello Flores

The political murder that takes place in Rome in the late afternoon of December 5, 1921, on Via Bartolomeo Eustachio (near Via Nomentana and Villa Torlonia), is not similar to the too many (as many as 425) assassinations carried out by the fascists who, in that year, are bloodstaining not only the capital but the whole of Italy: it is a political crime that is a child of the war and the complicated international relations that the Paris Peace Conference has not yet managed to resolve.

The victim is Saïd Halim, former Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1917, for almost the entire duration of the war waged alongside Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Killing the “Turkish prince,” as the Italian newspapers call him, is a young foreigner, small and dressed in black, probably—it is speculated—an Armenian, given the hatred that Armenians have for Turkish and Ottoman politicians. A hatred, almost all newspapers recognize, motivated and justified by the violence suffered under the Ottoman government, especially in 1915-16, and continued thereafter until the end of the conflict, when the Sublime Porte surrendered to British and French troops.

The Corriere della sera, which points to Via Eustachi (which is the name of the street in Milan, while in Rome it is called Eustachio, as the 16th-century Italian anatomist was also known) as the road of the killing, hypothesizes a conspiracy “studied in all its details,” prepared “from afar” and difficult to ascertain, although “investigations continue actively.” L’Avanti! informs its readers that Saïd Halim is one “of the Turkish prisoners taken by England in the last war and interned in Malta,” later freed and repaired to Rome, and that “he was much hated for some acts of persecution carried out to the detriment of the Armenians.”

The person responsible for the murder, Arshavir Shiragian, who was never arrested, prosecuted or convicted for his action, thus described in his memoirs, published in 1973, more than half a century after the events, the moment when, crossing the street where the carriage where Saïd Halim is standing with his bodyguard Tevfik Azmi is coming, he jumps onto the car’s step:

“I slipped but managed with one hand to grab onto the rear support. Still unaware of my presence, the bodyguard leaned over to ask the coachman why

AN ARMENIAN REVENGE

the horses were rearing. At that moment Saïd Halim turned and our eyes met.” “Yeren...” [my dear], he shouted to his guard in a pleading voice. It was the last word spoken by the man who had been the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire. “I read the terror in his eyes when I pointed the barrel of the gun at his right temple. I pulled the trigger. One shot was enough this time. He let out a stifled cry and plummeted to the floor of the car.”

A MAN ON THE RUN

Shiragian’s autobiographical account reads like an adventure novel: after the fatal shot he shouts at the bodyguard to drop the gun because he does not want to kill him, he flees on foot in pursuit and in a daring way reaches the rental room; the next day his landlady, Maria, shows him the newspapers with the picture of the cloak and hat he lost during the escape and convinces him to hide in her lakeside villa for a few days. On his return to Rome he meets Elena, a girl who lives across the street from Saïd Halim’s house, with whom he had begun a relationship and whom he had met just minutes before carrying out his revenge, to greet her and ask her not to report anything about their relationship, and to tear up their photos together. He takes the train to Vienna and from there leaves for Constantinople, being stopped at the Bulgarian border and fortunately saving himself. In the Turkish capital he hides out with the family of his fiancée Gaiané, leaving then by boat for Romania, and again to Vienna and then Berlin. From there Shiragian is involved in the hunt for and killing of Behaeddine Shakir, one of the founders of the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), the ruling party in the Ottoman Empire and in charge of the Special Organization, a paramilitary force that had distinguished itself in the massacres of Armenians during the war, and Djemal Azmi, known as “the monster of Trebizond,” who are both executed in 1922 in the German capital. In 1923 he left for New York, where he was joined by Gaiané, whom he married and with whom he would have a daughter, Sonia, becoming an entrepreneur and deciding forty years later to write his memoirs (in 1965 in Armenian, and then in English in 1973).

THE REAL 0PERATION NEMESIS

Was Arshavir Shiragian really part of a plot? That is how the newspapers described it, unable to imagine the well-thought-out plan behind Operation Nemesis,

the scheme that had involved, along with Arshavir, other young Armenian survivors of the war and massacres carried out by the Ottoman Turks against the Armenian people. Perhaps, it has been written, Operation Nemesis represented the most extraordinary manhunt of the 20th century, which its organizers never recounted and whose events we know about thanks to the archives and memoirs of some of its protagonists and perpetrators.

The hunt for Ottoman leaders responsible for the Armenian massacres during World War I is organized and carried out around the world: it is decided in Yerevan, in the capital of the Republic of Armenia, independent after the collapse of the Russian empire, with war and revolution, which survives for two years after the war, overwhelmed in December 1920 by the Soviet advance that subsequently reduces it to one of the socialist republics of the USSR, after defending itself from the attack of the Turkish nationalist army of General Karabekir, under the orders of Mustafa Kemal, who thanks to French-English acquiescence occupies the eastern territories of Armenia. It is in Yerevan and Constantinople, still occupied by the Allies, that the Armenian revenge is decided. It is in Boston and Geneva that it is organized and financed. But it is in Berlin, Rome, Tbilisi and Central Asia that it is accomplished.

The main target of Operation Nemesis are the triumvirs who have led the Ottoman government since the coup d’état by which, in January 1913, their party, the CUP, got rid of the government that signed the London Peace Treaty, with which the unsuccessful—for the Ottoman Empire—First Balkan War had ended: Talât, Cemal and Enver, ministers of the Interior, Navy and War, respectively, are also—the former especially, who is the strongman of the government—the inspirers and organizers of anti-Armenian violence. Along with them, Grand Vizier Saïd Halim, appointed in June 1913 following the killing of his predecessor, Special Organization founder Behaeddine Shakir, Cemal Azmi, governor of Trebizond, and the most radical ideologue of Turkish nationalism, Dr. Mehmed Nâzim, are singled out as targets of revenge.

AN INTERNATIONAL PLANNING

Envisioning and planning Operation Nemesis are three men: the first is Armen Garo, who represented the Armenian delegation at the Paris peace conference; the second is Aaron Sachaklian, in charge of finance,

Saïd Halim Pasha was Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1917: these were the years when the genocide of the Armenians took place and they held him responsible for the events. His murder takes place in Rome exactly a century ago, on December 5, 1921.

AN ARMENIAN REVENGE

logistics and training; and Shahan Natalie,

operations coordinator. It was precisely from Paris, convinced that international justice would remain in the limbo of good intentions, that Garo had written to Boston, where the central committee of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (the party known as Dashnak, a member until the war of the Second International) was located, to talk about a draft “debt,” by which he meant the blood debt

to be paid by the Turkish leadership. The Dashnak party , which led the Yerevan government in the summer of 1919, drew up with the help of lawyers two lists, one of fifty names, the other of 650. The latter includes perpetrators and collaborators in the massacres while the former consists of political (government and party) and military leaders who were sentenced to death in absentia because they escaped at the end of the conflict and the Ottoman

the

Mehmed Talât Pasha, one of the main supporters of the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I alongside Germany, was affiliated with the Sufi Bektashi brotherhood and also Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Turkey. Responsible for several massacres, including the Armenian one, he was executed in Berlin in 1921.

surrender thanks mainly to German help.

The attempt by the victorious powers to create an international criminal court to try those responsible for war crimes seemed the consistent conclusion of the famous “Allied Declaration” of May 24, 1915, signed by the governments of Paris, London and Petrograd: “In the face of this new crime of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied governments publicly put the Sublime Porte on notice that they will hold personally responsible all members of the Turkish government and officials who will have participated in these massacres.”

GENESIS AND CONSEQUENCES OF A MASSACRE

The massacres were ones that had begun at least a couple of months earlier against Armenians and had accelerated rapidly on April 24 with the arrest and killing of numerous political, intellectual, and religious leaders of the Armenian community in Constantinople. On May 27, only three days after the Allied Declaration, the Law of Deportation was promulgated, which legally legitimized the deportation and massacres of Armenians that had been taking place since April and would experience an increase in June and July. Two weeks later, on June 10, the Law of Expropriation and Confiscation makes clear the intention to uproot the Armenian people from Anatolia and Cilicia. The total number of Armenians who survived the deportations in the summer and fall of 1915—locked up in the deserts of Syria and in prison camps—is about 800,000, just over 40 percent of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Equally numerous are those who have already been killed so far and about 300,000 who have managed to escape. A new law stipulates that the presence of minorities, including Armenians, in different districts cannot exceed 5 percent and 10 percent in the Aleppo area. Since the detention camps where Armenians are imprisoned are all near Aleppo, this law will, in effect, allow between the end of 1915 and the summer of 1916 the killing of about 500,000 more Armenians.

Paradoxically, it is Ottoman courts that put the perpetrators of the massacres on trial, created by decree in December 1918 by the government, which, supported by the British, sought to bring the Ottoman empire back into the realm of constitutional liberalism, although it would soon be defeated by the nationalism of Mustafa Kemal, who abolished the Ottoman sultanate in 1922 and created the Republic of Turkey the following year.

Military courts issued their first sentences in 1919:

on July 5 in Istanbul Talât, Cemal, Enver and Nâzim were sentenced to death in absentia, earlier Behaeddine Shakir was sentenced by the Harput court, and dozens of other sentences hit the top leaders of the CUP and Special Organization, commanders of the armies involved in the massacres, ideologues and members of the state apparatus.

It is to this justice, imposed largely in absentia, at least as far as key leaders are concerned, that Operation Nemesis is aimed. The executors of its plan, in fact, are to kill only those who have been justly and regularly sentenced to death by an Ottoman court. It is not, therefore, about revenge, as too easily everyone was led to believe. Arshavir Shiragian, on this, is categorical: “The thought of using my weapon against innocent people had never crossed my mind. The police had often hunted me down and yet I had never fired on an officer, much less a Turk. I did not want to become a murderer. And on the day of Saïd Halim’s execution, I had not thought for a moment about

The front page of the Ottoman newspaper Ikdam, Nov. 4, 1918, after "the flight of the three pashas," at the end of World War I (lost, along with the Central Empires to which the Ottomans were allied).

AN ARMENIAN REVENGE

MARCELLO FLORES

A historian, he has worked on the history of communism, the 20th century, the Armenian genocide during World War I, human rights and victims of wars. He served on the scientificeditorial committee for the monumental History of the Shoah and on the scientific committee for the publication of Italian diplomatic documents on Armenia. He has taught at the Universities of Siena and Trieste and directed the European Master in Human Rights and Genocide Studies. Among his latest books, Il Genocidio (Il Mulino, 2021) and, with Giovanni Gozzini, ll vento della rivoluzione. La nascita del Partito comunista italiano, Laterza 2021.

hitting bodyguard Tevfik Azmi [...] Our organization did not have an extermination project. It punished those individuals who had been tried in absentia and found guilty of mass murder.”

Shiragian, like later the perpetrators of the killing of Cemal in Tbilisi in front of the political police building, the Cheka, and of Shakir in Berlin, is not arrested or even acknowledged, while two of the most prominent names on the list of condemned men are not killed by the young Armenian executioners. Enver, the minister of war who had escaped at the end of the war in Communist Moscow, had escaped a couple of attempts on his life but would die on August 4, 1922 leading a band of Islamic insurgents at the hands of a squad of Armenian Bolsheviks not far from Samarkand in the emirate of Bukhara. The notorious Dr. Nâzim, who had escaped the Armenian avengers on several occasions, was hanged in Ankara on August 26, 1926 by order of Kemal Ataturk, against whose government he was accused of plotting.

To be arrested, however, is Soghomon Tehlirian, executioner of the chief perpetrator of the Armenian massacres, who on Hardenbergstrasse in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district kills Talât Pasha on March 15, 1921. Blocked by the crowd and viciously beaten, Tehlirian is tried three months after the crime and after a two-day trial found “not guilty” by the jury of the new Weimar Republic. The young man, who had initially confessed to having premeditated the killing of Talât, recanted in the courtroom at the suggestion of the defense counsel, who told of a sudden “emotional storm” that seized his client when, by chance, he encountered on the streets of

Berlin the man responsible for the deportation and death of 85 of his relatives and hundreds of thousands of Armenians. The issue, then, was not whether or not Tehlirian had killed Talât, but whether or not he was “guilty”: while it was certain that the person responsible for the Armenian massacres had been sentenced to death by a Turkish court-martial and was hiding in a country that wanted to forget as soon as possible that militaristic class that had led Europe into the abyss of world war.

LEXICOGRAPHY OF GENOCIDE

The Berlin trial, which morally justifies avenging violence, was also, indirectly, the basis for the invention of the term “genocide,” which Polish Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin, repaired by the war to the United States, would propose in 1944, imposing it to the attention of not only jurists but to increasingly widespread use. Lemkin was a law student in Kiev and in discussing with his professor the Tehlirian trial had asked why Talât had not been arrested for the ordered massacres, receiving the answer that there was no crime for which to charge him and for which to convict him. Precisely in the long search for a term—to be concretized into a crime recognized by international law—capable of identifying who had been responsible for mass killings, Lemkin came to the conclusion, while the Shoah that had decimated his own family was in progress, that a Greek term and a Latin suffix could combine into a word that did not need to be translated into any language: genocide. And the Armenian massacres had constituted the first great and terrible genocide of the 20th century. ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

T. AKÇAM, Killing orders. I telegrammi di Talat Pasha e il genocidio armeno, Guerini e Associati, 2020.

E. BOGOSIAN, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide, Little, Brown & Company, 2015.

J. DEROGY, Opération Némésis. Les vengeurs arméniens, Fayard, 1986.

M. FLORES, Il genocidio degli armeni, Il Mulino, 2015

H.L. KIESER, Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide, Princeton University Press, 2018.

M. MESROBIAN MACCURDY, Sacred Justice. The Voices and Legacy of the Armenian Operation Nemesis, Routledge, 2016.

A. SHIRAGIAN, Condannato a uccidere, Guerini e Associati, 2005.

The Armenian exodus in vintage photos

Today Armenians call it Medz Yeghern ("The Great Crime") and every April 24 they commemorate the Turkish-directed holocaust of 1915-16. More than 40 percent of the population was exterminated, many left the country giving rise to the Armenian exodus. Photos are courtesy of the Armin Wegner Archive.

THE IMPLICIT ANIMISM OF NEUROSCIENCE

Is consciousness a function of and in the brain? Many people think so, but there is no scientific evidence.

Riccardo Manzotti

When we think of peoples and cultures ascribing a soul or sentient principle to an object, we often smile with smug superiority. How is it possible, we ask, to assign to an object, even a finely carved totem, that mental dimension that we consider to be the most intimate and valuable prerogative of human beings (and perhaps some animals)? Is it not naive to attribute to an object that capacity which, in philosophy and psychology, is called phenomenal consciousness? It is. Yet, mutatis mutandis, this is what happens in neuroscience: many authors are convinced that an object, not made of wood but still made of matter, is sentient. The object in question, you have surely realized, is none other than the brain. It is the totem of neuroscience.

According to the Treccani, the term “animism” denotes the “belief of primitives in spiritual beings who would animate objects in nature; the basis of animism would be dream experiences, from which primitive man would derive the idea of a soul, attributed even to inorganic and inanimate objects because they were recognized as capable of action.” This is exactly what neuroscience does. Having thrown out the notion of immaterial mind (rightly so), they assume that some special objects are sentient, that is, they are simultaneously both objects and subjects. These special objects, it was said

above, are brains. The new totem, is not a carved wooden pole in the center of the village, but it is an organ within our body: an organ that is conveniently invisible in most cases (and therefore conveniently mysterious and hidden from people’s direct gaze). Usually this organ is not shown directly, but through “sacred” representations where, thanks to animations and other vestiges, it is transfigured in the form of digital images where a network of colored lights runs through its synapses and neural networks.

Juxtaposing neuroscientists and animists—brains and totems—may seem irreverent, and yet the analogy is perfectly fitting. Neuroscience proposes, albeit within the rituals proper to the scientific method (Latour 1993), a totemistic or animistic model. To believe that a finely carved wooden pole has a spirit implies a confusion of categories not unlike that required to believe that a biological organ, albeit an extremely complex one, has consciousness. This is an ontological leap, an act of faith. In the case of neuroscience, one does not resort to a magic ritual, but one makes liturgies invoking nebulous concepts such as “complexity,” “emergence,” “levels of reality”: magic words as devoid of real empirical substance as saying abracadabra!

For example, no one has any idea why the increase in complexity of a system should, at some point, result in the appearance of subjective experience: more com-

Tutte le immagini di questo servizio sono state create dall’autore, con il concorso dell’Intelligenza Artificiale.

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plexity = consciousness? And why would that be? Even the most sophisticated defender of this approach, neurologist Giulio Tononi, is forced to admit that his recourse to complexity (in his case defined in terms of integrated information) stops at the phenomenal aspect, which is the real problem. According to the original formulation of his theory, “consciousness depends on/corresponds to the system’s ability to integrate information” (Tononi 2004) or, even, that consciousness is one with integrated information (Tononi et al. 2016), but in none of his work is it explained why and why from integrated information we have to move to subjective experience. Once again, we have an object explicable in physical-quantitative terms to which is attributed, after some magic formula...pardon! Mathematics...a spirit. In Tononi’s case, Tononi’s totem is the integrated information within the brain, certainly more sophisticated than neurons, but still a totem.

COMPLEXITY DOES NOT EXPLAIN AT ALL

We could make similar considerations for all other proposed solutions within the brain: from the 40 Hz frequency to the claustrum, from the global workspace to microtubules. As objects or physical processes within an object, they are as many totems that have none of the characteristics of consciousness, but are attributed, by authority more than anything else, the ability to feel.

Obviously, on a par with primitive peoples who were accustomed to believing that a particular object could be endowed with a mind, so we—who are perhaps not so different—are led to believe that the brain is endowed with consciousness. We were told this in school and repeated it in college. We are constantly shown it in science fiction movies and popular programs. Most importantly, we see no alternative. Where could our self be if not in that mysterious object, conveniently placed in the center of the head, that we call the brain? Little does it matter that nothing resembling our experience has ever been found or that there is no theory explaining how to “turn the water of neurons into the wine of consciousness” (McGinn 1999). Most of us believe, with sincere faith, that the brain is the best physical candidate for our mind. But this tradition, as things stand, is simply an animistic superstition, that is, something we believe in without being able to defend it either by deductive reasoning or by a set of empirical evidence.

If you are still unconvinced, consult a fundamental journal like Nature and you will find that it has not published a single article on the mechanisms that are supposed to produce consciousness. Many articles, of course, describe neural processes related to consciousness, but that is another thing. Scientific knowledge requires a causal explanation to be subjected to experimental verification. Even Tononi does not propose a causal explanation from the physical to the mental, but confronts us with postulates. Neuroscience theses about consciousness are not equivalent to believing that penicillin kills pneumococcus. In fact, in this case, one is able to explain the causal mechanism by which antibiotics inhibit the bacteria’s cell wall synthesis. In the case of consciousness, one has no idea what happens. Between neurons and our experience there is a space that, from an epistemic point of view, we can safely call infinite. Nothing that happens inside the nervous system, if you did not know (or want to know) that it is connected to consciousness, suggests the phenomenal dimension. Put brutally, but honestly: neuroscience encourages a form of animistic superstition. The proof of this fact is that there is no scientific explanation available. All the cases cited do not constitute empirically verifiable theories, but neither do they constitute intelligible explanations (for example, why should complexity become experience, instead of simply “more complexity”? Mystery). So

RICCARDO MANZOTTI

A philosopher and engineer, he is professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Iulm University in Milan. He was previously Fulbright Visiting Scholar to the Department of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT (Boston). Primarily deals with the physical basis of consciousness, artificial intelligence, perception, psychology of art. He is executive editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness and has published numerous books and articles on the topics of consciousness, artificial consciousness, of the philosophy of mind, perception, media and the psychology of art. Among his latest books: La mente allargata (Il Saggiatore, 2020); The Spreading Mind: Why Consciousness and the World Are One and Dialogues on Consciouness (both eds. from ORBooks, 2018).

believing that the brain is conscious implies believing in something that science itself claims it cannot explain, at least at the moment. And so a profession of animism is made.

I will immediately respond to a cry that I feel is rising among many readers: but how? What about all the data collected by neuroscience with increasingly sophisticated technologies (fMRI, PET, EEG, MEG, etc.)? These are data that relate to neural activity and, in this sense, have enabled an increasingly precise understanding of how our nervous system works (Rossi 2020).

Neuroscience has never passed a correlative level, that is, it studies phenomena that have a correlation with our being conscious. For example, the wellknown fact that anesthesia, acting on the brain, results in the disappearance of our subjective experience is not, scientifically, more enlightening than

the fact that, by taking the batteries out of a cell phone, we can no longer hear the voice of the speaker: it is not proof that we are talking to someone inside the cell phone or, even more absurdly, that we are talking to the cell phone itself. And yet, in the case of the brain, most neuroscientists and their readers accept this way of reasoning...

Another important thing to point out is that the thesis that the brain is conscious is an extraordinary thesis and is not symmetrical with its negation. That is, to say that there is an object, our brain, that does something that no other object does—or is capable of doing—as an object is something miraculous. Since this is an extraordinary claim, as it might be to claim that there are elves inside the earth, we would need extraordinary proof, but this continues to be lacking. When Alfred Wegener argued that continents were drifting he had to

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produce substantial evidence (Wegener 1929), he did not just ask for research funds promising that one day we would see a continent move. Similarly, with regard to consciousness, the burden of proof should fall on the shoulders of neuroscience. And so far not only has this proof not been found, but it is not even known where to look for it.

In this sense, the absence of evidence for consciousness within the brain, downstream of decades of massive investment and legions of researchers, should begin to constitute, even for the most staunch defenders of “cranialism,” evidence of absence (Miller 2005; Rockwell 2005). Or, at the very least, it should prompt consideration of alternatives, even radical ones. However, this acknowledgement is not happening: too much investment (economic, personal, and social) has been made in the brain, and the identification between neuroscience and the mind sciences (e.g., in neuromarketing) prompts so many to defend this line of thinking.

CONSCIOUSNESS REMAINS A MYSTERY

It is surprising to see how neuroscience gets away with very generously distributing what philosopher Daniel Dennett called “epistemic promissory notes,” or “explainers” (Dennett 1991). Despite the fact that experience remains incongruous with the standard description of the physical world, we continually read that neuroscience has made great progress, accumulated large amounts of data, and is getting closer to a solution (Melloni et al. 2021; Anil K. Seth et al. 2015; A. Seth 2021; A.K. Seth and Bayne 2022). We have been confidently accepting these promises for decades and we are still at the same point. Consciousness is a mystery and the brain is a totem.

There are two alternatives to this state of affairs: one is known and one is generally overlooked. Let us start with the first. The alternative to the idea that consciousness is an attribute of the brain is, according to many necessarily, a form of dualism or spiritualism. Consciousness would not be in the brain because it would be the manifestation of an immaterial spirit, soul or mind. Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, this solution is worse than the animism of neuroscience. At least that one gives hope that we may, some distant day, find consciousness in the world of objects. The soul, on the other hand, is out of the world of facts, we might say, by vocation. This is not good

The other option, which I feel obliged to mention, is to reconsider the starting point, which is that subjects and objects are two incommensurable and alien levels unless, goodness gracious to them, some special object, totem or brain that is, gives us the grace to perform a miracle. But we know that miracles are not part of nature. And so to find a solution one should have the courage to rewrite the book of nature so that our existence is no longer an exception, but something obvious and, from an ontological point of view, harmless. But I have discussed this elsewhere (Manzotti 2019).

Neuroscience is doomed, like Master Cherry in the Adventures of Pinocchio, to wonder at a miraculous fact, namely that a piece of wood or neurons can see, hear, act. Neuroscience cannot find an explanation because it moves within a rigid ontological framework that divides the world into subjects and objects. Subjects are endowed with experience, while objects are not. If one starts from this assumption, it is futile to hope that one can find in some object, such as the brain, that experience which one has established is not part of nature. In this context, the central nervous system (the brain) falls into the category of objects and therefore cannot have experience, otherwise it would be a subject. In this ontological framework, neuroscience is doomed to animism and thus, as far as consciousness is concerned, to failure.

The good news is that this state of affairs is not mandatory although, to be overcome, it will require a step back: consciousness is not a property of objects, but neither is it outside the physical world. Within this seemingly insoluble contradiction lies a new and still largely unexplored research horizon. In a famous 1973 duck story scripted by Guido Martina, The Secret of the Decapitated Totem, Scrooge McDuck decides to offer a sum of money to whoever discovers the secret and valuable contents of a totem pole. Many characters struggle to guess, eventually it will turn out that the valuable contents were Scrooge himself. This process is not unlike what happens in the great crises of science when it is often discovered that nature was mysterious only because it was approached with the wrong prejudices. Often the solution was always at hand and visible to all: although not as a totem.

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LOST PEOPLE OF OLD EUROPE

Native civilizations arose along the coasts of the Danube, with strong signs of gender equality and cooperative community culture. A tribute to Marija Gimbutas, visionary archaeologist.

Harald Haarmann and Mariagrazia Pelaia

Let’s discover Old Europe! In the preface to her fundamental work, The Civilization of the Goddess (1991), Marija Gimbutas, whose birth centenary this year is included in the official UNESCO celebrations for 2020-21, summarizes the essential aspect of her entire academic project, that is to highlight the deepest layers of European history, which preserve the constituent components of Western civilization. «My purpose in this book is to bring into our awareness essential aspects of European prehistory that have been unknown or simply not treated on a pan-European scale. This material when acknowledged, may affect our vision of the past as well as our sense of potential for the present and future» (Gimbutas 1991, p. VII).

A crucial aspect for the research perspectives inspired by her consists in the identification of Old Neolithic Europe as a true civilization. In the Preface to her most important book, the archaeologist compares her discoveries with the antiquated current model: «I reject the assumption that civilization refers only to androcratic warrior societies. The generative basis of every

civilization lies in its degree of artistic creation, aesthetic achievements, non-material values, and freedom which make life meaningful and enjoyable for all its citizens, as well as a balance of powers between the sexes. Neolithic Europe was not a time ‘before Civilization’ [...] It was, instead, a true civilization in the best meaning of the word» (Gimbutas 1991, p. VIII).

To this day, most mainstream scholars recognize androcratic civilization as the only valid model of our cultural history. The few proponents of different hypotheses with models without social hierarchy, however, ignore Old Europe (e.g., Maisels 1999). Even in Cyprian Broodbank’s monumental work (2013) there is no mention of Old Europe. Only recently is a new all-encompassing paradigm of differential models of civilization being developed, including Old Europe (Haarmann 2019a, 2019b).

It is an achievement of Gimbutas having highlighted the importance of the preparatory phase of any civilization and especially of Old Europe: «All of this was not ex nihilo . […] The rich display of religious symbolism which flourished in

Temple model with seven figurines (circa 3700 BC). The find is attributable to the Cucuteni Culture, which is developed in the areas of present-day Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. Almost all the images in this service are taken from the Gimbutas Archive. Courtesy Joan Marler and Harald Haarmann.

central Anatolia and in Old Europe is part of an unbroken continuity from Upper Paleolithic times» (Gimbutas 1991, p. VIII).

«The civilization that flourished in Old Europe between 6500 and 3500 BC, and in Crete until 1450 BC, enjoyed a long period of uninterrupted peaceful living which produced artistic expressions of graceful beauty and refinement, demonstrating a higher quality of life than many androcratic, classed societies» (Gimbutas 1991, p. VIII).

This condition of peaceful existence has been recognized by numerous archaeologists who point out that no ash deposits attributable to arson have been found in the settlements of Old Europe. The destructive element comes into play with the arrival of Indo-European shepherds during the migrations radiating from the Eurasian steppe (Gimbutas 2010).

AN OUTDATED PARADIGM

The universal prototype of hierarchical civilization is a cliché to overcome. According to the new paradigm inaugurated by Marija Gimbutas there are at least two elementary models of civilization, the stateless one of egalitarian society

(represented by the Civilization of Old Europe, or Danubian Civilization, and by the Civilization of Indus Valley) and the state one based on a social hierarchy (represented by Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, and the Maya in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica). A typical feature of the stateless model is economic and gender equality.

During the Neolithic transition from hunting and gathering to plant production (with agriculture and horticulture fully developed), the activities of women and men were evenly divided. The men still went hunting but they also helped the women who mainly dedicated themselves to planting, cultivating, and harvesting. The result of this gradual process is a balanced developmental phase. Exactly what Marija Gimbutas described in her publications.

The old paradigm of the linear and unilateral development of patriarchal society as an inevitable expression of social “progress” is now obsolete and must therefore be rejected.

There are other clichés to overcome . The idea of Mesopotamia as a centre of cultural radiation ( ex oriente lux ) is antiquated, given that modern research has discovered that the main technological innovations originated elsewhere:

- the first highly refined ceramics with elegant decorations appear in Old Europe at the end of the fifth millennium BC. Ceramic production reached its peak in the regional Cucuteni culture, at least a millennium before it reached an advanced level in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Marija Gimbutas has documented the pattern of pottery styles from the sixth millennium BC (Gimbutas 1991).

«Actual evidence that pottery burnishing and decoration was done by women comes from the cemetery of Basatanya (Bodrogkeresztúr phase) in eastern Hungary, where a tool kit for pottery burnishing, painting, and engraving, consisting of a pebble, a fish bone, a bone polisher, a pyxis, and a dipper, was found in a number of female graves» (Gimbutas 1991, p. 123);

- the first writing emerges in the cultural environment of the Danube civilization (Gimbutas 2013);

- the first metal smelting experiments are attested in south-eastern Europe (southern Serbia). The beginnings of copper smelting in Old Europe date back to 5400 BC. approx. (Pernicka

Binocular vase from the Cucuteni Culture, 4050 BC.

and Anthony 2010). Which means that this technology began to spread in Europe hundreds of years before than it did in Anatolia.

- the first detached houses with a solid structure and the beginning of different architectural styles are attested in Thessaly starting from 6500 BC. approx.;

- the emergence of the first urban infrastructures in the Cucuteni-Trypillya region dates to the fourth millennium BC. (Gimbutas 1991: p. XI and p. 103 ff.).

WRITING AS RITUAL

The cliché of a universal prototype of the first writing associated with economic functions fades. The Sumerian cuneiform writing is not the first writing in the history of humanity. The earliest evidence for the use of Egyptian hieroglyphs dates back at least 150 years before the oldest Sumerian texts (late fourth millennium

BC). The origins of a writing technology in Old Europe date back to the end of the sixth millennium BC. (Haarmann 1995, Marler 2008). The alleged first writing of humanity had economic functions. Old European writing, on the other hand, was at the service of religious beliefs and ritual practices. The signs of writing are engraved and/or painted on the bodies of the figurines, on the surface of the cult vases and on the sides of the miniature altars. Marija Gimbutas rightly defines it as «sacred script» (1991: pp. 307-321).

The use of linear signs at the time of Old Europe corresponds to that found in the first writing systems: intentional signs, conventional forms, systematic alignment, internal organization, a rich repertoire (the motifs of ceramics are instead a limited number).

OTHER QUESTIONS

Did the world’s first trade network develop in

The masked female and male gods in thoughtful posture. Hamangia Culture, 4800 BC.

the Middle East? Were the first ships built in the Persian Gulf? - Small-scale trade in the Aegean archipelago and Anatolia began more than ten thousand years ago. However, the development of larger commercial networks dates to a later period, to the fifth millennium BC, while the flowering took place during the fourth. The first network did not develop in the Middle East, trade routes connected the main regions of Europe (and the centres of Old Europe corresponded to the trading points) and trade extended to the Eurasian steppe and the Anatolia region. This vast trade network also included North African coastal regions.

The Middle Eastern trade network, which connects the Sumerian trading centres with Egypt, Dilmun and the ancient Indus civilization, was established in a later age: during the third millennium BC.

The construction of the first ships is due to the inhabitants of Old Europe who sailed in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (Haarmann 2018), between the sixth and fifth millennium BC, i.e. thousands of years before the navigators of the Near East.

MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED

Has the world of Ancient Europe disappeared without a trace? Old Europe no longer exists; however, this does not mean that its traditions have vanished. Descriptions of a “lost world of Old Europe” (Anthony 2010) are misleading. On the contrary, the cultural achievements and traditions of the first great European civilization have survived in subsequent cultures with multiple transformations. The civilizations of the ancient Aegean (i.e. the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete and that of Thera) emerged from the stock of Old Europe (Haarmann 1995). The Pelasgian culture in the Balkan Peninsula has been identified as “pre-Greek” (Beekes 2014), therefore not of Indo-European origin. The Pelasgian culture and language represent the last offshoot of Old Europe.

In the aftermath of the Indo-European migrations towards south-eastern Europe, the old cultural fabric was not replaced by Indo-European models. Initially the migrants settled in the vicinity of the pre-Greek population, the Pelasgians (‘people who lived here before us’, from pelas ,

Another classic figurine from the Cucuteni Culture, 4050 BC.

‘nearby, in the neighbourhood’) giving rise to a process of cultural fusion with various innovative models. One of these, hero worship, shows how fusion dynamics work, serving as a pillar in the foundation of Western civilization. Patriarchal Indo-European heroes were given divine legitimacy to exercise power by pre-Greek goddesses.

Marija Gimbutas has strongly supported research projects for the continuation of her work, in particular studies on the survival of the cultural characteristics of Old Europe in the subsequent phases, i.e. in the so-called ancient world. A vast panorama of traditions - in the fields of folklore and mythology, in various craft sectors, in the context of social institutions and in artistic styles - can be identified in the regional cultures of south-eastern Europe (Haarmann 2019a, p. 257 ff.; 2014).

Have the language and writing of Old Europe been lost? In the ancient Greek lexicon, approximately 1700 words have been identified that can be associated with the substratum language, i.e. the language spoken in the Hellas region before the Indo-European migration (Beekes 2010).

Pre-Greek loanwords are not randomly scattered, the oldest are organized into relevant lexical domains that reveal the various incursions of Old European cultural influence (e.g. pottery, weaving, olive growing, metalworking, shipbuilding, trade, religion, democratic institutions) (Haarmann 2014).

The Danubian (or Old European) writing had various outcomes in the Aegean cultures: the Linear A writing (Minoan writing of ancient Crete) and the subsequent derivation, the Linear B writing for Mycenaean Greek; Cypro-Minoan and

MARIAGRAZIA PELAIA

Indipendent researcher and author, editorial collaborator, freelance translator (literature non fiction) form Polish and English, and sometimes Franch, German and Russian. She edited and translated into Italian Civilization of the Goddess and the Gods of Old Europe by Marija Gimbutas. Since 2004 she has been part of the Editorial Committee of Prometeo and since 2008 of the Scientific Committee of Traduttologia

HARALD HAARMANN

Researcher in the field of linguistics and cultural studies. He has published more than fifty works in German and English, translated in many languages, including Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Korean. He wrote eleven volumes on languages and cultures of the world. He received the “Prix logos 1999” and the “1999 Jean Monnet Prize”. He is currently the vice-president of the Institute of Archaeomythology based in California and also director of the European section based in Finland.

Cypriot-Syllabic writing; the additional signs of Greek alphabet: chi , phi , psi (Haarmann 1995).

THE GREAT ARCHETYPICAL GODDESS

What happened to the Goddess of Old Europe after the arrival of the Indo-European migrants?

The interruption in the production of Neolithic Goddess figurines in the tumultuous period of Indo-European migrations after the third century BC is only apparent, because wax began to be used instead of traditional clay. Since this is biodegradable, archaeological excavations have not preserved any traces of it.

The continuity of the production of clay figurines of the Goddess in the Aegean archipelago (in Minoan Crete and in the ancient Cyclades islands) was not interrupted throughout the Bronze Age and into the Mycenaean era. Even on mainland, the production of clay figurines continued in some places, for example in Lerna in the Peloponnese, during the third millennium BC.

The monotheistic legacy of the Neolithic Great Goddess did not even fade in comparison with the patriarchal worldview of the immigrant IndoEuropeans, giving rise to a prolonged process of fusion. Classical mythology, for example, is a cultural field which, despite the abundance of pre-Greek figures, motifs, and narrative strategies, is wrongly ascribed en bloc to Greek culture.

The Great Goddess reappears in the guise of her “daughters”, that is, the powerful goddesses of the “Greek” pantheon, whose names and cults date back mostly to pre-Greek times. Their origin is therefore prior to the archaic Greek and Greek-

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Mycenaean periods (Dexter 1990). Mythical narratives reflect different phases of the fusion process during which the male protagonists of the Greek pantheon extended their scope of power at the expense of their female counterparts.

When the ancestors of the Greeks brought their sky god, Zeus, to the Hellenic region, he had an Indo-European wife, Divia, who was still worshiped in Mycenaean times with a sanctuary at Pylos. However, later, the indigenous goddess Hera replaced her. In a metaphorical sense, the union of Hera and Zeus can be considered a mythological guiding motif that reflects the fusion of two different worldviews that occurred in south-eastern Europe.

The most glorious of all pre-Greek goddesses is Athena, icon of the Athenian state, with her wide range of skills in both craft and intellectual realms reminiscent of her divine ancestor, the Goddess of Old Europe. The largest temple on the Acropolis, the Parthenon, was not dedicated to Zeus but to her, who dominated the public and private lives of Athenians.

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Art history has failed to identify the sources of inspiration for many artists whose creations are labelled “modern art.” In the case of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), for example, traditional African art is used. From his biography it can instead be deduced that what inspired him was the traditional imagination of his native country, Romania at the beginning of the 20th century (the traditional ceramics of Oltenia and Dobrogea take up forms from the Neolithic era).

The success of some modern sculptors decreed by some critics and art historians has been attributed to the originality of their works which deviate from the classical Greek tradition. In addition to Brancusi, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Alberto Giacometti can be cited in this regard (Haarmann 2013: p. 275 ff.).

Their originality arises from the revitalization and remodulation of forms and styles coming from an extra-canonical local artistic tradition, not from an alleged innovative impulse.

In many places where the ancestors of the Greek immigrants had settled, there were older communities: the descendants of Old Europe. These settlements had a pre-Greek designation, namely

The Venus of Lespugue, found in France in 1922, it is instead from the Gravettian Paleolithic, around 23 thousand BC. Credit: Mondadori Portfolio/ Phototeca Gilardi.

kome (a term that dates to the substratum language). They were not governed by local chiefs but were administered by a village council. In fact, it was a type of community self-management.

Most of the oldest kome persisted into classical Greek antiquity and served as models for democratic government. For example, Thorikos, a community south-east of Athens, famous for its collectively owned silver mines, which has become so wealthy that it could afford its own theatre to compete with that of Dionysus in Athens.

In ancient philosophy, myth was replaced by reason: a mistaken belief. The European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century favoured the affirmation of reason’s cult. This tendency that opposed reason to myth did not do a good service to the knowledge of intellectual life among the ancient Greeks. The distortions of the Enlightenment have conditioned our approach to education, making us favour reason as a mode of investigation up to the present day.

The ancient Greek intellectuals (i.e. the pre-Socratic philosophers, the first historiographers, the philosophers of the classical age) did not postulate an opposition between myth ( mythos ) and reason ( logos ). In fact, they were considered two different modes of inquiry, each having its own value (Morgan 2000, Haarmann 2017). In one of his dialogues Plato even coined a neologism to explain how mythical arguments and motifs concealed sources of knowledge. The term is “mythology” and occurs for the first time in the Republic (394b).

The narrative texts concerning the mythical tradition in Greek antiquity contain numerous concepts and motifs that refer to the cultural heritage of Old Europe. Furthermore, there are some myths that the Greeks themselves recognized as pre-Greek, such as the “Pelasgian myth” of the primordial goddess Eurynome as the Creator of all living beings.

Plato was wrongly considered a “patriarchal” author: in his political theory of the ideal society, he expressed himself in favour of gender equality. The philosopher especially honours Athena, a pre-Greek goddess. Plato assigns her the role of “divine intellect” for the world order. No other god in the Greek pantheon enjoyed such a privilege. In his philosophical effort he echoes the spirit of Old Europe.

We could continue for a long time, but here it is enough to provide a brief overview of the possible research avenues that have opened and could open up in the future starting from the work of Marija Gimbutas (see also Pelaia 2016). One life is not enough to explore all the horizons opened by this visionary researcher. ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

D.V. ANTHONY (a cura di), The lost world of Old Europe - The Danube valley, 5000 - 3500 BC, Princeton University Press, 2010.

R.S.P. BEEKES, Etymological dictionary of Greek, 2 volumes, Brill, 2010.

R.S.P. BEEKES, Pre-Greek. Phonology, morphology, lexicon, Brill, 2014.

C. BROODBANK, The making of the Middle Sea: A history of the Mediterranean from the beginning to the emergence of the classical world, Thames and Hudson, 2013.

M.R. DEXTER, Whence the Goddesses, Teachers College Press, 1990.

E. ELSTER, Le nuove scoperte dell’archeologia neolitica, in “Prometeo”, n° 121, 2013.

M. GIMBUTAS, Kurgan. Le origini della cultura europea, pref. di C. Sini, traduzione e cura di M. Doni, Medusa, Milan 2010.

M. GIMBUTAS, La civiltà della Dea. Il mondo dell’Antica Europa, traduzione e cura di M. Pelaia, Stampa Alternativa, 2012 e 2013.

M. GIMBUTAS, Le dee e gli dei dell’Antica Europa, traduzione e cura di M. Pelaia, Stampa Alternativa, 2016.

H. HAARMANN, Early civilization and literacy in Europe. An inquiry into cultural continuity in the Mediterranean world, Mouton de Gruyter, 1995.

H. HAARMANN, Ancient knowledge, ancient know-how, ancient reasoning. Cultural memory in transition from prehistory to classical antiquity and beyond, Cambria Press, 2013.

H. HAARMANN, Roots of ancient Greek civilization. The influence of Old Europe, McFarland, 2014.

H. HAARMANN, Plato’s philosophy reaching beyond the limits of reason. Contours of a contextual theory of truth, Olms, Hildesheim, 2017.

H. HAARMANN, Who taught the ancient Greeks the craft of shipbuilding?

On the pre-Greek roots of maritime technological know-how, in “Mankind Quarterly” 59:2, 2018.

H. HAARMANN, The mystery of the Danube civilization. The discovery of Europe’s oldest civilization [2011], Verlagshaus Römerweg, 2019.

H. HAARMANN, Culture dimenticate, traduzione di C. Tatasciore, Bollati Boringhieri, 2020.

C.K. MAISELS, Early civilizations of the Old World. The formative histories of Egypt, The Levant, Mesopotamia, India and China, Routledge, 1999.

J. MARLER (a cura di), The Danube script. Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe, Sebastopol, Institute of Archaeomythology, 2008.

K. MORGAN, Myth and philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Plato, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

M. PELAIA, Traducendo e curando libri di Marija Gimbutas. Divagazioni da scritture e letture parallele, in “Traduttologia”, luglio 2016-gennaio 2017, fascicoli 15-16, pp. 57-84.

NOVELS AS INFLUENCERS

Empirical research suggests that plots and fictional characters in fiction affects us in everyday life.

Emanuele Castano

One of them is a quite successful banker, but suffers from alcoholism and depression. Another, a chef de cuisine and owner and owner of a trendy restaurant, has just opened a second one. The third person teaches Marxism at the university.

It takes the average reader twelve seconds to read the the lines above; to the above-average reader it takes even less. Another handful of milliseconds, and the mind has already created images from these words. Neuroscience tells us, with great certainty, that the process is automatic, and that by now we have already formed images, if initially somewhat blurred. Social psychology, perhaps with less certainty, goes one step further and tells us which images have emerged in your mind. The first is of an individual with an elegant but somewhat unmade shirt and a loose tie. The chef is, one out of two times, Gordon Ramsay if we are in the Anglo-Saxon world - Carlo Cracco for us in Italy. The image of the Marxist teacher is less personalized, but rich in detail: beard, jacket with elbow patches, and the ever-present pipe.

CONFIRMATION AND CHALLENGE TO THE IMAGINARY

Guessing which images will be evoked by these minimal descriptions is possible because they are

part of our collective imagination. They are stereotypical images of these social categories: the banker, the academic, and the chef. The exercise can be repeated with other descriptions, but my choice was not random. These are the three characters who already have an author: Jonathan Franzen.

When, in the first pages of his novel The Corrections , these three characters are introduced, readers will most likely conjure up images similar to the stereotypical ones described amove. After a few dozen pages, however, they will be forced to abandon them. First, the chef is a woman—even among the typically progressive audience within the contexts in which I present these ideas, never has anyone mentioned imagining the chef, or even either of the other two characters, as a woman. The banker is…I’ll stop here, in case you haven’t read the book.

The point is this: Franzen forces us to construct images that are different from those that spontaneously form in our minds. In doing so, Franzen does not confirm our expectations, our culturally learned patterns, our stereotypes. He demolishes them. If Danielle Steel had written this novel, this would not happen: after six hundred pages, a thousand twists and turns will have occurred, but the three characters will remain more or less true to the stereotyped images. Instead of demolition,

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we would find confirmation of our expectations. And this is because Franzen writes literary novels, while Danielle Steel writes popular novels.

Categorizing novels as literary or popular may appear as elitist. However, the distinction I propose is not meant to be a value judgment: it is a simple distinction, a heuristic taxonomy. In this paper I will review a number of findings that have emerged over the past decades in literary cognitive science and computational linguistics, which suggest that this distinction has, continuing with the Frenchisms, its raison d’être

OF THE UNIQUE CHARACTERS/INDIVIDUALS AND STEREOTYPES

Let’s start with a simple question: are characters in literary novels really less stereotypical and predictable than popular ones?

Some experiments conducted in the United States, like almost all of the studies discussed here, suggest a positive response. In these experiments, eight hundred participants were randomly assigned to read one of twelve texts. Given the impossibility of reading an entire novel in the context of an experiment, the texts were short stories, pre-categorized as literary or popular on the basis of their inclusion in anthologies of the same name. Short stories included “ Corrie ,” by Nobel laureate Alice Munroe, and “ Uncle Rock ,” by Dagoberto Gilb. Popular ones include “ Jane” by Mary Roberts Rinehart and “ Space Jockey ” by Robert Heinlein. After reading their assigned short story, participants completed a series of tasks. In one of these tasks, participants answered a series of questions about the main character. From their responses, it emerged that characters in literary short stories were perceived as less clear and less predictable than those in popular shors stories. This result may seem irrelevant: after all, what does it matter how readers perceive these fictional characters? Admittedly, it matters little. But such a perception has profound consequences.

Immersed in a novel or novella, as well as in a movie or television series, we elaborate hypotheses about characters and plot, attribute causes to events, create analogies with other information about past experiences (themselves fictitious or real) that we have stored in our mind, and with desires and fears. We make inferences and adjust them continuously in search of coherence and

meaning. All these mental processes, which we refer to as “social cognition,” are the same ones we employ in our everyday, real, lives. Our mind, in other words, does not necessarily differentiate between fiction and reality. It is not only possible but quite likely that the characteristics of the fictional characters, and more generally the social, economic and political contexts of the novels we read end up influencing what (content) and how (cognitive processes) we think about the real world.

If the villain of the novel is always defeated in the end and the good hero prevails, I will form beliefs that the (real) world is just. If the fictional characters that populate my readings, or the movies I watch, have well-defined and consistent characters, such is the image I will have of human beings. If the women in the novels I read are highly emotional, distracted while driving, and manipulative, an association will form in my mind between the concept of “woman” and these characteristics, and these associations will be activated automatically when I meet a woman in real life. In addition, the woman/man distinction will gain greater meaning and importance, greater explanatory power, and I will therefore use it more often to interpret what is happening around me. It matters little whether or not it corresponds to the truth, or that the characteristics attributed to social categories, in this case gender, are actually so distributed in the population. Our own expectations, as we know from decades of research in social and cognitive psychology, will create that reality.

THE REALITY OF REALITY

Psychological essentialism is the tendency to interpret a person’s characteristics as caused by some invisible internal property, an essence. Applied to social categories, it consists of perceiving members of a social category as sharing such an essence: Italians have their own Italian-ness, and the French their own French-ness. Such beliefs have significant consequences for the way we approach issues such as crime, gender, immigration, or the European integration. A more pronounced tendency toward psychological essentialism leads to seeing prison as punishment rather than re-education, to seeing roles as differently suited to men and women, to perceiving immigrants as a threat to Italian-ness, and European legislation as interference. Just as in other thinking styles and beliefs, people vary

significantly in their tendencies toward psychological essentialism. What are the reasons for such differences?

Recently published research suggests that one of the causes is precisely the type of novels we read. In two studies with a total of about a thousand participants, it was found that greater familiarity with literary fiction was associated with a lower tendency toward essentialist thinking. Greater familiarity with popular fiction showed the opposite tendency. Remember the banker, the chef and the Marxist professor? If such characters, in the course of the novel, confirm our expectations, schemas and stereotypes with respect to social (in this case professional) categories, essentialist thinking will be fortified: chefs are all like that, and what unites them is precisely their essence. If, as in Franzen’s case, such expectations are disappointed, the perceived homogeneity of social categories is eroded, and with it, readers’ essentialist thinking.

Some social psychologists followed for nine months a group of white American students who, in order to study at university, had moved from the U.S. mainland to Hawaii – which is characterized by a strongly multiracial population. From this study it emerged that among these students

frequent contact with the Hawaiian population caused a reduction in the degree of essentialist beliefs about race. According to the authors of these studies, exposure to diversity creates uncertainty and challenges category boundaries, thus reducing psychological essentialism. When the social world is complex and not easy to categorize, essentialism ceases to be a valid heuristic for interpreting it and making sense of it.

Psychological essentialism is a heuristic—a mental contrivance that helps us draw conclusions quickly, with minimal cognitive effort. The price we pay when we use heuristics is the quality of the conclusions: they are psychologically satisfying, but inaccurate. Efficiency requires simplification, and simplification is the enemy of accuracy. Particularly with regard to explaining human behavior, the opposite of psychological essentialism is to take into account the multiple factors, both internal to the person and pertaining to the immediate circumstances and the broader context, that cause it. Social psychologists have a tool to measure this propensity: the attributional complexity scale. As for psychological essentialism, the inclination to think more or less complexly varies from person to person. And as for psychological essentialism,

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research shows different associations with the type of fiction one reads. Paraphrasing the results of that research for the Italian context, we would say that those who have read Resistere non serve a niente are likely to see human behavior as caused by a dense web of complexly interacting factors. Those who have read Scusa ma ti voglio sposare, will opt for simpler explanations.

The correlational nature of the research that has shown the link between the type of reading preferred on the one hand, and essentialist thinking and the tendency to recognize the complexity of the causes of human behavior on the other, prompts us to be cautious in interpreting them. Does reading literary fiction inhibit and reading popular fiction stimulate psychological essentialism, or do people with a propensity to think in essentialistic terms read popular fiction, while others prefer literary fiction? It is the old chicken and egg dilemma. In light of other research in this field, we can consider it likely that people with different psychological profiles choose different types of novels, and thus the most likely hypothesis is that the causality between readings and thinking is not unidirectional but circular.

In addition, since we are dealing with correlational (and not experimental) data, there may be so-called intervening variables: variables that covary with those of interest and may cause “spurious” correlations. In the research described here, some of these variables were taken into account and their effect eliminated through statistical procedures. Among them we find the level of education, gender and political ideology of the participants. Just to give an example, it is possible that for some reason that we cannot necessarily anticipate, people who have a predilection for literary fiction are ideologically more left-wing, and for other reasons, people who are ideologically more left-wing have a lesser tendency toward psychological essentialism. From the relationship between type of readings people do and, for example, the tendency for essentialist thinking, we can eliminate, with statistical procedures, the part due to ideology. The research discussed above has used these techniques, improving our confidence in the results.

These methodological clarifications reflect the difficulty of rigorously studying the impact that fiction, or other cultural products, have on our social cognition. It is not practical, let alone eth -

ical, to isolate one hundred people for a month and have them read exclusively literary or popular fiction in order to study the effects of such a diet. Mini versions of this unlikely experiment do exist, however, and they have shown the effects of reading literary or popular novels on another process of social cognition: Theory of Mind.

I BELIEVE THAT SHE KNOWS THAT YOU LOVE HER. One of the characteristics that is considered, if not uniquely, at least exquisitely human, is the ability to infer other people’s thought processes: their emotions, beliefs and aspirations; their thoughts, doubts, desires. In other words, to understand their mind.

To understand another person’s mind we need to possess a number of key concepts (e.g., a clear conception of different emotions), deploy a number of cognitive processes (from attention to memory), and be motivated to make an inferential effort to understand what goes on in the person’s mind. Even if some of the basic processes occur spontaneously and automatically, and without requiring cognitive effort, forming a thought with respect to the other person’s mental state always requires a motivation to do so.

In the cognitive sciences, this ability is called Theory of Mind—a similar construct, but distinct from empathy. As we have just seen, Theory of Mind is a multifaceted concept, and has therefore been measured in a variety of ways ranging from guessing what emotion the person depicted in a photograph (or video) is feeling, to taking a person’s intentions into account when judging his or her actions. These and other Theory of Mind tests have been used in various experiments in which participants were first asked to read short stories or parts of a regular length novel. Each text was previously classified as literary or popular-—with criteria to which we will return. Each participant read only one text without being aware that different participants were reading other texts, let alone that “his” text had been classified as literary or popular. Moreover, it was not the participant who chose which text to read; it is always the experimenter, or an algorithm, who randomly assigns a text to each participant. Random assignment is an essential component of experimental research because it ensures, with an adequate number of participants, that the two groups (those assigned

to read literary and those assigned to read popular fiction) are not at the outset different from each other. Any difference that emerges between the groups can thus be attributed to of the different activities they perform: in the specific case, to whether they had read literary or popular fiction. What emerges from these experiments is that participants who read a literary text subsequently performed better on Theory of Mind tests than those who read a popular text. We also note that the same result emerges from correlational studies, such as those cited earlier, which find that greater familiarity with literary texts is associated with better performance on Theory of Mind tests. It’s true: she knows you love her.

One experiment extended this line of research to movies. In film, the equivalent of the distinction hitherto used for written fiction (literary versus popular) is between art films and Hollywood films. In this experiment, half of the participants watched films that had met with little success at the box office but had been finalists or winners at the Cannes Film Festival (art films), while the other half watched films that, while not winning any awards, had been commercially successful

(Hollywood films). After watching their assigned film, participants completed Theory of Mind tests. Again a difference emerged: those who had watched art films scored better than those who had watched Hollywood films.

The research discussed so far suggests that reading literary fiction has different effects on the way we think than reading popular novels. This taxonomy of novels is commonly used by academics, literary critics, publishers/libraries, journalists, as well as in everyday life. The taxonomy is mainly based on insights, anecdotes, and reflections of scholars extremely qualified to do a thorough reading of such texts. From all this emerges the idea that, at the very least, the experience that readers and readers have of these texts is different. But what influences their experience? Are there objective differences between literary and popular texts?

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE VERB - LANGUAGE AND STRUCTURE OF THE NARRATIVE

The magic of novels lies in the fact that our minds create worlds from simple words. In these worlds we immerse ourselves, suffering and rejoicing with the characters, anticipating their vicissitudes, re -

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flecting on their meaning. It is our capacity for imagination that transforms words into something so extraordinary. In the beginning, however, remains the verb.

Since the verb, understood as language, is the only objective reality of which novels are made (as opposed to, for example, movies, which have sound, images, movement, a structured pace, etc.), it is on language that we need to focus to see if there are differences between literary and popular novels.

As we have seen, research suggests that reading literary fiction elicits, among other things, a greater ability to read the minds of others. Developmental psychologists, who for decades have been studying the development of Theory of Mind in childhood, have always observed how this ability is related to language acquisition and development. More specifically, there is a correlation between Theory of Mind skills and ability to understand complex syntactic structures. Is it possible that the language of literary novels is characterized by more complex syntactic structures? Well, recent research findings demonstrate just that. An analysis of a corpus of English-language novels published over the past two decades found that compared to popular fiction (i.e., novels that without winning any awards have nonetheless topped the sales charts), literary fiction (U.S. National Book Award winners or finalists) have a more complex syntactic structure. But there is more.

Already Aristotle noted how stories tended to follow a common structure, made up of beginning, unfolding, and epilogue. Since then, various prototypical structures have been identified and studied by literary scholars, and recently, thanks to developments in computational linguistics, we can also extract mathematical indices representing them. A few years ago, social psychologists developed indices for three of these structures, called staging, plot progression, and cognitive tension. Through the analysis of thousands of texts, including novels, these authors showed that the index reflecting staging has high values at the beginning of the story, and decreases linearly as the story progresses, while the plot progression index shows the opposite trend: it is very low at the beginning of the novel and increases linearly as the pages progress. The third index shows a real arc: cognitive tension increases from the beginning until about halfway through the novel (unfolding),

and then begins to decrease returning to initial levels toward the end (epilogue). Typically, these three indices are considered to be a measure of how well the story structure corresponds to the reader’s expectations, at least, in the cultural tradition of the West. In other traditions, particularly Eastern ones, the ending tends to be less resolved in order to allow room for reflection. Well, even in this regard, literary and popular novels seem to differ. Preliminary results from a survey of the same corpus used to study differences in syntax suggest that the trends in the indices just described emerge in both popular and literary novels, but that for the latter the trend is not as pronounced: the staging begins at lower levels and does not dissipate as clearly, and the plot progression does increase over the course of the novel, but not as markedly. Finally, the arc of cognitive tension is not as pronounced. Even in terms of the plot structure itself, popular and literary novels seem to differ, and the difference here, too, is in whether or not they match expectations: in how readers expect the story to evolve.

REASONED EPILOGUE

Stories, their content and structure, as well as their role in human evolution, have been the subject of reflection for centuries. The empirical research I have summarized here, however, is only in its infancy. In the years to come, the techniques used in this research will be refined, and new tools will

EMANUELE CASTANO

An expert in cognitive science, political and social psychology, he received his Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and taught at prestigious universities in Scotland, England and the United States, where he was appointed full professor in 2014. An associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento, and an associate researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council, for the past decade he has studied the impact of cultural products, and in particular of fiction, on social cognition processes.

emerge. We already have glimpses of the role of artificial intelligence, not only in the study of texts, but also in their production. Nevertheless, it is worth drawing some conclusions.

Let us start from the evidence that popular and literary texts differ in terms of syntactic complexity and the structure of the story itself. Does this mean, then, that it is permissible, or appropriate, to talk about highbrow and lowbrow literature? Instead of creating a hierarchy of fiction, I think it is appropriate to reflect on the significance of these differences, especially in light of the research findings summarized here which suggest an association between types of fiction on the one hand, and processes of social perception and cognitive styles on the other. Some of these, such as psychological essentialism and the tendency to perceive others according to the social categories they belong to, enable the imagination, the construction and maintenance of social groups, and with them the development of identities and roles, thus simplifying the social world. Conversely, other social perception processes and cognitive styles favor a more complex worldview; they push not for social categorization but for individualization, emphasizing the subjectivity, idiosyncraticity and inscrutability of each human being. In so doing they can erode the idea of the group as having its own reality, its own essence.

Simplification and certainty on the one hand, complexity and doubt on the other. Can we conclude that one of these configurations is more valuable than the other? And how do we define value? From the point of view of intrapsychic life, of psychological equanimity (how well we are in our own skin), but also from the point of view of the economy of cognitive resources, research in psychology suggests that certainty and simplification may be more adaptive. Because they are not accurate, they do not give us a “true” picture of reality, they can however become maladaptive in the medium- or long-term, both in the context of our interpersonal relationships and in our social life. Many illusions help us live, but sometimes, though not always, we are confronted with reality.

Equally complex to judge what is desirable and valuable as far as society as a whole is concerned. Simplification of social reality can help create social cohesion. I would even venture to say that cohesion, understood as the formation of collec -

tive identities and thus ingroup coordination and collaboration, requires the centripetal forces of simplification, a certain glossing-over of individual differences. However, unbounded cohesion leads to an ossified society, to closure, which must therefore be countered with the complexification of existing structures, both social and conceptual. The history of our species is also characterized and, in fact, constituted by, these centrifugal forces.

Therefore, to thrive, a human society must not only allow but also protect the existence of these two types of forces, ensuring a continuous tension between them.

This occurs explicitly in the ideological opposition between conservatism and progressivism; perhaps, but only apparently, less explicitly in the visual and performing arts, where tradition and the avant-garde are pitted against each other; and, as I have proposed, in fiction, in that distinction, maybe only contemporary fiction, and therefore perhaps also temporary, between popular and literary fiction. ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

L. BARTOLOMEO, L. CERNIGLIA, M. CAPOBIANCO, Empatia e Teoria della Mente: una review narrativa su differenze e convergenze concettuali alla luce delle recenti scoperte neurobiologiche, in Ricerche di Psicologia 41, 19–54. doi: 10.3280/RIP2018-001003 (2018).

R.L. BOYD, K.G. BLACKBURN, J.W. PENNEBAKER, The narrative arc: Revealing core narrative structures through text, (2020).

E. CASTANO, J. ZANELLA, F. SAEDI, L. ZUNSHINE, L. DUCCESCHI, On the Complexity of Literary and Popular Fiction, pubblicato in Empirical Studies of the Arts, 02762374231163483, (2023).

E. CASTANO, M.P. PALADINO, O. CADWELL, V. CUCCIO, P. PERCONTI, Exposure to Literary Fiction Diminishes Psychological Essentialism, pubblicato in Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 2152 (2021).

E. CASTANO, A.J. MARTINGANO, P. PERCONTI, The effect of exposure to fiction on attributional complexity, egocentric bias and accuracy in social perception, pubblicato in Plos one, 15(5), e0233378 (2020).

D.C. KIDD, E. CASTANO, Reading Literary Fiction and Theory of Mind: Three Pre-registered Replications and Extensions of Kidd and Castano, in Social Psychological and Personality Science doi:10.1177/1948550618775410 (2019).

D.M. KIDD, E. CASTANO, Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind, pubblicato in Science, 342(6156), 377-380. doi: 10.1126/science.1239918 (2013).

D.M. KIDD, E. CASTANO, Different Stories: How Levels of Familiarity with Literary and Genre Fiction Relate to Mentalizing. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, 11(4), 474-486. doi: 10.1037/aca0000069 (2017).

K. PAUKER, C. CARPINELLA, C. MEYERS, D.M. YOUNG, D.T. SANCHEZ, The role of diversity exposure in Whites’ reduction in race essentialism 1007 over time pubblicato in Soc. Psychol. Pers. Sci. 9, 944–952 (2018). doi: 10.1177/19485506177 1008 31496.

THE GAZE OF THE JAGUAR

Who were the Indians really? And who were we? A new metaphysics moves from the body as the seat of the soul.

Gianfranco Marrone

It seems that in the Greater Antilles, a few years after the discovery of America, strange crossroads and bloody metaphysical reversals were happening. The Spaniards, intrigued by the inhabitants of those places, set up commissions of inquiry to decide whether or not the Indians had souls, and whether or not they could be considered for all intents and purposes human persons. Like us. The Indians, for their part, immersed white captives under water, to examine very carefully the physical transformations of their corpses, so as to understand whether or not those bodies were going into putrefaction; and whether or not, for that matter, they could be considered for all intents and purposes human persons. Like them.

This anecdote, taken from Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo’s Historia de las Indias (1526), circulates widely among anthropologists, especially Americanists, as a kind of theoretical parable. Claude Lévi-Strauss, in Race and History, quoted it as a reminder of the fact that human nature, willingly or unwillingly, tends to deny its own generality, preferring to distinguish within itself between “proper” humans and their eventual by-products, with all the horrific – all too human – consequences: racism, persecution, mass extermination and so on.

The same scholar, returning to the issue in Sad Tropics, also pointed out how, beneath the apparent symmetry between the two behaviors of the Spaniards and the Indians in search of a peculiar answer to the same question, there was a strong difference in intent between them. The Europeans, using the models of theology, argued that the ‘others,’ the In-

GIANFRANCO MARRONE

Essayist and writer, he works on contemporary languages and discourses. He is full professor of Semiotics at the University of Palermo. He has taught courses at the universities of Bologna, Bogotá, IULM, Jyväskylä, Limoges, Madrid, Meknès, Paris Descartes, Pollenzo, and São Paulo, among others. He directs the International Center for Semiotic Sciences in Urbino and the journal E/C. He is president of the Sicilian Semiotic Circle. As publicist, he contributes to Tuttolibri, doppiozero and other publications. He is on the scientific committee of Versus, Carte semiotiche, Lexia, Actes Sémiotiques, Ocula, LId’O. He directs the series “Insegne” at Mimesis and the “Biblioteca di Semiotica” at Meltemi.

dians, were nothing but animals and could therefore to be persecuted, mistreated, killed. The inhabitants of the West Indies, on the other hand, using their scientific models, suspected that the Spaniards were spirits, idols, actual gods. The game, in short, is three terms (humans, animals, gods), not two (humans and not). The otherness that Westerners think about is not the same as that targeted by the so-called primitives: where the latter raise man to divinity, the others reduce man to pure beast. In other words: not only did people on both sides of the Atlantic think, and act, in very different terms, but these behaviors referred to unequal metaphysical principles, to different ways of thinking about reality, existence, the cosmos, human consciousness and the sphere of the divine. It’s metaphysics, then, in both cases.

This bitter little story is taken up and re-discussed in Cannibal Metaphysics (2009, transl. it. Ombre corte, 2017), a key book by Eduardo Viveiros De Castro, a very well known, chair at the Anthropological Museum of Rio de Janeiro, who has been pursuing extensive and innovative reflections not only in the field of ethnology and its methods, but, far more broadly, in that of philosophical criticism for some years now. Trying to interweave, just to name a few, the so-called “ontological turn” in anthropology (Descola, Ingold, Latour, Strathern... but also Sahlins and Wagner) with, on the one hand, the systematic structuralism of Lévi-Strauss and, on the other, the dynamic post-structuralism of philosophers such as Foucault and, above all, Deleuze and Guattari. His aim, as he has stated several times (see for example The Gaze of the Jaguar, Meltemi 2023, a very useful collection of interviews in which Viveiros synthesizes and clarifies some of the insights of his own thought), is to write a book that, similarly to Deleuze-Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, could be titled The Anti-Narcissus. A book that may never see the light of day, but whose central intent – dissolving the self-styled centrality of Western thought by decolonizing the rest of the world – circulates everywhere in his writings and sayings (among others, see also the valuable Does a World to Come Exist?, with Déborah Danowski, Nottetempo 2017).

A RADICAL ANIMISM

But what is a cannibal metaphysics? Already in the seemingly oxymoronic title there is an allusion to one of Lévi-Strauss’ own best-known texts, Savage Mind, which sixty years ago attributed complex forms of

philosophical-scientific, classificatory, speculative activity to so-called primitives. Similarly, Viveiros argues that anthropophagi (an intended stereotype to indicate, between the literal and the metaphorical, the populations studied by ethnologists) practice a metaphysics, or if you will, a cosmology, which is something at once broader and more precise than

the infamous “culture” of which they are said to be the bearers. Having worked for a long time on (but it would be better to say with) the Amazonian peoples, Viveiros found in them a radical animism, namely a tendency to attribute to a large number of living beings or things in the world a spirituality, thus a humanity. For the Jivaros, for example, monkeys,

Assassination of a Mexican Indian depicted in the Codex Kingsborough, a 16th-century manuscript, also figurative, preserved in the British Museum.

ANTHROPOLOGY

peccaries or certain birds can be part of the extended family, like in-laws. And if everyone (humans and animals and plants, but also spirits or dream entities) potentially has a soul, then the body is what distinguishes living beings from one another: it is in the body that species differences are instituted; it is the physiological functioning that determines the separation between properly human beings and other living beings, more or less fantastic.

O riginally, according to Amazonian imagery, living beings – humans, animals and spirits – were humans in their own right; then, little by little, some of them changed their bodies, becoming animals or spirits, while retaining all their interiority, consciousness, their being as human persons. One thus understands the profound meaning of what the Indians, in the Lévistraussian parable, were doing with their Spanish inmates: by studying the phys -

iological reactions of their bodies, they were going in search of forms of humanity in them, in order, consequently, to reject their supposed divine nature. Europeans had never denied that Amerindians had bodies; they rather doubted their souls. Indians, on the contrary, already knew that Spaniards had souls; but they were not certain about the meaning of their bodies. Observing their postmortem behavior (the way the corpses decomposed) was then the best way to assess their real humanity.

Hence, to make a long story short, the basic idea of Viveiros’s book: there is no such thing as nature, there is no such thing as culture, just as, more to the point, there is no unambiguous way of separating these two spheres. For us Westerners, nature is one and the same, the physical and biological basis from which various cultures are constituted as so many ways of detaching themselves from it. For many

Eduardo Viveiros De Castro has taught anthropology at the Museu Nacional of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro since 1984. He was also professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge between 1997 and 1998 and director of research at CNRS between 1999 and 2001.

In 1998, starting with a series of lectures given in Cambridge, it marks the beginning of the so-called Ontological Turn. His work offered a novel reflection on Amerindian communities. Advancing the idea of multinaturalism, Viveiros De Castro attempted an approach that could open anthropology to philosophy. He also theorized, calling it “prospectivism” or “multi-naturalism,” that some ethnic group not only believe that animals behave like humans, but that animals themselves perceive humans as animals, as if one species’ view of others always depends on the body in which it resides. The Ontological Turn is the subject of heated academic debates. Author of many scientific publications and popular essays, the complete bibliography is on Wikipedia

other ethnic groups, however, this is not the case. For them to be one and the same is culture, while natures are multiple.

Thus, for our part, the notion of multiculturalism is quite obvious: one nature, many cultures. For people like the Amazonian Achuar, and for many other peoples around the world, what is instead normal is multinaturalism—one culture, many natures—a notion that Western Europeans have great difficulty even understanding, if not perceiving.

PERSPECTIVISM VERSUS RELATIVISM

Let us try to explain, resorting to the key concept of Viveiros de Castro’s thought: perspectivism. Not to be confused, as the Brazilian scholar punctually points out, with relativism. The latter exists because it opposes universalism (and vice versa). Perspectivism, on the other hand, acts transversally, deconstructing both relativism and universalism. By following the mythological narratives of indigenous people, listening to ethnographic accounts, and carefully observing the behavior of tribes and clans of all kinds, it becomes clear how at the heart of all thought and action is what Viveiros calls the metaphysics of predation: after all, we are all either prey or predators (eaten objects or eating subjects, as the great French mathematician René Thom translated). Hence the multiplicity and constant variation of viewpoints, which in turn depend on the position and role of bodies in given circumstances. Thus, Viveiros explains, under normal conditions humans see themselves as humans and animals as animals; when in trance and because of illness, humans also see spirits as spirits. In turn, however, predatory animals and spirits see humans as prey, while beasts of prey see humans now as spirits, now as predators. In doing so, predator and prey animals see themselves as humans, and animal food as human food. Jaguars see human blood as corn beer; vultures perceive carrion worms as grilled fish. Hence all the metaphysical relevance and thematic complexity of the cannibalistic theme. Similarly, human ornaments (clothes, jewelry, makeup) are for animals as many forms of animal appearance, while for humans, animal plumage, fur, nails or beaks become forms of clothing.

After all, Viveiros explains by leaning on Benveniste’s theories, the point of view of living beings is analogous to the pronominal system of languages: just as I is the one who says “I,” and becomes “you” if one reverses the perspective of the interlocution, leaving all others, not included, in the role of “he,” similarly

happens in Amerindian perspectivism: the persons acting in that cosmology are not nouns but, precisely, pronouns, changing incessantly on the basis of their body’s position, hic et nunc, in the world. The person of whom Viveiros speaks is then not the spiritually overburdened person of philosophical personalism but that of grammar, as when we say first, second or third person according to the momentary position of the subjects of linguistic utterance.

The gaze of the jaguar is the moment when this animal says “I,” seeing prey everywhere: humans for example become pigs or sheep, and the blood flowing through the veins, it has been said, excellent beer. It happens, however, that the jaguar becomes a “you,” or even worse, a “he,” thus beginning to think that we are the real cannibals, stupid animals who would claim, who knows how, to roast it in order to eat it.

For this reason, perspectivism has nothing of relativism. For the relativist—a typically Western character—it is the point of view that creates the object. For the perspectivist, it is the object, its bodily position in the world, that produces the point of view. That is constantly changing. Here is the Anti-Narcissus: not only does Western culture have nothing superior to others, not only do other cultures have conceptual structures as complex as ours, but the moment our culture wants to mirror itself in others, it falls into them and disappears. It dissolves. It dies. Like those corpses of white people immersed in the Caribbean Sea to be observed, with scientific panache, in their somatic mutations. The challenge posed by Viveiros’s perspectivism is, in short, twofold: on the one hand, by reconstructing Amerindian cosmologies, it vindicates their specificity; on the other hand, it pushes our cosmology and revises itself to the point of dissolution. Moreover, even chez nous, contrasts emerge, not so much hidden, between different ways of relating to natural beings, considering them less and less as such. Just think of veganism or animalism, and the resulting conflicts within our daily lives. For more and more people, as for the Jivaros, certain animals are part of the family. They are like children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins. One would not otherwise explain the gesture of bottle-feeding a tender lamb. Pet food marketing is thriving today more than ever before. It’s a matter of perspective. ■

THE VIRTUE OF IMITATION

Reproducing an artwork or drawing inspiration from successful images is reprehensible today. But it was not always so: homages to the Masters provided for it. And now there are those who intend to revive the practice of “remakes.” A contemporary artist, Barry X Ball, recreates famous statues. Because, like Gertrude Stein’s rose, a copy is a copy is a copy is a...

Sara Piccinini

Barry X Ball, Sleeping Hermaphrodite, 2008-2017, in translucent Iranian pink onyx. Opposite page, Sleeping Hermaphrodite, 2008-2010 in black Belgian marble. The works reproduce the model taken from the Borghese Hermaphrodite, Louvre Museum, Paris (former Borghese Collection, Rome), which had been discovered near the Baths of Diocletian in 1608: figure and drapery are attributed to the Roman Imperial Period (2nd century AD) from Greek original (2nd century BC), with restorations by David Larique (1619) and the insertion of the bed by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1619). Courtesy and copyright of Barry X Ball for all images of his works.

Walking through the eighteenth-century rooms of a famous Venetian palace overlooking the Grand Canal, in the rather near past, the somewhat distracted visitor might have feared being affected by diplopia, coming into the presence of a space-threshold between two guardian sculptures. On a pedestal, the Veiled Woman (Puritas), c. 1720, by Antonio Corradini, a delicate allegorical bust of the Christian Faith, in which the compactness of the marble becomes veiled, wrinkled, almost softly drooping skin. A short distance away, a second “Purity,” equally white and refined, but more translucent, luminous, and with its head specularly inclined with respect to the first, creating a line of consonance of

intimate and joint abandonment, along with a space of almost sacred tension between the two.

Since 2008, Barry X Ball, an American artist already devoted to the use of precious materials and advanced technology, began to turn his interest to ancient statuary. From the earliest Purity works, made in white and pink Iranian onyx and black marble from Belgium, he has continued his contemporary re-production, always citing the source models, with masterpieces such as Giusto Le Court’s The Envy (1660-1670) — which he also elaborated in exuberant stones such as Mexican onyx and American “Golden Honeycomb” calcite — Rondanini’s Pietà (1552-1564) or Marco d’Agrate’s Flayed Saint Bartholomew (1562). But perhaps the work by Ball

Barry X Bal, Purity, 2008-2021, in black Belgian marble; opposite, Purity 2008-2011, in pink Iranian onyx. On the right page, also by Barry X Ball, Purity, 2008-2019 in translucent white Iranian onyx. The works are inspired by Antonio Corradini’s Purity, 1720-1725, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice.

STORIES IN ART

that most lends itself to a reflection on the concept of “copy” is Sleeping Hermaphrodite (2008-2010), which the artist has modeled in total black (black marble from Belgium, almost a counterbalance to the white color of the original) and total pink (pink Iranian onyx, almost reconstructing with the material the hue and texture of the young complexion).

Ball’s landmark sculpture here is the so-called “Borghese Hermaphrodite,” found near the Baths of Diocletian in 1608 and immediately acquired by Cardinal Borghese, who then commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to make the realistic capitonné marble bed on which to lay the boy/girl. This ancient sculpture, which ended up in the Louvre in the nineteenth century, was ab origine a second-century AD Roman copy from a second-century BC Hellenistic original, just as other

siblings and variants of the same subject were found in later centuries, now on display in museums including the Borghese Gallery, the Uffizi and the Hermitage. A number of modern artists have since worked on this same iconography, culminating in the work of Barry X Ball. While retaining the intensity and all the fundamental traits expressed by the Masters in the original creations, the artist makes hundreds of more or less visible changes — from the choice of material to the subtraction of details, from the modification of entire parts of the original work to the most subtle variations of the surface — transporting those images to another time and space, inviting us to re-appropriate them and push them further.

Following the path of the Hermaphrodite, it is possible to trace a concise chronology of the concept of

Saint Bartholomew Flayed (1562) by Marco d’Agrate, Milan Cathedral. Opposite page shows Barry X Ball’s reproduction, Saint Bartholomew Flayed, 2011-2020, in French Rouge du Roi marble.

STORIES IN ART

copying from antiquity to the present. The first fraudulent imitators of mainly Greek art, which was highly coveted by collectors, first appeared in in ancient Rome. At that time, as throughout the Middle Ages, copying was primarily a means of disseminating models and spreading knowledge in a historical context in which originality was not a primary value and copying was not considered disreputable in itself. That which resembles the original, and thus exhibits an appropriate degree of craftsmanship, is considered true (and, in the case of relics, absolutely effective and functional).

As the number of collectors and the value of antiquity

increased from the Renaissance onward, so did the number of commissions of imitations and copyists; but these imitations, or reworkings (as in the case of Bernini’s bed for the Hermaphrodite), were not often motivated by a desire to deceive as much as to pay homage to the masterpieces of the past and thereby prolong, on a classical model, an ideal art.

The phenomenon developed further, with unprecedented proportions, in the 18th and 19th centuries, when along with increasingly widespread collecting, a genuine forgery industry was born. This marks the onset of the strong distinction, collectively perceived

Barry X Ball, Envy, 2008-2010, in golden honeycomb calcite. On the side, also Envy, 2008-2013, in Mexican onyx. The model is from The Envy by Giusto Le Court, 1670.

STORIES IN ART

and supported in the Western world, between original and fake, which remains a fundamental aspect of the contemporary art system.

Barry X Ball keeps the title of the work (translated into English) and mentions the original model in the descriptions of his works - preceded by “after” (d’après). In a very complex present time, his sculptures emanate, in a highly conscious way, from the older tradition of copying, understood as a form of homage and as a model for learning. But at the same time, these “mirrors of the originals” embody evidence of an intriguing and perpetual question: how and as what can a “copy” be defined? ■

SARA PICCININI

She studied semiotics at the University of Bologna, spending an Erasmus period at the Université Libre in Brussels in 2005. After an internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice (2006), she attended a course in Art Communication at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York (2012). The Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, of which she has been Director since 2021, has seen her in-house since its opening in 2007. Since 2018 she has been its Coordinator, assuming full responsibility for the organization and planning of internal and external activities.

Barry X Ball, Pietà, 2011-2022, in translucent Iranian white onyx. Work inspired by Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Pietà Rondanini, Castello Sforzesco, Milan, 1552-64.

BERNARD STIEGLER THE PHILOSOPHER WHO LOVED TECHNOLOGY

“New reality of being” for Heidegger, téchne has been largely “repressed” in Western thought, from the pre-Socratic Greeks to Marx and Derrida. But, what if the poison is also the remedy? A great theorist like Stiegler, who died too soon, worked on this thesis for a long time.

Carlo Bordoni

Martin Heidegger

The appointment was in a small restaurant in Milan, not far from the headquarters of the Catholic University, where the next day, October 11, 2018, an international conference (strictly in English) would be held on the theme Social Generativity. It was on that occasion that I met Bernard Stiegler, preceded by fame as a great thinker, philosopher, sociologist, epistemologist, collaborator of Jacques Derrida and, like him, not an easy author. His complex language, full of neologisms, assonances, verbal games, was preg -

nant, rich, profound and precisely because of the difficulties of translation, little known in Italy. Yet famous all over the world.

Born in 1952 in Villebon-sur-Yvette, he had had a dramatic youth: at age 24, driven by economic problems, he had committed four armed robberies. Caught in the act, he had been sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment (later reduced to five for good behavior), and in prison he went on to study, earning a degree in philosophy and coming into contact with Jacques Derrida. On leaving prison in 1983, he had begun a brilliant university career, eventually becoming director of research at the Collège Internationale de Philosophie, associate professor at the University of Compiègne and head of the cultural development department at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. He had taught at Goldsmith College in London, founded the Ars Industrialis group and a school of philosophy in Épineuil-le-Fleuriel.

Thus the coming to presence of technology harbors in itself what we least suspect, the possible arising of the saving power.

MEMOIR

A THICK CONVERSATION IN THE NIGHT.

A t our meeting Stiegler immediately proved affable and helpful; so the next day, at the conclusion of the conference, I proposed an interview with him for the Corriere della Sera ’s La Lettura. We began a friendly conversation that lasted well into the night, continuing as we walked back to the hotel, losing our way at least a couple of times and meeting again in the morning for breakfast before he returned to Paris.

For my part, there was not only curiosity about his thought—I had read little about him, only a few pages from the first volume of La Technique et le Temps (1994) and Dans la Disruption (2016)but mostly about the man. Stiegler had not had an easy life and, to hear him speaking, he did not sound like the same person who spent five years in jail: a hard-scarred existence that, unlike most less fortunate cases, he had redeemed through study. Hence his confidence in knowledge.

During the interview he compared himself to poet Joë Bousquet, who was paralyzed by a wound during World War I and spent his life in a room with closed windows. With this example he intended to clarify how a tragic experience can translate into something positive. Stillness as a reason for change. Bousquet had succeeded in transforming his infirmity into a poetic capacity: almost as if illness were a necessity, an initiatory test, a caudine gallows, a price to be paid to get out of the state of minority.

“I was in prison and tried to turn prison into a chance. I recognized myself in what Gilles Deleuze says about Bousquet: I was an ‘infirm’ like him. But Deleuze, unlike Derrida, produced a positive pharmacology, arguing that we need to transform illness into health.”

No attempt was made to erase or even hide his past, showing that his conviction was now an integral part of the man who had become one of the most important contemporary philosophers.

We talked about his latest book coming out in France, Qu’appelle-t-on panser? , with an untranslatable assonance between “penser” (to think) and “panser” (to cure). A text that reveals the author’s ecological soul and the urgency of a new economic policy.

“After two hundred and fifty years of the industrial economy,” he explained, “which has dragged us into the Anthropocene, we have to reckon with

the damage done to our planet. We need to rethink the economy, to fight against the entropy that threatens every living form. There is a need for a cure. For this we can turn to negative entropy, negentropy, and make technology the instrument of salvation for humanity.”

A PRAISE OF TECHNIQUE

A s already mentioned, Stiegler is not well known in Italy, partly because not all of his works have been translated, starting with the seminal La Technique et le Temps in three volumes (1. La Faute d’Épiméthée ; 2. La Désorientation ; 3. Le Temps du cinéma et la question du mal-être ), reprinted together by Fayard in 2018.

Here Stiegler observes how philosophy, from its origins, is founded on the repression of technique. This work, from Socrates to Deleuze, from Heidegger to Derrida, through Marx, who makes technique the starting point, can be read as the programmatic manifesto of his thought, which in all subsequent works will only deepen and develop this fundamental concept.

Stiegler never condemns technique; on the contrary, he emphasizes its ability to contribute to the continuity of existence, rejecting that direction of Western thought that has always discredited it, preferring the episteme.

To support this thesis he resorts to the Greek classics, from Plato to Aristotle, pointing out that technique, like any pharmakon , is both cure and poison. It becomes negative when it is misused, especially when capitalism appropriates it to use it as an instrument of oppression and control of the individual. Archaic Greek thought, pre-Socratic and tragic, recognized that technique affects the fate of mortals. One finds traces of this experience of the tragic in Socrates, although Plato later suppresses it. Its toxicity cannot be completely eliminated and always returns over time, but only through knowledge it can be limited and transformed into a cure. In this Stiegler distances himself from Derrida’s thought, which lacks a positive pharmacology. In common thought, human beings are considered sick as a result of technique, but illness can be transformed into anew health, crediting Martin Heidegger with arguing that “technique is the new reality of being.”

Memory, in Stiegler, assumes fundamental importance for the symbolic and for the construction

AN ESSENTIAL BIOGRAPHY

Bernard Stiegler (Villebon-sur-Yvette, April 1, 1952 - Épineuil-le-Fleuriel, Aug. 6, 2020) was a French philosopher who devoted his theoretical work mainly to issues of technology. He had a troubled life: in his younger years he was also in prison for armed robbery, but he went on to achieve brilliant results, so much so that he became director of the Collège international de philosophie and professor at the Université de Technologie in Compiègne, as well as a visiting professor at Goldsmiths College in London and later also director of the Department for Cultural Development at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. In 2010 he opened his own school of philosophy in the French town of Épineuil-le-Fleuriel.

of the self, in Gilbert Simondon’s development of psychic and collective individuation. As a temporal object (Edmund Husserl), consciousness is formulated by the time of its passing—”it appears only by disappearing”—and is constituted by the primary retentions of memory. Not everything is retained, but filtered through the secondary retainings, as a remnant of the primaries. Together they form the hypomnemata , which could be called the notebooks of memory: that which remains under trace and can be re-presented through anamnesis, the re-enactment of memory.

REFERRING TO HEIDEGGER

A confirmation of the temporal connection of Stiegler’s thought with the sensibility of the early third millennium is provided by the very first volume of La technique et le temps : la faute d’Épiméthée. Indeed, it shows how the importance of technique must be recognized at a time when new technologies are making their mark in every area of daily life, as well as in a productive practice.

But while many voices rise among the “apocalyptics” to denounce the encroachment of technology into human relations, with the risk of ever-increasing dehumanization and isolation among the “integrated,” Derrida’s disciple argues a fascinating and alternative thesis to common thought. The basic thesis of La technique et le temps (with a title that explicitly recalls Heidegger’s masterpiece, as to suggest an ideal continuity with the philosopher who first brought technique back to the center of critical debate) is that Western thought, from its origins, was based on the repression of technique.

In the German philosopher, the reference to the question of technique returns with extreme, repeated and almost obsessive prominence throughout his life, right up to that decisive remark in 1955, in which we read, “the world is transformed into a complete domain of technique” (The Abandonment, 1959), which could well be used as an exergue to Stiegler’s entire oeuvre.

But while Heidegger makes a note of this, noting its consistency on the practical level, with all its attendant anxieties, — “man is not at all prepared for this radical change in the world” — Stiegler goes further and recognizes that technology has always been part of human nature and only misjudgment or deliberate mystification have constantly tried to evade this fact, never taking into account the

originally “exosomatic” character of human beings, who have always been endowed with artificial characters and organs. This attitude is not cultural, not induced by learning or experience, but absolutely natural. Proper to his being from the very beginning.

Stiegler calls Socrates to witness, along with archaic and pre-Socratic Greek thought, thus still lacking the logos. This is because it is not a matter of reason, but a vital requirement, on which survival itself depends. The technical condition is thus the fate of mortals.

At the origin of this fate that binds us to technology is the implicit weakness of the human being, the animal not yet stably determined ( Das noch nicht festgestellte Tier ), which Nietzsche alludes to in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). From whose awareness the myth of Prometheus is born. But this congenital weakness, this state of minority, proved successful from the moment it found an ally in technique and made technique its strength.

NEOTENISM AND PROTESTION.

I t all stems from the fact that human weakness is characterized by a strong neotenic tendency, that is, permanent characters of infantilism, the presence of youthful characteristics even in the adult.

Among higher animals, the human is the only one that needs a longer time for breeding and for making offspring autonomous. But neotenism, Stiegler argues in The Symbolic Misery (2. The Catastrophe of the Sensible , 2005), is also responsible for the assumption of the upright position, thus for a new structural and functional balance of the

Sociologist and essayist, writes for Corriere della Sera and the supplement La Lettura He works on the sociology of cultural processes, the analysis of political phenomena and social change. His latest publications include: Ethical violence (Polity, 2024); Post-Society (Polity, 2022); L’intimità pubblica (La Nave di Teseo, 2021); Il primato delle tecnologie (Mimesis, 2020); Hubris and progress (Routledge, 2019); Interregnum. Beyond liquid modernity (Transcript, 2016).

With Zygmunt Bauman he wrote Stato di crisi (Polity, 2014 2015).

CARLO BORDONI

body, which results in “prosthesization.”

That is, the abandonment of upper limb motor skills: the arms are no longer used to move, as in primates, but take on a completely different function. The hand, thanks to the opposable thumb, can pick up, squeeze, lift, do. This is the optimal condition to allow the use of the technique. From the moment an Australopithecus africanus discovered that it could pick up a branch or a bone (as in the opening scene of 2001 A Space Odyssey , Stanley Kubrick’s film), to smash, strike or just increase the strength of the hand, the use of technique opened up. This is where the exosomatic destiny of humanity is born and consolidated over time. Technique modifies the way of life: if until now humans had survived in the same way as animals, as gatherers-hunters, taking advantage of what nature offers, thanks to technique they can intervene in natural processes, modify the landscape, beginning with the first and simplest alteration: the cultivation of the soil. As a result, man develops the presumption that he can dominate nature through technique, of which he is the sole possessor, which leads him to believe in a special divine favor.

THE TECHNIQUE IS A PHARMAKON

I n their growing sense of omnipotence, humans rely more and more on technology, which is the industrialized operating arm of technique, forgetting that, like all artificial remedies, technique has a positive and a negative side. It is a Pharmakon , and as such can prove toxic.

Now, while for Derrida the toxic contribution of technique is inevitable, since it is part of its very essence (as artifice, it does not follow the laws of nature), for Stiegler it is instead possible to limit the toxic content of technique through knowledge. “What is missing in Derrida,” Stiegler warns, “is a positive pharmacology. Just as in Georges Canguilhem ( The Normal and the Pathological , 1966), who was a doctor and considered man sick because of technology. But illness can be reversed into new health, to use Nietzsche’s words: the Pharmakon is a poison, but it can also be a remedy, forgetting the essential. That knowledge is a cure.”

Knowledge can be the formidable tool for containing the negative effects of technique. Knowledge, then, that dominates technique with intellect. Not only through creativity, ideation, design and mental processes, as Marx explains with the alle -

gory of the bee and the architect, but also from the deep understanding of its conditioning, its predictable effects and the consequences that can result from its use. Knowledge may be the true ruler of technique, although so far technique has been dominated by other technique.

If technique is a product of man, while knowledge is inherent in man, the prevalence of knowledge over technique, its controllability, its dependence on knowledge is confirmed, but only as long as knowledge is cultivated and deemed the highest form of human production. This is the limit that cannot be crossed: the disavowal of the primacy of science.

Instead, when one believes in the independent power of technique, detached from knowledge, or as a function of non-knowledge, the toxic side of the Pharmakon will prevail, resulting in dehumanization.

AFTER THE MILAN MEETING

The exchange with Stiegler continued via e-mail. I further studied his work, translating the piece Nouvelle généalogie de la morale considérée depui l’ère anthropocène for the book Il primato delle tecnologie (Mimesis, 2020). Sadly, in the same year, on August 6, came the news of his untimely death, which occurred in the village of Épineuil-le-Fleuriel, where he had established the headquarters of his school of philosophy. With him passed away one of the most original voices of the 21st century. The philosopher who restored to technology its humanity, in a time when new technologies have become an indispensable reference point. ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

B. STIEGLER, The Age of Disruption: Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism, Polity

- States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century, Policy.

- Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews, with Jacques Derrida et al.,Polity

- The Neganthropocene, with Daniel Ross, Saint Philip Street Press, 2020.

- Automatic Society, Vol. 1: The Future of Work, Polity 2016.

- Symbolic Misery. Vol. 1: The Hyperindustrial Epoch, Polity 2014.

- Symbolic Misery. Vol. 2: The Catastrophe of the Sensible, Polity 2015.

- The Lost Spirit of Capitalism: Disbelief and Discredit, Polity 2014.

- What Makes Life Worth Living: On Pharmacology, Polity 2013

- For a New Critic of Political Economy, Polity, 2010

- Technics and Time, Stanford University Press, 1998.

THE LAST FAUST

Pietro Citati and the Lorenzo Valla Foundation. Two life journeys crossing their paths along the way to the greatest literature and finally setting sail driven by the waves of myth. Ulysses, Helen, Hermes, Goethe, and later Manzoni, Gadda, Fenoglio. Not to mention the Zeitgeist and that fearless enterprise to let the world grow together with words.

Rosita Copioli

On November 22nd 2021, Valla Foundation council members unanimously elected and warmly applauded Pietro Citati as their Founding President. It was a natural outcome, since Citati designed and created it. Yet, its minute, carefully outlined and branched structure would remain somehow obscure, unless we first trace back its premises to Citati’s mind. He worked on his mythical and symbolic system with the skills of a craftsman, combining auctorial and editing practices together with journalism, intertwining the classics with modernity.

The Valla Foundation is almost a necessity to him who, like an old scholar of romance philology, was constantly moving more and more backwards, in search of the origins of literature. He could not accept seeing ancient books deprived of their philological apparatus, essential to the strange fight between truth and lie which literature engages.

The Valla Foundation takes the side of truth, although its ambiguous creator, keeps both sides like a double-faced Janus. I will try to tell all this through Pietro Citati’s own experience.

In March 1970, Mondadori published his book on Goethe’s Meister and second Faust. It had been the outcome of ten years of studies, of the thorough selection of textual sources, with fascinating chapters on lunar dew, on Helen and the descent to the mothers, on Hermes and the origin of poetry. The continuous, in-depth exploration of the grounds of classical myths, will later lead to La mente colorata.

Ulisse e l’Odissea (Mondadori, 2002). Calvino wrote him that, perhaps, his Goethe represented the only currently viable example of literature, being at once critical and creative. Citati was fifty years old when he won the Viareggio prize, while in 1983 his Tolstoj was awarded the Strega. He worked for Garzanti, editing many book series, directly overviewing works by Gadda and by other authors such as Fenoglio and Zolla, he devised the monumental Cecchi-Sapegno Storia della letteratura italiana. Having left Garzanti, Alberto Mondadori (and Vittorio Sereni) called him to run with Giovanni Pozzi a new Religious Studies series. Although the project never took off, because deemed not commercially profitable, it did eventually form the basis for the future Valla Foundation. A new professional partnership with the publisher began, resulting in more projects, collaborations, and even in the conception of many Meridiani.

FAMILY CHRONICLE

He came from a Ligurian-Piedmontese family of Sicilian, and Emilian, descent that he will portray, together with the periodic family dramas, through the letters of his ancestors in Storia prima felice, poi dolentissima e funesta (1989). He would, then, pick his friends of choice among peers or masters who were soon to become brotherly figures: Elémire Zolla, Italo Calvino, Alberto Arbasino, Beppe Fenoglio, Carlo Cassola, Giovanni Merlini, Giorgio Pasquali, Gianfranco Contini, Leo Spitzer, Emilio Cecchi,

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia, Giorgio Manganelli, Attilio Bertolucci, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Elena Croce and Raimondo Craveri with their children, Raffaele Mattioli, Alfredo Schiaffini, Roberto Longhi, Anna Banti, Francesco Arcangeli, Giuliano Briganti, Eugenio Scalfari, Alberto Ronchey, Giuliano Gramigna, Giulio Cattaneo, Enzo Forcella, Giorgio Bassani, Vittoria Guerrini, Mario Praz, Giovanni Macchia, Niccolò and Dinda Gallo, Vittorio Sereni, Roberto Calasso, Giovanni Mariotti, Sergio Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, Giorgio Caproni, Mario Trevi, Anna Maria Ortese, Piero and Landa Crommelynck, Marc Fumaroli, Emil Cioran, Gérad Macé, Héctor Bianciotti, Santo Mazzarino, Carlo Diano, Marino Barchiesi, Carlo Gallavotti, Christine Mohrmann, Manlio Simonet-

ti, Francesco Sisti, Federico Fellini...

FROM THE POSTWAR YEARS TO THE 70S

From the Normale in Pisa came the 50s and 70s, (where the atmosphere was not peaceful: «They took Togliatti, and adored him, as the perfect example of politician, man of letters and infinitely good-natured person»). Citati studied there Leopardi and the Lombard Enlightenment, taking a liking to Giorgio Pasquali. Romance Studies in Zürich followed, as assistant to the great romansh philologist Reto Raduolf Bezzola, he was also praised for his translation of Arnaut Daniel. He met, then, Gianfranco Contini, who sent him to join the lectorate in Munich under Gerhard Rohlfs.

Only thanks to these forming years he could, first,

Pietro Citati in Grecia. Photo Frassineti/Mondadori Portfolio/Bridgemanart.

HIGHEST HONOR

write on Parini – starting from his brilliant thesis and findings –, on Marivaux and, then, oversee the works of Spitzer for Einaudi. Most of what he did in Munich and Zürich remains unknown. Nobody even bothered to search for his work on Arnaut, neither for the articles he wrote for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, for an American newspaper in Berlin, Die Neue Zeitung, and for the Bavarian Süddeutsche Zeitung Still in the 50s, he collaborates with prominent journals; like Il Punto, with via Bassani, and Pietra’s and Muraldi’s Il Giorno (1960-1973), out of which will later come Il tè del cappaellaio matto (Mondadori, 1972) «literature intended as infinite change around an immutable time». He will join Il Corriere della sera (1973-1988) beginning with his writings on Manzoni, soon published as monographs, all well received, but criticized by moralists, because they were interpreted as the shattering of a sacred icon. Alessandro will appear abruptly out of nowhere –with its appendix of documents edited by Francesco Sisti (Mondadori, 1974) – as life does when actually mythical: Pasolini will make of it his only, truly self-involved, queer review.

From the 50s up until today, he devises, well within the present, his mythical-symbolic system based on archetypes, going beyond all analytical inspections. While talking about the myths at the center of his La luce della notte (Mondadori ,1996) – Shiite, classical, Chinese, Islamic, Hebraic myths, as well as modern, European ones, including their darker nemesis: the schizophrenic condition – he says to Benedetta Craveri: «Mythical thinking means moving past the law of contradiction; one myth might simultaneously have twenty, thirty opposite meanings, and we might give it different interpretations. And yet, each myth is perfectly coherent: Hermes, Apollo or Dionysus, despite their many faces, are all one, unique figure. Characteristic of myths is their infinite ability to radiate: they never run out, while we suppose that poetry does. There is one main thread in the book. We cannot contemplate light (or maybe we can but once in a lifetime, during ecstatic revelations): we do see it when multiplied and refracted in nocturnal lights, like Lucius and Psyche in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses. […] We need to measure ourselves against the mythical condition. We have to live as if Apollo and Hermes were our contemporaries, […] having present at once in our mind all the myths of human history. Because this is the only true way to be present to oneself. The Self that is made of feelings and

emotions is mere appearance without a core structure. Only by embracing a multiplying identity that allows us to continuously face all myths together, we will experience being with a true Self» (La Repubblica, September 13th 1996).

This borderline, schizophrenic contemporaneity and simultaneity – reminiscent of Ulysses’ many-colored mind, ‘octopus and chameleon’ – can move in every possible direction within the finite world, as Goethe warns those chasing the infinite. It is the love for nature and for the present which the analogic spirit still feels connected to all things, despite disasters, ruins and the death of all gods: it is that feeble, inextinguishable spark of endless continuity which never dies. Paradoxically, this love for the present coincides with an equal passion for the infinity of the past. On the one hand, he does not rely on the past to find stability and support. On the other, the more he is contemporary and simultaneous with the now, the more he incorporates the past, bringing it to light. And he did not mean just one limited section of it, but its totality, starting from the most at hand and closest regions: the Greek and Latin pasts, the first centuries of Christianity, up until the Middle Ages. Imagination can truly travel only when texts are read and reread in their identity, capturing their forever living aery spirits. Surprisingly enough, while many claimed the death of the novel – in the name of aphasia and incommunicability, and out of cowardice –and others rejected nature and myth for the sake of commodification, Citati kept seeing gods, spirits of the novel and theological adventures everywhere, even in authors coming from that modernity which seemed to deny them.

Hermeneutics is a skill, a quality distinctively owned by Hermes, fostered by the loss of all boundaries and assumptions. Like a pearl, it emerges from deep waters, and out of philological wisdom, carried by and within a finally restored literature.

The gift comes with dangers though: it often implies choices that easily turn into challenges. Both his personal books and the book series he runs, like the recent Classici Rizzoli and Islamica Mondadori, not to mention the Valla, are all efforts which primarily rely on esteemed collaborators and on the preeminence of the texts themselves, in blatant contrast with the absurd oversimplifications of today. Citati follows his own original nature, like Goethe: he is true to it. Whether he works on the Incas or on Saint Teresa, Cosroe and Suhrawardi, or on Jesuits in China,

on Monet, Kafka, on the idea of harmonia mundi (amond cats, children, travels, politics, chatter, italian language), whether he is working on the best of all possible worlds, or on Leopardi, Mainsfield and Fitzgerlad, on Don Quixote and on the Gospels, on the disease of the Infinite tainting the last century, on the silence and abyss which the Gnostic myths keep inspiring in us, or whether, like in his last unpublished work, he draws a vast itinerary stretching from antiquity to today, on the background of literature and art most ardent visionaries, Citati will always embark, like Hermes, on unexpected and astonishing journeys, keeping us readers on the verge of his expectations and of his own sense of wonder.

BIRTH OF THE VALLA FOUNDATION

In 1970, Goethe surely marks a turning point. It joins together expertise, areas of interests, myth. The back cover informs us that the author «is preparing, alongside other scholars, an upcoming series on Greek and Latin writers». Being already well familiar with the creation of book series, he feels that a series combining the Classics with the Christians is lacking, and especially one that would be equally accessible to specialists and also to those readers willing to approach the fundamental texts of our origins with the help of a reliable and distinguished guide.

A series like this one does not exist anywhere, not even abroad, and Italy has long lost the primacy of its Humanism. On March 25th 1970, Citati goes to the notary with Santo Mazzarino and Carlo Gallavotti: they sign and the Association, which will be later subsumed by Mondadori, is founded. He named it after Lorenzo Valla, true symbol of philology, the practice which unmasks falsehood and is an instrument of truth across different fields, even the religious and political ones, since Valla proved the donation of Constantine had been forged by the Church in order to establish on it its temporal power and authority. In addition to be the greatest historian of ancient Rome, Mazzarino knows everything, like Hermes did: «Nobody compares to him. He owns lots of books, from St Paul to Asoka, not even Pasquali, Spitzer, Diano, Praz, can match him». Mazzarino is an excellent advisor and like a puer he has «an extraordinary imagination, the analogic sense typical of poets, as he pulled together Rome and China, the Middle Ages and Mexico, allowing every detail to enlighten each other».

Christine Mohrmann, the greatest scholar of Christian Latin culture, is the first one Citati pursues, up

ROSITA COPIOLI

She has written books of poetry and prose, plays and historical texts; she edited and translated works by Sappho, Yeats, Leopardi, Goethe, Flaubert, Fellini. She edited the magazine L’altro versante (1979-1989). Books of poetry include: Splendida lumina solis, Forum 1979; Furore delle rose, Guanda 1989; Elena, Guanda 1996; Il postino fedele, Mondadori 2008; Le acque della mente, Mondadori 2016; Le figlie di Gailani e mia madre, Franco Maria Ricci 2020; Elena Nemesi, MC 2021; I fanciulli dietro alle porte, Vallecchi 2022.

Among those in prose: I giardini dei popoli sotto le onde, Guanda 1991; Il fuoco dell’Eden, Tema celeste 1992; La previsione dei sogni, Medusa 2002; Il nostro sistema solare, Medusa 2013; con Vallecchi: Gli occhi di Fellini, 2020; La voce di Sergio Zavoli, 2021; Simbolo, 2022.

to Nijmegen where they create the first volume on the lives of saints, with Citati’s own translation of Anthony’s life and others called to translate the rest: Marino Barchiesi (whose son Alessandro will be invited to edit and comment upon Ovid’s and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses), Luca Canali, who will eventually translate the Aeneid, Carlo Carena who will deal with Plutarch, and Claudio Moreschini. Mohrmann, jokingly portrayed by Citati as «plump and jolly», soon becomes a precious partner, joined by her assistants: Bartelink, Bastiaensen and van Smit. Among these first issues, there are Aristotle’s Poetics (1974), Empedocles (1975), both edited by Gallavotti, The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus, edited in two volumes by Giovanni Vitucci (1974). Since then, they have reached the total number of 175, four issues published yearly.

Citati believes volumes should not be confined to the works of individual authors, but they should also include collections, anthologies and overarching series: lives of Saints, Alexander Romance, Greek democracy, Christ, Anima Mundi, Franciscanism, the Soul’s Journeys, the Legends of Rome, only to name a few examples included in a well assorted program held tightly together by the unique in-depth investigation around our ‘foundations’, explored up to their infinite, wondrous ‘widening gyres’. These are qualities partaken only by those series of excellent craft that can afford a philological apparatus.

HIGHEST HONOR

Following his at once sophisticated and practical method, Citati oversees, rewrites, cuts, tailors with great auctoritas every single venture. Professors never complain, and he prefers to work behind the curtains, as he was taught by the sacrosanct adagio lathe biosas, ‘live in obscurity’, a precept sadly forgotten in today’s world. His ways were shared by one of his main partners, Francesco Sisti, official co-director from 1974 to 2011, who edited Arrian and died in the summer of 2021. And now Piero Boitani, recruited with strong resolution as director in 2005, given his unmatched and broad expertise, named executive vice-president in 2014 and currently in charge also as director of the ‘Greek and Latin Writers’ series. In 2016 he donated to the Valla Foundation half the worth of the Balzan Prize, launching the annual ‘Balzan-Lincei Valla Lectures’ and laying the groundwork for a long-lasting and eclectic program which will include Hebrew and Early Modern Humanism.

Valla’s working style is a creative and artisanal one, reminiscent of those laboratories where the artist-philologist could recreate, like Pinturicchio and Raphael, the Domus Aurea’s grotesques, unparalleled for value and fame, and nowhere else to be found.

In recent decades, Classical Studies are suffering and languishing at the hands of cancel culture, of wars and revisions targeting the classics, of false problems raised between science-technology and humanism, of practical-democratic and traditional-reactionary schools (the trite but still attractive Gramscian and Pasolinian gourmet), and of catastrophic university reforms, while all foreign classics series but the French Les Belles Lettres are either over or about to be shut down. In the midst of such cultural and educational decadence, the Valla Foundation fearlessly sails like the swift ship of Sidon returning Helen back home, escorted by Castor and Pollux riding their celestial horses.

Since the beginning, many writers who were also Citati’s friends gave their different contribution to the Valla Foundation: of spiritual, directive, advising, journalistic kinds, always consistent with the system of analogic resonances. Thus, many friends of Valla became reviewers on newspapers, forming a loyal group of supporters. I was recruited in the 80s and my first contribution consisted in book reviews; however, in 2000, when I started organizing for a few years the Medieval Poetry Festival in Rimini, I asked Valla for collaboration. Now, coming from Romagna as Serra did and being an unusual poet obsessed

with philology (one of my theoretical essays was titled Filologia anarchica dell’immaginazione simbolica), I am well aware that even philological memory belongs to the Muses.

When he published Goethe in 1970, Citati knew the book was to bring water in times about to explode in flames. That was also Vallas’s same water, poured from refreshing and nourishing springs which only a few contemporaries, mainly poets of younger generations, sought to revive. In 1975, when the Lives of Saints were ready, he mailed them to Fellini, asking permission to keep sending him more publications from the Valla collection. Fellini replied with enthusiasm. Thus, their intense friendship began, an actual exchange that brought closer to Valla he who, according to Kundera, was the most complete and prophetic artist of the 20th century, and who certainly was the most ‘winged’ companion in envisioning the catastrophe and in the reconstruction of literature, poetry, art and philology. ■

CITATI, AN ESSENTIAL BIOGRAPHY

Goethe, Mondadori 1970 (ed. def. Adelphi 1990); Il tè del Cappellaio matto, Mondadori 1972; Immagini di Alessandro Manzoni, Mondadori 1973 (col titolo La collina di Brusuglio, 1997); Alessandro, Rizzoli 1974 (col titolo Alessandro Magno, 1985); La primavera di Cosroe, Rizzoli 1977; I frantumi del mondo, Rizzoli 1978; Il velo nero, Rizzoli 1979; Vita breve di Katherine Mansfield, Rizzoli 1980; Il migliore dei mondi impossibili, Rizzoli 1982; Tolstoj, Longanesi 1983; Il sogno della camera rossa, Rizzoli 1986; Kafka, Rizzoli 1987; Storia prima felice, poi dolentissima e funesta, Rizzoli 1989; Ritratti di donne, Rizzoli 1992; La colomba pugnalata, Mondadori 1995; La luce della notte, Mondadori 1996; L’armonia del mondo, Rizzoli 1998; Il Male Assoluto, Mondadori 2000; La mente colorata, Mondadori 2002; Israele e l’Islam, Mondadori 2003; La civiltà letteraria europea, Mondadori 2005; La morte della farfalla, Mondadori 2006; La malattia dell’infinito, Mondadori 2008; Leopardi, Mondadori 2010; Elogio del pomodoro, Mondadori 2011; Il Don Chisciotte, Mondadori 2013; I Vangeli, Mondadori 2014; Sogni antichi e moderni, Mondadori 2016; Il silenzio e l’abisso, Mondadori 2018; Dostoevskij senza misura, in La Repubblica 2021; La ragazza dagli occhi d’oro (Adelphi, 2022)

THE MISTERY OF ZAZU

Rosie Vela was not an unknown newcomer.

Indeed, being very beautiful, she trod the fashion scenes in the pyrotechnic 1980s. But this overshadowed, perhaps forever, her talent as a sophisticated and experimental musician waiting to be rediscovered.

Carlo Boccadoro

In 1986, a very peculiar album appeared in record stores. The cover photo showed the face of a young woman surrounded by a mass of curly hair worthy of a Gorgon, but unlike her mythical ancestors, with a dreamy, inoffensive look.

The title of the record, Zazu, was itself bizarre, and about the debut author, Rosie Vela, there was no particular news as a musician: up to that time she was known more from her modeling career, successful appearances on dozens of Vogue covers, and a brief film appearance in Michael Cimino’s masterpiece Heaven’s Gate.

For Rosie, however, these activities were secondary to her real interest in writing songs of unusual structure, with highly refined harmonic progressions and serpentine melodies that followed none of the dictates necessary to achieve commercial success. It took many years of work to hone this skill; in the meantime, activity in the fashion world was a way of sustaining herself while waiting for her musical talent to be noticed.

Record enthusiasts of the time immediately pricked up their ears when they saw that the record’s production was entrusted to Gary Katz, i.e., the creator of much of the work of Steely Dan, a legendary rock band with refined pop/jazz influences that at the time had not recorded anything for more than six years and was considered defunct

due to quarrels between its founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.

Instead, the liner notes revealed the presence of both of them as unexpected Zazu collaborators, engaged in coating the songs of an artist on her first album with exquisite synthesizer textures. All the other musicians featured were also among the best U.S. session men. The record must have had an extraordinary budget to afford such a cast, which made this debut even stranger given that record companies generally, to avoid risk, do not set aside large resources for emerging artists.

Listening to the first song, then, did not seem to deviate much from the usual pop paths typical of the 1980s. Fool’s Paradise is undoubtedly the most conventional track on a totally unconventional record and may fool those approaching Zazu for the first time: but right from the second track, Magic Smile, backed by a springy, sly shuffle and Fagen’s colorful keyboards, it becomes clear that Rosie Vela possessed a highly original talent for writing pieces that seemingly belonged to the sophisticated, drawn-out pop/ rock of the era but that on each listen turned out to be far more interesting and bizarre, true musical matryoshkas containing multiple layers of meaning.

Rosie’s voice is also highly original, a dense and sensual alto totally lacking in technical virtuosity but able to tackle these strange songs with a personality that asserts itself right from the start. Finally, the

RANDOM NOTES

lyrics (again written by her) are decidedly out of the ordinary and include several made-up words mixed with English.

At that time, there were no Internet sites as there are today that could hold the words of thousands of songs, and there was only one lyric on the cover, that of Zazu, seemingly a love song in which “Decarbonize the diamond,” “Techno-data,” and in which executives of “Homocorporations” hand out “salaries in the night to survive” are mentioned: as you can see, it veers decidedly to the side of the surreal.

One had to guess upon listening at the rest of the words, but there was no way to unravel fully Rosie’s textual ambiguity, which interpolated absurd words and phrases such as “Keenovay,” “Nageebookakay” and even “A can na vee can a bot a set you zee a de dy cu no zy su no,” and “Hootchikoo” within lyrics that often seemed to speak of regret, goodbye, memories and melancholy, perhaps inspired by the early death of her husband Jimmy Roberts, a musician who died at a very young age from cancer.

The melodies of the songs appear elusive at first but over time end up sticking to the brain indelibly just like the simplest pop catchphrases, the verse structure in no way respects the reassuring symmetries of so much popular music, and in tracks like Interlude and Tonto, it seems to follow freely the visionary flow of the words, offering at times more funk and rock suggestions that Katz’s glossy production and

CARLO BOCCADORO

A composer and conductor, he was born in 1963. He collaborates with orchestras and groups chamber music in different parts of the world. He is the author of ten books published by various publishers, among his latest, Bach-Prince, parallel lives, released by Einaudi in 2021, while he is in bookstores a few months ago Battiato, Café Table Musik (La Nave di Teseo), a musical biography of Franco Battiato.

Since 2017 he has been Artistic Director of the Concerts of the Scuola Normale di Pisa, since May 2023 he has been Music Consultant of the Bonci Theater in Cesena. Since 2021 he has been Editorial Director of the non-fiction music series “Correnti,” published by Edizioni Curci. Since 2023 he has been Academic of Santa Cecilia.

engineer Eliot Scheiner’s crystal sounds distance from any temptation to viscerality, offering instead a look, as if from above, in deliberate contrast to the personal nature of the songs.

Gary Katz also encourages Rosie to sing in a seemingly detached manner (as if to ward off the risk of overemphasizing the implied suffering in many of the songs). Yet one of the very few remaining clips we have of her live performances, recorded on the David Letterman Show on October 14, 1986, features Rosie grappling with Magic Smile and reveals much more expressive, direct, and participatory intentions in her voice.

The musical world’s reaction to Zazu was one of intense admiration from critics and musicians (Don Henley of the Eagles called her to sing along with Joni Mitchell in the song Who owns this place?, made for Martin Scorsese’s film The Color of Money) yet of utter indifference from the U.S. public, which doomed the work to commercial failure.

Things went better in England, where the album entered the Top 30 charts selling a fair number of copies: however, this was not enough for the A&M record company, which in the face of the U.S. commercial disaster decided not to release Rosie’s second album made the following year and titled Sun Upon the Altar. No tracks from this album ever appeared even on the net or in the form of pirated bootlegs. This gave the work a mythical and mysterious aura. It seems that Rosie considered it even better than Zazu. Still, a total silence has descended on the album, and it is not known if it will be released someday.

It certainly didn’t help that from the very beginning Rosie rebelled against the part of the successful model engaged in music only as a hobby. She rejected the original photos taken by Herb Ritts for the album cover that portrayed her in sexy poses and that hinted at Madonna’s image. She told off stylists and record managers who wanted to lock her into a brainless fairy-tale image. In interviews she declared that she didn’t want to be “a Barbie” but wanted only to be judged for her artistic talent by declaring her independence. “People see me as Cinderella and think that some Lamp Genius waved a magic wand over me to make these songs come to life. Instead, I’m a serious person who works hard and applies herself to what she decides to do,” she said in an interview with New York Magazine in November 1986.

At the time, it was definitely difficult to convince people that a good-looking girl could also be endowed

with intelligence or talent (and, with the exception of figures like Kate Bush, Björk, or Joni Mitchell, I don’t see that things have changed much in the music business). This was probably the biggest obstacle Rosie Vela faced that prevented her career from continuing.

From this time little or nothing is known about her: she reappears in later years as a back-up vocalist in the Electric Light Orchestra, a famous bubblegum pop group (whose compositions compared to Rosie’s sound as if they were written by an elementary school child) but soon after disappears again and is never heard from again. To date, there are no photographs of

her from the 1990s or 2000s, even searching the Web.

There are two sites in her name on Facebook where she is selling horrendous paintings, and there is no mention of her musical activity: are they real or fake? No one can tell. Rosie Vela’s album has been out of print for many years and only in 2011 was it reissued on CD. Her music continues to appeal to a microscopic group of people (on Spotify she has just over three thousand listeners compared to Taylor Swift’s over 69 million or Elton John’s 51 million) and yet Zazu’s star continues to shine, albeit distantly, still decades after its release. ■

GTESTATINA DA SCRIVERE

NEUROSCIENCES

THE MIRROR BRAIN

Mirror neurons are not so “special” as commonly believed; they are presente in much of our primate brain (and the brain of other species).

Corrado Sinigaglia and Giacomo Rizzolatti

NEUROSCIENCE

THE MIRROR PROPERTY AND MECHANISM

Mirror neurons were first recorded in the early 1990s from the premotor cortex of the macaque. Studying the primate motor system, a group of researchers at the University of Parma—led by Giacomo Rizzolatti and including Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese, and, initially, Giuseppe di Pellegrino—discovered that in one area of the premotor cortex there were neurons endowed with a special property: they fired, in fact, both when the macaque performed a certain action and when it observed that type of action being performed by someone else (an experimenter or another macaque).

In subsequent years, neurons with the same mirror property were recorded from many other cortical areas, not only frontal but also parietal and prefrontal. Similar results have been obtained in humans. Using very different techniques—such as, for example, positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and, finally, intracranial stimulation and recording—many studies have found mirror responses in many frontal and parietal areas. Interestingly, such responses have also been found in the insula, amygdala, and cingulate gyrus—all centers implicated in emotional reactions such as disgust, fear, or mirth.

We now know that the mirror property characterizes not only a substantial part of our primate brain but also areas and brain structures of other species, such as, for example, New World monkeys (marmosets), songbirds, rats, mice, and bats. Two

CORRADO SINIGAGLIA

A full professor of Philosophy of science, he directs the Philab Laboratory at the university of Milan. He is internationally known for his attempt to combine in a new way philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience. His research focuses mainly on the role of motor processes in social cognition. he is the author of numerous articles in international journals.

Together with Giacomo Rizzolatti he has published, Mirrors in the Brain. How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Mirroring Brains (Oxford University Press, 2023).

studies, which appeared in Science a few years ago, recorded from the hippocampus of rats and bats, respectively, the activity of so-called place cells-known to play a key role in spatial orientation—showing that they were activated not only when the recorded animal was in a given position, but also when another conspecific occupied that position. Only a few months ago, a study was published in Cell, conducted by a group of Stanford researchers, showing that there are neurons in the mouse hypothalamus that are selectively activated during both the execution and observation of certain aggressive behaviors, thus manifesting a clear mirror property.

All this tells us that the mirror property is different from all the functional properties that characterize various brain structures. Unlike the latter, the mirror property is not identified by the response to a given incoming or outgoing stimulus, nor by the fact that a given circuit processes that stimulus. Rather, what characterizes the mirror property is the fact that a neuron or population of neurons exhibits its functional characteristics not only during the execution of a given behavior but also during the observation of that type of behavior performed by others. Consider the different types of neurons that we mentioned above having the mirror property. This property characterizes those neurons not because they do what they do, but because they do it twice, in the sense that they are activated when the type of behavior to which they are bound is produced in the first person and when observed in others.

So far, the mirror property. Associated with this

GIACOMO RIZZOLATTI

He directs the CNR Research Unit of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Parma. A world-renowned neuroscientist, he is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Accademia dei Lincei, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Académie des Sciences and was recently elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society. His studies on the motor system and properties of the mirror mechanism have earned him several very prestigious awards, including the Golgi Prize for Physiology, the George Miller Award of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society and the Brain Prize Lundbeck Foundation Award.

property is a mechanism, which has been given the name “mirror mechanism.” To understand the nature of this mechanism, consider what happens when a neuron in the premotor cortex exhibits a mirror response for a while. Suppose that a neuron fires during the execution of a grasping action. Whatever aspect of the action is represented, the activation of the neuron triggers motor processes and representations similar to those triggered by the activation of any other motor neuron in the premotor cortex. What happens if the neuron responds when the grasping action is observed instead of performed? Of course, the input representations are of different types because decision-making that triggers the planning and execution of an action is one thing, and visual representations induced by the observation of that type of action are another. As for the output representations, however, can only be of the same type, since the neuron is similarly activated during the execution and observation of the action. This means that the mirror response involves a transformation of the incoming sensory representations into the motor representations and, more precisely, into the same type of motor representations that are triggered when the action is planned and executed instead of observed.

The same applies to mirror responses recorded in other brain structures, whether located in the parietal cortices, prefrontal, insula, or belonging to subcortical centers such as the amygdala. Of course, not only do the incoming sensory representations change in these cases but so do the outgoing motor or visceromotor representations. As we have seen, they can have mirror neuron responses and populations of neurons with very different anatomo—functional properties. What is common to all neurons endowed with the mirror property is that they instantiate the same mechanism that makes use of the representations involved in the production of first—person behaviors to process information about behaviors of the same type when these are observed in others—a mechanism that, given the nature and pervasiveness of mirror responses, seems to constitute a basic principle of the organization and functioning of the nervous system of human and nonhuman primates, but not only.

MIRRORING ACTION GOALS AND EMOTIONS

The mirror mechanism is present in different brain regions and the transformations it entails depend

on the brain structures and circuits involved, which allows us to understand why mirror responses may have different functional characteristics. For the sake of brevity, we will limit ourselves to a few mentions related to the domains of action and emotion, considering only data from human and non-human primates.

Since the late 1980s, recordings of single neurons from the macaque premotor cortex showed that a large proportion of these neurons responded selectively to the goal to which the action being performed was directed. For example, neurons were activated during a grasping action regardless of whether that action was performed with the mouth or with the left or right hand. Subsequent studies showed that neurons that responded selectively during grasping actions did so even when these actions were performed through the use of pliers and, more importantly, did so even when the pliers (“reverse” pliers) required a sequence of movements opposite to the typical prehension sequence. In order to grasp food with the reverse pliers, the monkey had, in fact, to open the fingers of its hand, instead of closing them: the neurons that were activated during the closing of the fingers when the grasping action was performed without the pliers or with the normal pliers, also responded during the opening of the fingers when prehension was performed with the reverse pliers. Finally, a study published in Science revealed not only that neurons’ responses remain the same when actions performed with different movements are directed to the same goal but that this response can change when very similar movements are directed to different goals. A good percentage of the neurons recorded responded, in fact, differently depending on whether a grasping action was performed for the purpose of bringing food to the mouth or storing an object similar in size and texture in a container placed near the mouth.

Most importantly, a substantial proportion of the parieto-frontal neurons selective to action goals have mirror properties, responding to the goal(s) of an action either when it is performed in the first person or when it is observed being performed by others. Since the earliest studies, it has been found that the mirror response does not require observation of the entire course of the action. In fact, to trigger it, it is sufficient that the information concerning the goal to which the action is directed

is present. Moreover, the mirror response does not turn out to be limited to visual observation: there are, in fact, neurons that respond not only to the observation of an action, such as tearing a sheet of paper, but also to the presentation of only the sounds associated with that action. Finally, more recent studies have shown that the mirror response can encode the observed action even when performed with a plier, whether normal or inverted or when directed to a goal as different as bringing a piece of food to the mouth and placing it in a container.

Similar results have been obtained in humans. Numerous fMRI studies have shown that mirror responses in parieto-frontal areas are selectively related to the goals of observed actions. Some TMS studies also point in the same direction. One of these used a paradigm similar to that employed in the macaque, showing how the mirror response relates to grasping, regardless of whether this goal is achieved with a normal or a reversed grasp.

Human studies have also allowed for a more detailed investigation of mirror responses in the emotion domain. One fMRI study showed how the insula plays a key role in both experiencing disgust in the first person and detecting it when experienced by others. This study, in fact, showed an overlap in the activations of the anterior insula during first-person exposure to disgusting stimuli and observation of people exhibiting disgusted grimaces.

Mirror responses have also been recorded in the amygdala. Several fMRI studies have found amygdala activation upon observation of facial or body expressions typically associated with the fear response. The same is true for some intracranial recording studies in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy, which have shown that the observation of fear expressions results in a significant response of event-related potentials recorded in the amygdala. Finally, recent intracranial recording studies have shown mirror responses in the pregenual cingulate cortex associated with producing and observing expressions of mirth.

UNDERSTANDING FROM THE INSIDE

The selectivity of mirror responses in parieto-frontal areas has led to the hypothesis that they play a role in the ability to understand observed actions, contributing distinctively to the identification of

the goal(s) to which those actions are directed.

Multiple lines of evidence have corroborated this hypothesis over the years. One of these, for example, is represented by a number of studies showing that as the observers’ motor representations vary, the content of their perceptual judgment about the goal of the observed action also varies. Another line of evidence refers to studies that have identified a close association between the ability the observer has to understand and predict the goal of an observed action and the level of motor expertise the observer possesses with respect to that action. Finally, a third line of evidence points to numerous studies of repetitive TMS, which, when applied at low frequency, reduces cortical excitability both at the stimulated site and in related regions. These studies have shown that repeated stimulation of areas of the premotor cortex endowed with mirror property interferes with the ability to recognize actions with respect to their possible goals.

These data support the hypothesis that mirror responses play a distinctive role in action understanding. The observation of an action would result in the observer transforming the sensory representations inherent in that action into the motor representations analogous to those that would be recruited should the action be planned and executed with that goal. This transformation would facilitate understanding the observed action by providing the representation of the goal to which it is directed. The same applies to observing emotional expressions such as disgust, fear, or mirth. The transformation of sensory representations concerning emotional expressions observed into the viscero-motor representations that would occur if the observer experienced disgust, fear, or mirth would facilitate the understanding of those emotions by providing the representations that are processed when experienced firsthand.

The existence of this mechanism is confirmed by studying patients with focal lesions of the anterior insula or amygdala. Damasio and colleagues reported the case of a patient who, from the age of ten, had developed Urbach-Wiethe disease, with calcification of the amygdala in both hemispheres. Her social behavior denoted affective imbalance, with a clear difficulty in identifying potentially dangerous situations and acting accordingly. On a conceptual level, he knew what fear was, and what

situations could induce it. Yet even though she knew this, she did not seem to feel fear in those situations as others did. Just as importantly, the patient had great difficulty recognizing others’ expressions of fear—difficulty, which she did not have with other types of emotional expressions. Patients with similar deficits in first-person experience and recognition of others’ expressions were also observed in the case of disgust reactions.

In order to fully understand the contribution of the mirror mechanism to understanding others’ actions and emotions, one step remains to be taken. This step is less about experimental data and more about clarifying the notion of understanding. In this regard, it is necessary to distinguish between a basic understanding and a fullblown understanding of actions and emotions. While the former presupposes the identification of the goal(s) of the observed action or the type of emotion expressed, the latter implies, among other things, that one has some knowledge of the mental states that may have induced the agent to perform that type of action or to have that type of emotional reaction. The various lines of evidence mentioned above indicate that the mirror mechanism is sufficient, all things being equal, for one to have something like a basic understanding of an action or emotional reaction, while at the same time influencing the observer’s own ability to judge those actions or reactions.

This does not mean that this is the only way we understand others’ actions and emotions. Quite the contrary. What characterizes the understanding based on the mirror mechanism is that it is an understanding from the inside. By this term, we do not mean anything mysterious or mystical. Rather, it is the kind of understanding that Marc Jeannerod already alluded to when he pointed out how the recruitment of motor representations allowed the “intrinsic components” of the observed action to be captured, going beyond the sensory surface. Jeannerod was referring to the domain of action, but the data suggest that this kind of understanding also applies to the domain of emotion. It is the “intrinsic components” of observed emotional reactions that patients with lesions to the insula or amygdala are unable to grasp, being able to have only sensory and conceptual information. It is precisely the reference to the domain of emotion that allows for a better appreciation of a further

meaning of the notion of understanding from the inside. What characterizes such understanding is not only the use of representations that are typically involved in acting or feeling emotions in the first person. It is also the fact that such representations can shape one’s experience of an action or emotion of a certain kind, not only when one performs or feels it in the first person, but also when one observes it being performed or felt by someone else. The data above suggest that the way one experiences an action or emotion changes as the way that action or emotion is represented in motor or visceromotor terms changes. And this is not only when one acts or experiences an emotion firsthand, but also when actions and emotions are observed being performed or expressed by others. This being so, an understanding from inside of actions and emotions would presuppose an experience of those actions and emotions that, while clearly different from the experience underlying acting or feeling an emotion in the first person, would nevertheless share some fundamental aspects of it. What we experience when we observe others acting or feeling an emotion would, therefore, be partly similar to what we experience when we act or feel an emotion in the first person. This is precisely what characterizes mirroring the actions and emotions of others: it allows us to share not only processes and representations but, more importantly, experiences.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

■

L. FOGASSI, P.F. FERRARI, B. GESLERICH, S. ROZZI, F. CHERSI, G. RIZZOLATTI, Parietal lobe: From action organization to intention understanding, in Science, 308, 2005, pp. 662–667.

V. GALLESE, L. FADIGA, L. FOGASSI, G. RIZZOLATTI, Action recognition in the premotor cortex. in Brain, 119, 1996, pp. 593-609.

M. JEANNEROD, Motor cognition. What actions tell the self, Oxford University Press, 2006.

G. RIZZOLATTI, C. SINIGAGLIA, Mirroring Brains, Oxford University Press, 2023.

G. RIZZOLATTI, C. SINIGAGLIA, Mirrors in the Brain. How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions, Oxford University Press, 2008.

T. YANG, D.W. BAYLESS, Y. WEI, D. LANDAYAN, I.M. MARCELO, Y. WANG, L.A. DENARDO, L. LUO, S. DRUCKMANN, N.M. SHAH, Hypothalamic neurons that mirror aggression in Cell, 186(6), 2023, pp. 1195-1211.

«HE IS NOT HUMAIN»

He just wanted to say that Neanderthal man’s DNA is not like ours. Thus began, 25 years ago, a real breakthrough in evolutionary anthropology. It would then lead Svante Pääbo and the Max Planck Institute to redefine the relationships between so many human forms that have contributed to our history and evolution and to rework the concept of species, starting with the comparison of fossils and genes.

Guido Barbujani

Awarding the Nobel Prize to Svante Pääbo is not only good news in itself, it makes up for a bad oversight. In 1901, when the Nobel came into being, the definition “medicine or physiology” encompassed virtually all medical and biological sciences except for zoology and botany. But a lot has changed in a century and a half. Today, to understand how living organisms are made and how they work, we have at our disposal biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, evolutionary biology: disciplines whose advances have been spectacular. Over the years, the Karolinska Institut, which awards the prize, has taken note by awarding it to biochemist Hans Krebs (1953), for discovering the cycle of sugar utilization in the cell, and to molecular biologists François Jacob and Jacques Monod (1965), for elucidating how bacteria regulate the synthesis of their enzymes. In genetics, the prize went to James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins (1962), for the double-helix structure of DNA. None of this research had anything to do directly with clinical practice.

Evolutionary biology remained unrewarded, although there was no lack of excellent candidates or reasons: our own Luca Cavalli-Sforza among them. From the study of evolution, from the effort to re-

construct the history of living organisms and their diversity, fundamental knowledge has indeed been derived along with clinical applications of great importance. One of the most formidable technological breakthroughs in recent years is the CRISPR/Cas9 method, which promises to prevent many diseases by correcting DNA errors. It is a laboratory technique born, literally, in the countryside: from the observations of a Spanish microbiologist, Francisco Mojica, on soil bacteria that are not pathogenic to humans. In short, biomedical research has differentiated and now encompasses diverse fields; however, they all have something in common: they describe the results of an evolutionary process that began billions of years ago, affecting us as much as the microorganisms that make us sick. As a great 20th-century geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Applied to medicine, this phrase means that to understand why we get sick and how we can to try to cure ourselves, we need to understand how we came to be who we are.

Luca Cavalli-Sforza left us in 2018, and I think Svante Pääbo is his most worthy, if indirect, heir. Over the course of four decades, Pääbo’s work has reshaped methods and goals in human evolutionary research, opening it to previously unexplored scenarios. Only

once in this century, in 2016, has the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology been awarded to a single candidate; this, too, gives an idea of the scientific stature of this year’s winner.

NEANDERTHAL MAN

In his autobiography released a few years ago (Neanderthal Man - In search of lost genomes, Basic Books), Pääbo begins with a phone call in the middle of the night. It is 1997. A collaborator of his, Matthias Krings, has isolated for the first time a piece of Neanderthal man’s DNA (it can be spelled with an H or without, but the scientific name is Homo neanderthalensis). “It’s not human,” he tells him. Pääbo jumps out of bed and runs to the lab to uncork the bottle of champagne ready in the fridge for the occasion.

It’s a small anecdote, but it describes the man’s style well: a lot of work is done, even at night if needed, but the atmosphere in the research group is informal, easygoing. Leipzig is not exactly a place to spend a vacation, but in the laboratories of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology there is the crisp air of California, where this story began, in 1987. In that year Pääbo goes to work with Allan Wilson, in Berkeley. He already has a doctorate from Uppsala University, but now he has ambitious goals: he wants to see if and how we can study the DNA of Egyptian mummies, his passion since childhood.

Allan Wilson is the man to learn from. In his lab, DNA was obtained for the first time from the skin of a museum piece: a quagga to be precise, an African equine halfway between the donkey and the zebra,

Svante Pääbo in a famous image from the Max Planck Institute.

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which became extinct in the 19th century. That DNA proved that the quagga was a zebra with a few stripes, and not the result of hybridization with the donkey. But the quagga is 150 years old, the mummies thousands. Like all biological molecules, DNA deteriorates after death, so the technical problems are all the more complex the older the artifacts to be studied. Together with Wilson, Pääbo fine-tunes the methods that, bit by bit, will make it possible to look inside the cells of mummies, but also of the mammoth, the saber-toothed tiger and many other organisms that lived thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago. At the same time, Pääbo defines the criteria that must be met for the results to be credible. Anyone who touches the fossil specimens, or even just breathes on them, can leave their DNA on them—DNA in excellent condition that is then easy to mistake for the authentic one. A sequence attributed to a dinosaur, and published in a prestigious British scientific journal, was later shown to be actually human: someone had left it there, maybe a palaeontologist, maybe a geneticist, handling the fossil perhaps with too much enthusiasm and little discernment. Thanks to Pääbo, the modern laboratory for the study of ancient DNA takes shape: perfectly insulated rooms, into whose equipment no modern specimens ever enter, and where the researchers are decked out in gowns, gloves, overshoes and sterile masks.

But there is more. In the course of his work, Pääbo also progressively redefined the nature of anthropological research and expanded its boundaries. Traditionally, anthropology was divided into four fields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology; in the Anglo-Saxon world saying that someone is “versed in the four fields” means this person is a fine anthropologist. In 1997, the Max Planck Society, Germany’s most prestigious scientific institution, approaches Pääbo to set up a new institute where he would be entrusted as the director. He accepts, but wants to do it his way and sets specific conditions. He asks that a five-story building be designed for him with a department on each floor: Evolution, Genetics, Neuroscience, Linguistics and Primatology. There will be a spiral ramp connecting them, and at the top a glass roof from which light will descend. Neuroscience to understand the foundations of culture and behavior, paleontology and archaeology brought together in the area of evolution, and the study of primates because only by comparing them with us can we define what makes us human. At first,

the Institute’s headquarters was to be Rostock; but Pääbo demands a city with an international airport (it will be Leipzig) because only then can it attract collaborators and visitors from all over the world. And then he has it build a guesthouse for guests, of whom there will be many and who will contribute their ideas to develop a lively debate for the benefit of researches and students; a sauna for relaxation and better reasoning; and finally (and here perhaps there is a touch, a small touch of megalomania) a fitted wall on which, if desired, one can climb to access the upper floors. He has developed a passion for mountaineering. And because Germany is still Germany, the last time I visited, a bilingual table established the (different) times when the institute’s researchers, students or just visitors could try their hand at the wall.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

But back to us. In the long, and eventually successful, effort to learn about increasingly ancient (and therefore increasingly deteriorated) DNAs, the study of humans got off to a late start. The reason is simple, we’ve talked about it before: if it turns out that a dinosaur’s DNA is like ours, it doesn’t mean that we’ve discovered a stunning kinship, it just means that someone bungled it. When studying humans, however, figuring out whether our test tube has the (ancient) DNA of the fossil or the (modern) DNA of the person who handled it may be impossible. Paradoxically, the problem did not arise in 1997, in the first genetic analysis of Neanderthal man. As effectively summarized by Matthias Krings in the excitement of the call, Neandertal’s DNA “is not human,” that is, in any contemporary human. Honestly, Pääbo admits that if this had not been the case, if the analyses had produced a DNA equal to ours, he would not have known how much faith to lend to his results, and perhaps he would not have even published them. Today, the problem has been solved thanks to new DNA sequencing technologies, which make it possible to separate bad (i.e., ancient) fragments from good (i.e., modern, throw-away) ones.

Of course, it does not end there. Each discovery answers one question, but raises others; for example, what relationship was there between Neanderthals and us? In the past, some have argued that Neanderthals were the ancestor of Europeans, while the ancestors of Asians, Australians, and Africans were other archaic species (Peking Man, Java Man, and a third, unknown species), all of which later converged to form Homo

sapiens. It is called the multiregional theory, and it does not stand: in the animal world there is no example of different species merging into the same one at some point. Today it has been abandoned, with no regrets, and for a few decades it was thought, on the contrary, that Neanderthal and us, so different in appearance, with clearly distinguishable skeletons and skulls, represented two quite separate branches of the human evolutionary tree: cousins, because all human forms are part of the same genealogy, but different species, one of which became extinct shortly after the arrival of the other from Africa. The earliest genetic data on Neanderthals reinforced this belief, but they were data derived from a very particular piece of DNA: mitochondrial DNA, transmitted from mothers to all offspring, and technically easier to study.

It took a few years to take the next step, to find a way to describe in Neanderthal the entire DNA of cells, what we call the genome, or rather a significant part

of it. In 2010, Pääbo showed that this was not exactly what was thought. The DNAs of us sapiens and those of Neanderthals have parts where we differ, but also have so much in common. That’s not enough: by a small but regular margin, Neanderthal DNAs (the first one and those that followed) are shown to be closer to those of Europeans, Asians and Melanesians than African DNAs: a small difference, a 2 to 4 percent of the total known variants, but a constant one. What is that supposed to mean?

It may mean that the sapiens who colonized the rest of the world, coming out of Africa perhaps 100,000 years ago, were closer relatives of Neanderthals than those who remained in Africa, the ancestors of today’s Africans. That they were closer relatives of Neanderthals means that they share more recent ancestors. For the same reason, we are more similar to chimpanzees than to kangaroos: our and chimpanzees’ common ancestor lived 6 or 7 million years ago, our and kangaroos’ much earlier. Alternatively, it may mean that

Pictorial depiction of a Neanderthal community.

NOBEL DESERVED

sapiens who came out of Africa perhaps 100,000 years ago met Neanderthals, hybridized with them, and later took some Neanderthal DNA with them on their migrations, even to places (the Far East, Melanesia) where Neanderthals never dreamed of going. Both theories are broadly consistent with the data available to us.

Pääbo definitely leans toward the second explanation, but some doubts remain. They are not about the hybridization itself, as we will see in a moment, but about its long-term consequences. In fact, between 2015 and 2021 Pääbo’s group published analyses of three human fossils found in Romania (Oase), Bulgaria (Bacho Kiro), and the Czech Republic (Zlaty Kun), dating from the time when we and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe. All three fossils have a high percentage of Neanderthal DNA, showing that one of their ancestors was Neanderthal: a great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather. They are incomplete fossils, and we don’t really know what they looked like, but they do show that our relationships with the old Europeans were (also) very close, to the point that hybrid offspring were born of them; and these hybrid offspring were not sterile (for example, like mules, those of horses and donkeys) and had offspring of their own. It is less clear, however, whether indeed this Neanderthal legacy is still present in our cells today. Perhaps it is, but perhaps it is not: the other component of Oase, Bacho Kiro and Zlaty Kun’s genomes, the sapiens one, does not resemble that of today’s Europeans, and so it is not clear whether our direct ancestors included them, or whether we are instead descended from another group of sapiens who arrived from Africa later.

WHAT IS A SPECIES, AND WHAT WAS

The research goes on, and as new fossils are studied we will know more and more. The fact that there are different hypotheses, whether on the relationships between us and other human forms, or on the dates and routes followed by sapiens as he expanded from Africa across the planet, is not at all embarrassing: on the contrary, it is a sign of the vitality of a debate that affects us all, prompting new analyses and raising new questions. One among them deserves to be addressed, albeit in a few lines. In speaking of Neanderthals, or Peking and Java man, both now classified as Homo erectus, I used the word species somewhat lightly. Better then to say that the concept of species needs to be clarified a bit. In the eighteenth century, when

the great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus first proposed giving surname and name to animals and plants, that is, genus and species (Homo sapiens, Canis lupus, Quercus robur, and so on) scientists were all creationists: they were convinced that organisms had always been identical to how we know them today, from the moment of creation. Classifying them is a vast task, but conceptually simple: it is enough to apply the right label to each one, that is, to attribute to the same species individuals that, as they reproduce, produce fertile offspring, period (thus, not donkey and horse). As early as the mid-nineteenth century, however, it would take Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin, in this concurrence, to challenge this idea. Fossils show how organisms that lived in the past are similar enough to those of today to suggest kinship, and different enough to testify that they have changed over time: in other words, they have evolved. So, as Lamarck first proposes, different species descend, with modifications, from common ancestors. If we go back in time, what we now see as distinct species converge into the same one. And then there must have been a time when these groups of organisms were

GUIDO BARBUJANI

Full Professor of Genetics at the University of Ferrara, has also worked at Stony Brook University and the Universities of Padua and Bologna. From 2011 to 2014 he was president of the Italian Genetic Association. In 2007, with L’invenzione delle razze (Bompiani) he won the fifth Merck Serono Literary Prize, in 2014 the Naples Prize, and in 2017 he was appointed Honorary Member of Cicap.

In addition to numerous scientific publications, he is active in popularization and has written many essays. Among the latest: Europei senza se e senza ma. Storie di neandertaliani e di immigrati (Bompiani, 2008); Sono razzista, ma sto cercando di smettere (Laterza, 2008); Morti e sepolti (Bompiani, 2010); Lascia stare i santi. Una storia di reliquie e di scienziati (Einaudi, 2014); Gli africani siamo noi. Alle origini dell’uomo (Laterza, 2016); Il giro del mondo in sei milioni di anni (il Mulino, 2018, with Andrea Brunelli); Tutto il resto è provvisorio (Bompiani, 2018); Sillabario di genetica (Bompiani, 2019); Soggetti smarriti (Einaudi, 2022); Come eravamo (Laterza, 2022).

already different enough in anatomy to distinguish them (i.e., to give them a different name), but still similar enough to produce fertile offspring (i.e., to fall outside Linnaeus’ definition of species). Species change, and too rigid definitions do not capture the substance of their change. If we abandon a concept of species as a well-defined entity once and for all, Darwin writes, we will only have to “decide (not that it is simple) whether each form is sufficiently constant and different from the others to merit a name.” Thus “we shall cease to look at living things as savages look at ships, as objects wholly beyond their capacity to comprehend; we shall look at every product of nature as something that has a history.” We might not use the word savages today, but the concept is clear.

And so there is little point in asking, as has also been authoritatively done, whether, in light of the knowledge provided by ancient DNA, Neanderthal and we are part of the same species. We are different enough to deserve different names, and in fact paleontologists have no difficulty in classifying fossils one way or the other if they have a sufficiently intact skull at their disposal; we were similar enough to produce fertile hybrids, whose Neanderthal DNA has, according to many, come down to us.

The work of Pääbo and his group has continued and continues. In 2008, during excavations in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, two teeth and a bone fragment, the phalanx of a little finger, emerged. In the cold of Siberia their DNA had been very well preserved, and it was a different DNA

from both ours and Neanderthal’s. Denisova man is the first species (I hope it is clear by now how much ambiguity there is in this word) defined not on the basis of his anatomy, which we do not know, but of his genome. Denisovans and Neanderthals met, and their meeting also produced offspring whose aspect is unknown: a 90-thousand-year-old girl had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father, and that, too, is the result of a study by Pääbo. And then (but one could go on and on), in collaboration with Wieland Huttner, who works at another Max Planck institute, the one in Dresden, they inserted into cultures of sapiens brain cells a Neanderthal gene, TKTL1, which is like ours except for one, small difference. They have seen that cell multiplication is slowed as a result, and therefore probably brain development as well. We’re just in the beginning, and we’re going to see more of this. So the Neanderthal studies are opening up new avenues of research, helpful in better defining how much we had in common with these prehistoric relatives, and ultimately in better understanding who we are. But not only that: by comparing ourselves to archaic human forms, and seeing what happens when we replace our genes with theirs, we are better understanding how our organism works, starting with the most mysterious and complicated organ of all, the brain. Once again, and the studies continuing in Pääbo’s lab are a magnificent confirmation of this, good basic research lays foundations upon which many others, experimental psychologists and neurobiologists and clinicians, can build. ■

Realistic representation of a young Neanderthal man.

ALPHONSE MUCHA

THE SEDUCTION OF ART NOUVEAU

At the Museo degli Innocenti in Florence, through April 7.

Woman with a daisy, 1900, © Mucha Trust 2023.

Facing page, Twentieth exhibition of the “Salon des Cent” 1896, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023.

On the left page, top: Seasons. Calendar for Dewez Enseignes stores, Paris, 1903, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023.

Below left: Lance Parfum RODO, 1896, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023.

Below right: Job, 1896, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023.

On this page, top: Nestlé’s Food for Infants, 1897, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023.

Right: Moët & Chandon. Champagne White Star, 1899, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023.

Under the patronage of the City of Florence and the Embassy of the Czech Republic, the exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Mucha Foundation and In Your Event by Cristoforo, and is curated by Tomoko Sato with the collaboration of Francesca Villanti.

The exhibition has as sponsors Generali Valore Cultura, partners Mercato Centrale Firenze, I Gigli, Samsonite and Unicoop Firenze, mobility partner Frecciarossa Treno Ufficiale, media partner QN La Nazione, educational partner Laba and technical support Mucha Trail, Prague City Tourism.

Les Amants, 1895, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023. Below left, Bières de la Meuse, 1897, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023. Right, The Precious Stones: Ruby, 1900, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023. Opposite page, Chocolat Idéal, 1897, Color lithograph, © Mucha Trust 2023.

CHIMICA PRODIGIOUSPRODOGIOSA CHEMISTRY

BEE DANCE AND ENTOMOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF HONEY

Extraordinary insects. For modes of learning and communication, for production (of honey, wax, propolis), for pollinating 35% of the world’s food cultures. But they are threatened by pollution and CO2.

Stefano Colonna

Bees build the complicated honeycomb structures one step at a time. Made of wax, honeycombs are among the best engineered structures in nature. They weigh less than a sheet of paper when empty, but many pounds when filled with bees, honey and nectar.

The conventional image shows the hexagonal cells, but through high-energy X-rays it was possible to create 3-D images. Rahul Franklin and collaborators scanned a growing honeycomb every two hours and showed that the construction proceeds from top to bottom. Appropriately, the bees reinforce the foundation with more wax as the honeycomb grows.

However, they first create a vertical corrugated structure. Its protuberances and depressions form the sequence of hexagons in which the bees lay the bulk of the wax. Then they squeeze the wax like pizza dough to build the walls of the honeycomb cells (ADV. Mater, https:// doi.org/dfq, 2022).

They are important social insects in agricultural production, as they not only pollinate corollas but also create products, such as honey, royal jelly, propolis, pollen and wax.( J. Zhou et al, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2022, 70,1358).

Honeybees (Apis mellifera ligustica) are the world’s most important natural and economic pollinators

and, as we shall see, pollinate 35 percent of the world’s food crops. They provide economic benefits that are essential for species diversity and cannot be ignored. Within their colonies there are morphological (queen and worker) and temporal castes. (X. Li et al, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2022, 70, 6097).

There are five temporal castes: hive cleaners, nannies, forgers, hive builders, and food processors.

Many experiments concerning them are based on their behavior and toxicology concern: many behaviors of honeybees are regulated by the endocrine system.

THE ROLE OF HORMONES

Juvenile hormone (JH) plays an essential role in these regulations. Each caste has a distinct physiological basis associated with unique JH titers, which instruct, for example, a worker for the specialized tasks she must perform.

JH hormones play a crucial role in metamorphosis, caste differentiation and migration of insects. Seven different JHs have been confirmed in insects, and the different homologs show different actions and activities. It is known that JHs have a number of stereoisomeric compounds, and there are large

PRODIGIOUS CHEMISTRY

differences in the bioactivities of the different stereoisomers. Honeybees have only JHIII, and the R stereoisomer is the one that has the highest biological activity in regulating them.

Social insects need a very refined communication system, especially when thousands of individuals are organized hierarchically in their hives. Individual insects, on the other hand, can communicate through chemical signals, dances, thoracic vibrations and direct contact, all activities that help them recognize their hive mates.

They have a special form of communication that enables them to signal their hive mates about a food source through symbols.

Their coordinates are encoded through an intricate and sophisticated dance called the waggle dance on the vertical honeycomb, using gravity and time as a reference (L. Chittka et al, Science 2023, 379, 985).

Movements are followed by novices in the darkness of the hive, after which they decode the vector information and follow the dance instructions once they leave.

Like many other social insect behaviors, this communication system was thought to be innate. However, Dong and coworkers revealed that honeybees provide precise spatial information only if they have had the opportunity to follow dances by experimenting with role models-in other words, the communication system must be learned in part socially (S. Dong et al, Science 2023, 379, 1015).

After discovering a rich source of food, foraging honeybees can inform their hive mates by performing a figure-of-eight dance (consisting of central waggle dance, followed by alternating left and right semicircles) on the wax combs inside the hive, with the pupils touching the abdomen of the dancers with their antennae.

The duration of the dance informs the neophyte bees about the distance to the food source. It is repeated several times.

Early social learning is essential for honeybees. Dong and coworkers have established colonies composed exclusively of novice bees; without guardian guidance, they begin to do waggle dances a week or two after emerging from the pupa.

But the place directions from these inexperienced bees are more imprecise: they vary from dance to dance and indicate greater distances than actual distances.

However, when they gain experience over the next

twenty days, their position codes gradually reach normal levels. Still, distance cues remain abnormally oversized throughout their lives, indicating that after a critical window of time, corrections through social learning are no longer possible.

Control bees, which were exposed to the dances by experienced foraging bees before they began to provide their signals, have none of these drawbacks.

The study by Dong et al. adds further evidence that complex behaviors are rarely completely innate. For example, although the regularity and optimization of beehive construction was seen by Darwin as the “most wonderful of all known instincts,” it turns out that the ways in which worker bees construct the hive are influenced by the hive structures experienced when they were young (G. von Oelsen, Adipologie 1979, 10, 175).

It is therefore plausible that some of the more advanced behavioral innovations (including elements of dance language) may have emerged at least in part from individual innovations, becoming instinctual later in evolutionary time.

Apis mellifera ligustica (A. mellifera ) and Apis cerane (A. cerana) are the largest bee species in China and also the largest producers in the world.

A. mellifera has the highest productivity. In turn, A. cerana has been domesticated in Chinese beekeeping because of its superiority in collecting sporadic nectar sources, especially from herbaceous medicines, its long harvesting time, and its resistance to diseases such as the bee worm.

In China it is classified as a species just below A. mellifera, and its honey is considered superior because of its high nutritional value.

It is produced from flower nectar and plant secretions, which are collected by bees, processed and matured in hives by regurgitation of their salivary enzymes.

Honey is a miraculous product that has been coming to humans for tens of thousands of years and is the result of co-evolution between plants and honeybees. It is a natural sweetener that originates from flower nectar, collected by bees and then matured in the hive. Changes in the natural landscape-habitat and the environmental and temporal availability of floral resources can affect colonies, and it has long been known that shortages of food, particularly pollen, contribute to their depletion (see below).

The floral resources of the landscape surrounding the hives then determine the composition of pollen

and nectar, which form the basis of the bees’ diet and the honey subsequently produced.

Its major components are carbohydrates, which make up about 80 percent. Glucose and fructose are present in a ratio of about 0.5-2 percent, with sucrose, maltose, turanose and twenty other components making up the rest (W. Cao et al, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2022,7010194).

Given their high amounts, fructose and glucose promote weight gain and insulin resistance. Also present are various phytochemicals such as phenolic compounds and amino acids such as proline, which have biological properties as antioxidants and anti-inflammatories.

Honey from A. cerana contains more enzymes and has greater nutritional and health value, which is due to its endogenous secretions and different floral sources.

This makes it 3 to 19 times more expensive than that of A. mellifera.

Many experimental and clinical studies have documented the hypoglycemic effect of honey in animal

forms of diabetes and in diabetic patients. Recently, in a study of 18,281 patients, its consumption was shown to be inversely associated with prediabetes

In China, honey is widely used not only for its unique taste but also for its health-promoting qualities. It is believed that it can protect against the onset of metabolic syndrome due to its anti-obesity, anti-diabetic, hypolipedemic, and hypotensive activities. There is also abundant evidence that its use may contribute to the prevention of nonalcoholic hepatic steatosis.

FROM POLLEN TO HONEY

Bees are social insects and exhibit a complex colonial organization based on the division of labor among hive worker bees, particularly for food acquisition and storage: they build a honeycomb above the hive cells to store honey and pollen. Mature honey (MH) is covered with white wax for long-term storage. Surplus pollen, nectar and molasses are stored in wax honeycomb cells built by worker bees. They are used by honey bees to get through “dead” periods

PRODIGIOUS CHEMISTRY

when foraging is not possible. Carbohydrates that are brought back to the hive by forager bees (who specialize in collecting pollen, nectar or water) are given to storage bees, which distribute them among hungry companions or process them to produce honey. The storage bees also normally add substances such as enzymes secreted by the hypopharyngeal glands to convert sucrose into glucose and fructose. Fructose predominates in almost all types of honey, and the combined fructose and glucose make up 85-90% of the carbohydrates present. There are also traces of polysaccharides and volatiles responsible for the characteristic aroma. The acids produced by the stomachs of these bees lower the pH of immature honey and at the same time remove water to increase the sugar concentration.

This process is driven by both active bee behavior and passive evaporation of cell contents and depends on the specific conditions of the hive. Using their tongues admirably, worker bees concentrate the regurgitated nectar droplets with the movements of their mouths, and this leads to an increase in sugar concentration from 10 to 25 percent within a few hours.

The dynamics of honey maturation are influenced by various parameters, such as colony size, movement and air humidity within the hive, prevailing climatic conditions, and botanical origin, which determines the ratios of sugars and water contained in the nectar. The duration of maturation varies from 1 to 11 days. When the honey is mature, the bees seal it with wax a cover to protect it to prevent unwanted fermentation and spoilage.

With the growth in global demand for honey there has been an increase in adulteration and it is the third most frequent target of fraud as reported by the US Pharmacopeia’s Food Fraud Database (J.C. More et al, J. Food Sci 2012, 77, R118-R126).

In order to avoid fraud due to the introduction of cheaper honey, it is necessary to develop a method to identify and verify the entomological origins of the honey itself.

This is accomplished through biological methods involving protein and DNA analysis.

Alternatively, a metabolic approach with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry can be used by quantifying three markers.

As anticipated, bees are the most important and economic natural pollinators because they pollinate 35 percent of the world’s crops.

In the United States alone, crop pollination by Apis Mellifera is worth $20 billion annually (V. A. Ricigliano et al, The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2022, 70, 9790).

Unfortunately, beekeepers are experiencing losses in their bee colonies every year—which now number twice as many as historically, making pollination and thus food security uncertain.

These losses are attributed to many factors, such as parasites and pathogens. Much evidence indicates that the main cause is malnutrition.

Nectar provides energy in the form of carbohydrates, while pollen is in turn the main source of protein, lipids and micronutrients.

Under ideal conditions, multiple sources are needed to meet the nutritional needs of bees. There is a need for a certain variety of flowers, as the composition of pollen varies according to plant species.

Unfortunately, intensive agriculture is associated with a reduction in flower biodiversity. Plant responses to climate change in turn alter available floral resources, making bee nutrition and health problematic.

To solve these problems in raised bee colonies, beekeepers resort to pollen substitutes.

Various formulations have been used as natural pollen substitutes; these often incorporate protein-rich ingredients, such as soy, corn gluten, casein, and eggs, as a source of essential amino acids.

However, other nutritional factors could improve the artificial diet by introducing phytochemicals, for example.

Microalgae are nutritive ingredients used for rais -

STEFANO COLONNA

He was a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Milan and was part of the Pôle Scientifique des Universités de Grenoble.

Author of more than 200 scientific publications, he has written three books on food: Cucina e Scienza. Ingredienti processi e menù (with Fabiano Guatteri, Hoepli, 2008); I cibi della salute. Le basi chimiche di una corretta alimentazione (with Giancarlo Folco and Franca Marangoni, Springer, 2013), Alimenti vegetali e salute e l’arte di vivere sani (Aracne, 2014). The latest essay, written with Giancarlo Folco, is Fatti e Misfatti delle diete (Springer Healthcare, 2022).

ing livestock and even bees. Microalgae of the genus Chlorella and Arthrospira (commonly called spirulina) are an excellent source of protein, fatty acids, sterols and bioactive substances with nutraceutical potential. These microalgae can be digested by honeybees and mimic the growth characteristics of diets fed natural pollen. In addition to protein, pollen contains a variety of necessary lipids, essential fatty acids, and bioactive compounds such as vitamins and phenolic acids.

Sodium-enriched floral nectar increases the visitation rates of pollinating insects. Farmers have long known that cattle and sheep are attracted to sodium offered in the form of “salt licks.” Not surprisingly, many plants increase the quality or quantity of gratification in pollen or nectar to encourage pollinator visits (C. N. Sanders et al, Biology Letters 2022, 19.1).

Several studies have explored how concentrations of sugars and amino acids in nectar can attract pollinators and promote pollination, but few have explored what other macro and micro constituents may influence the number and multiplicity of pollinators.

Herbivores in different ecosystems feed on plants with high sodium content in their leaves.

Nathan Sanders and collaborators applied sodium-enriched artificial nectar to five common plant species in New England valleys. And they verified that those with the enriched nectar had nearly twice as many visits from different pollinator species.

The most common visitors were bees, including Apis mellifera and bumblebees. The plants used were of five different species, but they yielded the same results.

At present, it cannot be determined whether pollinators seek sodium chloride as such or in combination with gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which plays an important role in neurotransmission.

These results suggest that sodium may attract pollinating insects to plants. Changes in climate are expected to alter the water cycle and sodium availability in plants; this could adversely affect plant populations and the insects that visit their flowers.

ANTHROPOGENIC INFLUENCES IN THE FORAGING OF BEES

Bees, as mentioned, are specialized insects that

feed almost exclusively on nectar and pollen from flowers and in this way contribute substantially to the pollination of wild plants and crops (D. Goulson et al, Science 2022, 375,970).

They have adapted to locate and extract floral resources, including impressive learning, with navigation and communication skills.

However, adaptations for foraging can be influenced by anthropogenic factors. In particular, the spread of industrial agriculture has profoundly altered the landscape in large portions of the Earth, often reducing the availability and diversity of floral resources.

The most important crops (cereals such as wheat, rice, and maize, which comprise 79 percent of the cultivated area) are wind-pollinated and therefore provide minimal resources for pollinators. On the other hand, some crops such as canola, sunflowers, and many fruits and vegetables require pollination and therefore provide floral resources for bees, especially honeybees.

One risk to them is exposure to chemicals used in agriculture. Analyzed honey samples have shown that they normally contain ten or more pesticides in complex combinations. The effects of these chemicals include navigational problems for bees, increasing the frequency with which they are lost while foraging.

Neonicorticoids also impair learning of the association between scent and floral reward, a vital skill for identifying the most rewarding flowers.

Certain herbicides such as glyphosate also have a negative impact on foraging behavior, memory and learning in various bee species. This effect is even more pronounced for solitary bees.

Due to the fragmentation of settlements, bees must fly farther to find food and avoid areas with high traffic, polluted by drains, which moreover degrade floral odors. An increase in CO2 concentration can reduce the protein content of pollen, while extreme weather events such as heat waves, fires and droughts alter the ability of flowers to produce floral resources.

Initiatives to reduce or eliminate pesticide use in urban areas increase their value for foraging bees. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that bee and bumblebee colonies live (paradoxically) better in urban areas than in the countryside, in part because of the greater diversity and availability of floral resources throughout the year. ■

ME AND NUAGES

A gallery and publishing house through which the best Italian and international illustrators have passed. But what does this “ninth art” consist of?

What relationship does it have with text? The tale of those who have dedicated their lives to auteur drawings.

Cristina Taverna

Iwas only 15 when, with a boy a little older than me, I attended a Jannacci recital at the Odeon Theater: a thunderbolt. At that moment I decided that Milan would forever be my city, my hometown being Alessandria.

It was here, in this strange metropolis of the North that it all happened. With a premise: at the end of the 1970s, after a meeting with Roland Topor—accomplices also being the monthly Linus and Umberto Eco’s writings on the ninth art—I became passionate about comics and illustration. That’s why a few years later I started the Nuages Gallery and later Edizioni Nuages, our publishing house. I had felt the need to create something that would remain, that would not end with exhibition, and at that point memories of childhood picture books, later studies of literature and knowledge of Olivetti books edited by Giorgio Soavi, who had become a close friend in the early 1980s, resurfaced.

CRISTINA TAVERNA

Founder of the Nuages gallery in Milan, she has exhibited works by authors such as Folon, Moebius, Paul Davis, Hugo Pratt, Andrea Pazienza. And also great artists: Mattotti, Luzzati, Milton Glaser, Brad Holland, Matticchio, Guido Crepax, Muñoz, Pericoli. In 1989 Nuages also became a publishing house, including its series “I Classici Illustrati” and “Carnet de voyage”. In 1987, with the exhibition I manifesti di Folon at the Vicenza Museum, she also began her activity as curator of large public exhibitions in Venice, Siena, Palermo, Milan, Brussels, Varese, Lugano.

But how to do it? With what criteria? So I asked Andrea Rauch, already then a very good graphic designer as well as author, to help me create the Nuages “Illustrated Classics” series that I wanted to be beautiful and normal This is not an oxymoron, I just mean that they were not to be fancy books: they were designed to emphasize the images without becoming “object books.”

Rauch mixed these ingredients: graceful Garamond Simoncini font, handmade Tintoretto paper, 19.5 x 26.5 cm format, cover with the illustration framed by a colored outline... Classic books just as I had wanted them, they would all later be followed, like the Olivetti ones, by printer Gianni Biolcati. (Please clarify the preceding sentence.)

I go into the technical details to give the reader a sense of the extreme care that a certain publishing industry has poured into its products over time, a strange mélange between the artisanal and the super-professional. We were like that, and I think there are very few publishers left of this lineage. We had a great attention to form, but also to content. For example, I was peremptory about not having illustrations come before the text to which they referred. They were to appear afterwards, they were a kind of color epiphany for concepts already expressed: because the sentence on the page preceding the illustration had therefore already been read and referred triumphantly to the visual story.

The pairing, the alternation, between text and illustrations was and is very exciting. Most of the time, I asked an author to illustrate a text that I thought was suitable for him. Other times, especially with Emanuele Luzzati, we thought together about which one to choose and, in the case of Hugo Pratt, the proposal came from him.

It was very funny when I had suggested to Jean Michel Folon to do a classic for Nuages and he said, “The Invisible Man! So it’s already done....” Ours is a world full of jokes and ironies.

Over the years I have often found myself listening to different opinions. What, finally, is an illustration?

It is hard to find an author who does not have his own theory about it. For the great Argentine cartoonist and illustrator José Muñoz to illustrate is to give luster, light. Some are afraid of the definition, others are proud of it, and still others use it casually and without prejudice. I think it is basically about quality and freedom. The catalog of one of our exhibitions was titled Free Illustration. Protagonist: the author’s freedom to read and translate a text, a subject, precisely freely.

These are always interpretations alongside the text. After all, when we read a book or even an article in a newspaper, images form in our minds, a film of the story runs, in the case of illustration we see the film of someone who, gifted with great talent puts it on paper, colors it and offers it to us.

This is the aspect that has always fascinated me. When I think of classic Nuages, I think of Macbeth: have you seen the opening image for this article of

mine? I think it is splendid! However, I had asked Ferenc Pinter to draw this Shakespearean play for us (he was very happy with it), and I still take this book as an example because it offers readers a very great illustration, consistent with a very great poetics.

Shakespeare’s words come with the force of a flood, plunging into the depths of passions, states of mind, the subtleties of thought, the sick confusion of guilt. Precise as scalpels, they reveal the complexity of feelings. Like a flash they illuminate friendship, like a glint of embers they cast a reddish light on the murderous design. They open wide a door to the abyss of desires and remorse. Shakespeare’s art is nature, and like the phenomena of nature it comes in a direct and engaging way. His words are matter and perhaps only with another matter could they be approached. To illustrate Macbeth, Ferenc Pinter has done just that: “Such deeds must not be thought of this way, so they will drive us mad,” whispers Lady Macbeth to her husband, and tempera lives on the canvas texture making her gaze dismayed at the bloody hands of the murderous king.

The light of words always reflects in paintings. Flashes, gleams, shadows, reflections, flares, strike the eye, the heart, the mind. Pinter has always flanked Shakespeare’s

words in this way, managing to add force through another perception, the visual one also like the words, directed to the heart. Pinter in some plates has been able to illustrate thought: not just any thought, but mad thought.

I think almost all the illustrations in the Nuages classics reach these heights. Hugo Pratt had proposed to me a selection of letters that Rimbaud had written from Africa to his family. The book was a great success. Later would also come a selection of poems by Rudyard Kipling, poems that had not yet been published in Italian, another success.

A long association was with Emanuele Luzzati. With him, seven classics: Candido, Pinocchio, Alice, Decameron 1 and, we didn’t have enough, Decameron 2, then Peter Pan and, last, Il Milione. When a book would come out, Luzzati would always say to me, “What do we do now?”

Another great illustrator who accompanied me for many years was Jean Michel Folon. In addition to the aforementioned Invisible Man, he drew a selection of La Fontaine’s Fables for Nuages.

The authors of our classics have been many: Altan, Milton Glaser, Moebius, Mattotti, Toppi, Loustal, Perini. I would say that all of them have created extraordinary

Above, an illustration for the volume Poems Rudyard Kipling by Hugo Pratt (Nuages 1993). Below, for La Fontaine Fables by Jean Michel Folon (1996). Opposite page, for Jack London, The Call of the Forest by Nicola Magrin (2018). Top, illustration for William Shakespeare, Macbeth by Ferenc Pinter (2001).

THE STORIES IN ART

works (as is also the latest volume in the series, The Call of the Forest by Jack London, illustrated by Nicola Magrin).

The classics are complemented by many other books, exhibition catalogs, the “Carnet de voyage” series and the “Encounters” series. In the latter we published Hugo Pratt, Moebius and Emanuele Luzzati. All works that allow me to relive and make known the contents of my encounters with authors: the next one Over the Rainbow will be dedicated to Jean Michel Folon.

In Hugo Pratt’s book I recount the unfolding of a friendship through various episodes, a presentation in Venice on a snowy day, a Roman spring, a New Year’s Eve party in Lausanne with singers and musicians, and a trip to Brittany in the forest of Broceliande in a crescendo of emotions with musical suggestions, watercolors and photographs.

A vacation to Stromboli is staged with Moebius, with ascent to the volcano in great activity and friendship experienced in the intimacy of small places, under starry skies, amid scents of hibiscus and jasmine from the Aeolian Islands and seafood from Brittany.

With Emanuele Luzzati I write about the great set designer and illustrator and recount the unfolding of our friendship between exhibitions, books and travels. It is a time rich in anecdotes, confidences and memories: the shared enchantment over the first snow, the arrival in Venice and the city of Paris. After so many years spent designing and making books, the desire to fix these beautiful stories also came to me. I like to write and try to do so.

The latest Nuages book, A Few More Moons: Chief Seattle’s Answer, is not part of the illustrated classics but stems from the emotional layering that I write about in my text to arrive at Chief Seattle’s prophetic words spoken to the envoy of the great white chief who intended to drive the Indians from their territories and place them on shameful reservations. Magrin’s watercolors make those words vibrate on the paper that unfolds for nearly four meters in a format that is called “Leporello” reminiscent of Don Juan’s servant. Yes, life in a gallery and publishing house is an extraordinary hotbed of encounters on a great human level. Of rebounds. Nuages and I have been able to count on figures of the highest artistic level, but also people like my father, who used to take the train from Alessandria to Milan’s Porta Genova to support our activities with intelligence, grace and passion. The truth is that beauty always wins by immediate contagion. ■

Above, illustration for the Collodi volume, Pinocchio, by Emanuele Luzzati (Nuages 1996). Opposite page, Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince, illustration by Brad Holland (2015).

IL CIELO STELLATO SOPRA DI ME VAGUE BEAR STARS

RETHINKING THE WORLD MACHINE

Combining poetics and astrophysics, Genesis and Big Bang, Dante and Mallarmé. The verse work of Haroldo de Campos.

Piero Boitani

Between three thousand and two thousand five hundred years ago, archaic Greece elaborated the first meditation on the nature and formation of the cosmos. Aristotle transmitted to us in the Metaphysics a list of thinkers who had proposed a series of material causes of the structure of the cosmos, the “principles”: Thales, water; Anaximenes and Diogenes, air; Heraclitus, fire; Empedocles, all four elements; Anaxagoras, infinite principles. Homer and others had focused on Ocean and Thetis, Hesiod and Parmenides on Eros. Some pre-Socratics had realized how futile it was to postulate only material principles and had resorted to causes that Aristotle would call “efficient,” that is, at a higher level of abstraction. Empedocles had thought of Friendship and Discord, or Conflict; Anaxagoras had gone even further, imagining a Nous, an ordering Intelligence. Next in Aristotle’s review come the Atomists Leucippus and Democritus, and finally the Pythagoreans.

It is important to note at least one detail: among all these authors, at least four - Homer, Hesiod, Parmenides and Empedocles - wrote in verse, as indeed did the Roman Lucretius in his beautiful De rerum natura. No one among the ancients would have been shocked that “natural philosophy,” that is, physics and astrophysics, used poetry to express themselves. And there is no shortage of examples, from Aratus to Manilius in antiquity, to Bernard Silvestris, Alain of Lille and Dante in the Middle Ages, Scève and Du Bartas in the Renaissance, all the way to Erasmus

Darwin in the 18th century, and beyond.

Every poet of note felt an obligation to describe and interpret the universe in his or her work. In the Portuguese tradition, this obligation is fulfilled by Luis de Camões in his Lusiads, the poem that became the Portuguese classic par excellence and that narrates Vasco da Gama’s expedition to India. In Canto X, the goddess Thetis shows Vasco what he calls a máquina do mundo: “ethereal, elemental, fabricated / as it was by the high and deep Knowledge / that principle has no, nor end given.” It is the structure of the cosmos, with the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic heavens and the Empyrean that all concentrically contains them, the shining stars and planets, the Earth (and its geography, from Europe to India). A vision, probably, inspired by Pedro Nunes’ Tratado da Esphaera (1537), itself a reworking of Sacrobosco and Peuerbach. “High” poetry, in many ways sublime.

In the 1930s, it was taken up by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, the greatest Brazilian poet of the first half of the century, with a long lyric of existentialist and at once metaphysical bent, A Máquina do Mundo, itself entered the canon of Portuguese-language classics: a vision that suddenly, calmly opens up for the poet as he travels along an oil road in Minas Gerais: “majestic and circumspect,” soundless, “that richness / superior to every pearl, / that sublime and formidable, yet hermetic science, / that total explanation of life,” and all that is, the “primordial absurdity” with its enigmas: behold, it appears “at that juncture,” and then, when

PIERO BOITANI

Fellow of Accademia dei Lincei, British Academy, Medieval Academy of America and National Institute of Astrophysics, taught comparative literature at Sapienza University in Rome and at the University of Italian Switzerland. A Dantist, Anglicist, scholar of myth and the Bible, he has also been active in translation. He directs the “Greek and Latin Writers” Series of the Lorenzo Valla Foundation. He writes in L’indice dei libri del mese and Il Sole 24 ore He has won the Feltrinelli dei Lincei Prize for Literary Criticism, the De Sanctis Prize, and the Balzan Literature Prize.

he is incapable of taking it in and responding to it, and lowers his eyes, refusing the invitation, then the world machine, rejected, goes remaking itself in “the narrowest darkness,” while the poet goes on “vaguely,” assessing what he has lost, “with forlorn hands.”

Drummond de Andrade’s is a chronicle of a self-imposed defeat, a renunciation of the conquest or reception of science. But when, in 2000, Brazil’s greatest poet of the second half of the 20th century, Haroldo de Campos, published his A Máquina do mundo repensada, everything changed. Haroldo carefully prepared himself for that venture, giving birth to Xadrez de estrelhas as early as 1976 and Signantia Quasi Coelum in 1979, then Galaxias in 1984, and above all by translating-”transcreando,” as he put it-Dante (Umberto Eco called it the best translation ever of Dante’s poetry) and by studying in depth the biblical Books of Genesis, Job and Qohelet with Bere’shith: while enthusiastically reading the major works of Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Maxwell, Poincaré, Einstein, Planck and Monod. In Crisantempo, the collection immediately preceding Máquina, which eventually also included the beautiful poem about Ulysses, Finismundo: a última viagem, Haroldo included a “transluminura” of Sappho’s fragment on the stars, and opened the collection with This planetary music for mortal ears, a lyric that takes its title from Shelley’s Defence of Poetry to celebrate the music of the spheres. Haroldo’s attempt is not unlike that made by another Latin American poet, Nicaraguan Ernesto Cardenal, with his phenomenal 1989 Cántico cósmico, which I have dealt with elsewhere. However, while Cardenal composes a long, mighty poem, Haroldo chooses the brevity of one hundred and fifty-two tercets and one

verse, the concentration of poetry, astrophysics, and biblical myth for allusions and very rapid, iridescent images. As Drummond de Andrade, Haroldo first sets the work in existential terms, placing in his seventieth year the middle of Dante’s cammin and, on that model, the “varcare cantando” of Paradiso II: “vou cantando / e no cantar tresvairo.” He then distributes the matter in three sections: the first related to the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmos of Camões, the second to that of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, the third finally to that of Einstein, Planck and modern astrophysics: background radiation, Big Bang, expansion.

It is not easy to make poetry of today’s science, without making use of its quantitative (mathematical) criteria and without even touching on the qualitative approaches of the ancients, or the neo-Platonic theories of emanation, or the Aristotelian categories (form and matter, potency and act) employed by Dante in Paradiso XXIX. The only thing that the contemporary poet can rely on is language, strongly marked by the Joyce of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake: the more or less striking variation on the text of the Lusiads, the invention of neologisms and verbal and rhythmic sequences that intrigue and bewitch the reader. For example, Haroldo dries up, purifies, contracts Camões’ first description of the máquina, that of the circle of the Zodiac, while retaining, however, and indeed enhancing, the most characteristic features.

Olha estoutro debaxo, que esmaltado

De corpos lisos anda e radiantes, Que também nele tem curso ordenado E nos seus axes correm cintilantes.

Bem vês como se veste e faz ornado Co largo Cinto d’ouro, que estelantes

Animais doze traz afigurados, Apousentos de Febo limitados

Vedine sotto un altro, che smaltato è di lucidi corpi e rutilante: percorso, dentro lui, fanno ordinato e corron nei propri assi scintillanti. Osserva come sta vestito e ornato d’una cintura d’oro, che stellanti reca dodici fiere figurate, ch’offrono a Febo soste limitate.

Haroldo ‘transcreates’ in the following manner (italics indicate borrowings): “the living // stellar lumens shining / in the golden belt of varied enamel / to

concatenate the ever-moving signs.”

os vivos

estelantes luzeiros resplendentes em áureo cinturão de esmalte vário encadeando os sinais sempremovente

Dante’s model leads him to eliminate verses (and details) that he deems superfluous or excessive, and an entire octave is reduced to a triplet. Of course, there is no shortage of wordplay. An amusing, but not superficial, moment of this, on the philosophical-poetic level, presents the action of chance, quoting Einstein’s famous phrase, “God does not play dice,” and immediately afterwards reversing Mallarmé’s equally famous one, “un coup de dés jamais n’abolira l’hasard,” into “ao azar / jamais abolirá un coup de dés.”

Obvious transpositions march the poem into modernity: the Dantean forest at the beginning of the Inferno becomes the sertão of Guimarães Rosa, the Christian alpha to the Hebrew and Borgesian alef. But it is in the third section of the poem that Haroldo fights the decisive challenge, what Dante called “aringo,” the struggle with the ineffable and hitherto unexpressed. He knows it is the ultimate

HAROLDO DE CAMPOS

Born in São Paulo in 1929 and died in São Paulo in 2003. With his brother Augusto and Decio Pignatari he founded “concrete poetry” in the 1950s. He taught extensively at his city’s Catholic University, as well as at Yale and the University of Texas at Austin. Winner of the Octavio Paz Prize for poetry and nonfiction in 1999, he has made his mark on Brazilian culture with his own poetry and translations, which include the Iliad, Genesis and other books of the Bible, excerpts from the Divine Comedy, Joyce and Mallarmé.

wager of word and life, so much so that he recalls in a single triplet “the septuagesimo year of his age” and the explosion of the cosmic egg. And it is here that modern astrophysics and the Bereshit, the Principle (or “chief”) of Genesis, the “estilahaços de fogo de primeva pulsão,” the splinters of fire from the primeval pulsation, and the “fogoágua” and the background radiation that bears witness to it “surge da lonjura / de galáxias perdidas como envio / de memória estelar revivescente”: rises from the beyond (but also: from the distance) of lost galaxies as a sending of stellar memory that revives.

Present here, by the author’s explicit statement in the text itself, are the “kabbalistic” books (“no començar/ no encabeçar”) and Rashi of Troyes’ commentary on Genesis (“shamáyin/”fogoágua”). As already in Bere’shith, Haroldo in fact follows the midrash that breaks down shamayim (heaven) into ‘esh (fire) and mayim (water), and reads in reshit, according to one part of the tradition, the form of the construct of the word rosh, which means “head”: hence “no encabeçar” along with “no començar.”

It is evident, however, how the fabric of the poem becomes entwined in lumps that, starting from triplet 89 and up to 94, make for a bumpy ride before reaching dissolution in triplet 96. See: in 89, having concluded the interjection about his age, the poet addresses the explosion of the cosmic egg and the Big Bang; in 90, he continues with the ejection of the fiery splinters from the “primeval drive,” and immediately associates the biblical bereshit with it, with the interpretative variants we have seen-Kabbalistic books and Rashi-which occupy all of triplets 91 to 93 and provide the images of the “mythical name of

An iconic and colorful representation of the Cosmos and the interactions between different galaxies.

VAGUE BEAR STARS

heaven,” “from heaven to the above-absent earth,” and the “burning / crystal flowing around to the sublime / divine throne.” He then returns to the Big Bang with the extraordinary conceptual enjambment between the end of 93 and the beginning of 94. The “figure” of the Big Bang detected by modern instruments in the background radiation occupies triplets 94 and 95. Thus, it dissolves into 96.

It is, on the whole, five leaps from one level to another-from the scientific to the biblical to the exegetical to the mythical and back to the scientific-forming for the reader a kind of roller coaster sequence. If one stops to consider it calmly, one sees the scope of Haroldo’s invention, which equalizes the five types of discourse, introducing moreover into them the exegetical one: in everything alien, normally, from poetry.

Eventually, however, the writing ramps up, and the first two lines of triplet 96 mark the poem’s climax in the fusion of poetry and science, when the “burning / crystal flowing around the sublime / divine throne” becomes Big Bang in “vermillion-extreme” figure of a “desvio / espectral da luz” rising “de galáxias perdidas como envio / da memoria estelar revivescente.” The deviation of the light spectrum is transformed into spectral deviation of light arising from distance-from receding lost galaxies-as if sending stellar memory “revivescent.” The final, Dante-esque neologism seals the

echo of the distant astral light that is also continually renewed. These are verses that I personally associate with some of the finest of Giacomo Leopardi, who in The Broom described the cosmos as it appeared to those who knew about astronomy in the early nineteenth century. They possess, in a completely different context, the same evocative power:

Sulla mesta landa in purissimo azzurro veggo dall’alto fiammeggiar le stelle, cui di lontan fa specchio il mare, e tutto per lo vòto seren brillare il mondo. E poi che gli occhi a quelle luci appunto, ch’a lor sembrano un punto, e sono immense ... e quando miro quegli ancor più senz’alcun fin remoti nodi quasi di stelle, ch’a noi paion qual nebbia, a cui non l’uomo e non la terra sol, ma tutte in uno, del numero infinite e della mole, con l’aureo sole insiem, le nostre stelle o sono ignote, o così paion come essi alla terra, un punto di luce nebulosa…

Those who look at the Beginning, however, cannot

SMALL NOTE ON ONE OF PIERO BOITANI’S LAST BOOK

It is called Verso l’incanto (Laterza) and defying any tautology we can say that, indeed, it is an enchanting book. A boundless erudition but without affectation, indeed always fluent, is the stylistic hallmark of these “lessons on poetry.” In the introduction Boitani, not without a thread of smug irony, quotes that Michael Longley who had said, “I haven’t the faintest idea where poetry comes from, or where it goes when it disappears. Silence is part of the enterprise.”

However, it is a true examination that the author offers along 280 pages in search of poetic meaning. From what does it spring, for what reasons? As the author writes, “there is, in poetry, a consistent element of madness: common, moreover, in the earliest times also to philosophy and “science.” In archaic Greece, “scientist” and poet were the same person, and even heeding Aristotle’s warning that putting Herodotus in verse does not make poetry, no one in ancient Greece

would have considered a natural philosopher insane.”

It could be agreed that the making of poetry goes through three stages. The first, as can be seen in the “tondo” that Raphael dedicated to her, starts as “Numine afflatur: she is inspired by a Nume.” And almost never peacefully. There is fury, albeit in the sublime; there is also the Daimon who, as William Butler Yeats wrote, “is our destiny.”

The second step is wonder. A line of admiring awe that spans the millennia, from the Homeric Hymns to Shakespeare. The third is enchantment. With unfair simplification, we say it constitutes the mature and stabilized version of it, unencumbered by the lunges of the irate gods. As Piero Boitani writes, “Enchantment does not involve a blow, an ekplexis, or a ‘stunning of the soul,’ but has gradations ranging from bewitching to sweetening, from mitigating to seducing, from enthralling to delighting.” (Gabriella Piroli)

help but also think of the End. The creation that began in Genesis ends only with Revelation. What, then, comes next? “Uma épica?” A “desastre de astros”? The fall of a “gigantic blue star”? A “dancing poetics of the universe”? An “inestática vibrância”? The universe expands starting with the Big Bang. But does the expansion end? And when? And in what way? Perhaps it is “ocaso de escarlate supernova” that has now become “estrela de nêutrons em vacância”: ready to vanish when it is put to the test of resistance to gravity and succumbs “à negra / voragem” of a black hole. Expansion could be followed by contraction, toward terminal entropy: “dying stars / in a cadaverous darkness / cold astro-traces and fori-sepolture.”

“Desconsolada gesta,” Haroldo comments, “assim termina? / no fim do fim o que há? o que futura // no ante-início do início e o ilumina?”

The expressive tension of this physical eschatology is enormous, and the poet, who feels himself becoming “noontide / in his terracqueous time,” regrets for a moment Dante’s “narrow way,” the “sertão d’entro-sentieri,” and the comfortable Ptolemaic cosmos of Camões and Vasco de Gama. It continues, instead, to neutrinos, urca processes, and, after a long excursus, to the doubts and questions with which the poem closes: “where is the bereshit - the first gene - / imbued with elohim?” Above all, should the poet - the man - “feign a guess between no and yes,” or look into the “mirror of the perplexed”? Gather in oneself or search for the external “nexus” by groping. Observe the paradox of the “same way” or discuss the “angel and sex” of the “other way.” The conclusion is a repeated invocation left hanging in the last verse, the one that exceeds one hundred and fifty-two triplets: “O nexo o nexo o nexo o nexo o nex.”

To make poetry of modern-day astrophysics and cosmology -- without employing mathematics -- is very difficult. But Haroldo de Campos shows us that it is not impossible, that by using words as elementary particles, twisting language into knots and games, mixing the Bible and Dante with relativity and indeterminacy, Einstein and Mallarmé, one can succeed in creating what he calls a shadow-penumbra of the universe and show its importance in one’s life. The 21st century cosmos is, once again, open: scientists seek the Theory of Everything, the poet invokes the “nexus.”

Incidentally: the evening of March 23, 2001, when Haroldo came to my home in Rome bringing me A máquina do mundo repensada as a gift, ended quite

The constellation Cassiopeia has been known since antiquity, and Ptolemy includes it in his list of 48 star clusters.

early. After dinner, around 10 o’clock, Haroldo took his leave. He had, he said, booked a cab for 4 a.m. to go to Recanati to see the “Hill of the Infinite,” the rise of Mount Tabor from which Giacomo Leopardi tried, over the hedge, to look toward “the last horizon” and imagined “interminable spaces” and “superhuman silences” and “profoundest stillness.” A smile of anticipation was already shining in Haroldo’s eyes. Perhaps he expected Infinity to conclude his Máquina ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

HAROLDO DE CAMPOS, The Education of the Five Senses, edited by Lello Voce, with facing texts and translations by Daniela Ferioli (and two recollections by Umberto Eco and Augusto de Campos), Metauro Editions, 2005.

HAROLDO DE CAMPOS, Translations, transcreations, essays, edited by Andrea Lombardi and Gaetano D’Itria, introductory note by Umberto Eco, Oèdipus, 2016

HAROLDO DE CAMPOS, Pedra e Luz na Poesia de Dante, Imago, 1998.

HAROLDO DE CAMPOS, Bere’shith. A Cena da Origem, Edit. Perspectiva, 2000.

HAROLDO DE CAMPOS, Crisantempo, Perspectiva, 1998, which also includes the poem on Ulysses, Finismundo: A última viagem (1996).

HAROLDO DE CAMPOS, Depoimentos de oficina, Unimarco Editora, 2002.

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WERE METAZOANS

Science has always looked for clear-cut confines between animal species. Advancements in research point to blurred boundaries in the evolutionary history that gave rise to the life of our minds.

Matilde Perrino

The aquatic environment is uncomfortable for us: it restricts our ability to breathe, alters our sense of weight, and hampers our movements in its dense medium. In water, we find ourselves visitors in a realm governed by different rules and inhabited by other minds . Yet, our evolutionary history is rooted in water. Every cell in our bodies carries the imprint of our past connection with this medium; our animal biology emerged in tandem with the sea and within it.

But what does it mean animal? What are the origins of mind and experience? Also, what does it mean to have a mind? These inquiries echo similar interrogations posed by scientists and philosophers in the 19th century about a different yet intertwined topic, the nature of life. What is life? What distinguishes living organisms from inorganic matter? Some, like physicist Erwin Schrödinger, explored the concept of an “aperiodic crystal,” suggesting that order emerging from physical chaos could elucidate life’s manifestation. Others, such as biologist Jacques Monod, emphasized the transmission of information for specific purposes (teleonomy) as a crucial aspect of life.

The scientists H. Huxley and Ernst Haeckel also grappled with these questions: however, their

strategy was to look for a fundamental ingredient that would sharply distinguish the living world from the inorganic one. They believed they had found it in protoplasm , a gelatinous substance found in Bathybius haeckelii, a primitive organism. Science, in time, revealed that they were wrong: life is the result of organization from common chemical elements and is not identifiable in a special material that appeared from one specific moment in life history.

This episode exemplifies the attempt to reduce high-level properties (such as life) to concrete special materials or markers. It highlights humanity’s desire for tangible solutions and clear-cut boundaries in the intricate realm of biology. Yet, as history demonstrates, such reductionist endeavors often yield oversimplified interpretations and misguided conclusions. The same inclination has spurred attempts to unravel questions on the mind, its origins, and its ontological properties. The mind is often seen as a singular faculty defined by specific attributes, such as possessing a language or the ability to experience pain. Each attribute is considered distinct and isolatable, fostering a form of cognitivist dualism where abstract properties appear independent of underlying physical

structures. But then again, this may be a blunder.

To circumvent the pitfalls of reductionism and metaphysical speculation, we can look for alternative approaches. One notable example is Peter Godfrey-Smith’s recent work Metazoa , (available in english, publisher William Collins). In this book, Godfrey-Smith delves into the history of the mind, tracing it back to the evolution of nervous systems in multicellular organisms, also known as metazoans . By connecting the physical and mental realms through evolutionary history, we begin to dissolve the perceived dichotomy between them. This endeavor may prove to be easier than previously thought.

THE STORY OF THE FIRST ANIMALS

Metazoa is a synonym of Animalia, the kingdom of animals. It encompasses a vast array of organisms, from sponges and giraffes to swallows and jellyfish, including Homo sapiens and tardigrades.

This kingdom is characterized by chases and stillness, electricity and metamorphosis, and emerged in the Ediacaran period around 600500 million years ago. Comprising over 30 phyla, including chordates - to which we belong - and arthropods – as insects - every phylum traces its roots back to a common ancestor, depicted in the nodes of the phylogenetic tree. This tree doesn’t imply superiority or antiquity; instead, it reflects the passage of evolutionary time, highlighting the equal evolution of all organisms.

In trying to answer questions on the origin of the mind, the philosopher and diver Peter Godfrey-Smith suggest a shift in perspective: rather than starting from humans and seeking traces of similarity with other animals, he prefers a mini -

MATILDE PERRINO

PhD student in Neuroscience at the Interdepartmental Mind-Brain Center of the University of Trento. She graduated in Philosophy in Turin and then in Neuroscience in Trento, Italy. She is currently investigating how fish assess the size of groups of conspecifics and their perception of motion. She is interested in neuroethology, philosophy of science and theories of the brain.

malist and additive approach, tracing the history of the association between cells from the simplest organisms onwards.

Water is the starting point if we want to delve into these themes. Most of what surrounds us underwater, although in some cases stationary, is animate. As the author tells us describing the seabed of his dives, we are faced with the equivalent of an animal forest. It is in water that the first unicellular living organisms were born, and it is always underwater that the animal species most distant evolutionarily from us are found, and therefore the most interesting for the questions posed earlier.

Choanoflagellates are the group of unicellular eukaryotes believed to be the closest unicellular ancestor of metazoans . They use a flagellum to propel themselves through the water or to anchor themselves in one place, assuming a sessile form. They tend to gather in colonies and genetic analyses have revealed the presence of genes encoding for some proteins that help cells attach to each other.

The ability of multiple cells to come together, coordinate and sense their neighbors behavior led to the development of multicellular organisms. This transition marked the beginning of animal life and metazoans , with the earliest forms likely resembling sponges (Porifera phylum ). Sponges, however, are sessile animals, they remain fixed in one place and lose their ability to move during their adult form. A fundamental distinction between sponges and other animals is precisely the lack of a nervous system.

ACTION AND SENSATION IN PRIMITIVE SUBJECTS

Body-scale action is an innovation that was introduced by cnidarians like jellyfish and anemones.

At that time the primary need was to improve food intake, relying on movement to explore the environment. However, multicellular movement required rapid signaling and cell coordination. To accomplish this, early nervous systems evolved.

The first form of action was a random exploration following chemical trails. The organism moved in the same direction in case of positive energy return, or headed elsewhere in case of food source exhaustion. This behavior can be described as “Markovian stochastic process,” meaning that the probability of transitioning between the two

states depends only on the immediately preceding state of the system.

Only in the Cambrian period, with the advent of predation, the necessity to gain knowledge of the environment to perform specific actions drove the development of a rich array of diverse sensory organs. The earliest eyes belonged to arthropods (e.g. shrimp and flies) and even today some of them surpass primates in terms of visual acuity. At this point in time, knowledge was no longer gained only through movement and random navigation but in the feedback between environment and action. Sensory systems transformed animals to into causal vehicles able to conditionally act and influence the environment through feedback mechanisms. The combination of action and perception also led to the ability of subjects to differentiate themselves from the heteronomous world.

This evolutionary perspective on nervous systems sheds light on the questions posed at the beginning. These animals probably have what it takes to be called subjects of experience. Thanks

to the interaction between action and sensation, they possess the ability to distinguish themselves from their environment—a defining characteristic of sentient beings.

THE LESSON OF WATER

The transition to movement of a multicellular body marks the birth of the nervous system while the development of sensory organs gives rise to subjectsagents. What comes next? The story unfolds with a myriad of special senses and very diverse bodies, shaping the richness of animal life and behavior, that both amazes and obsesses scientists.

The octopus, with its decentralized nervous system, resembles an alien on Earth. Its arms operate independently, almost like individual small brains. Sometimes, its focus is outward, with single arms exploring the world separately, while other times, the central brain directs coordinated actions. The octopus is the embodiment of the problem of disunity of the self.

Another intriguing example is that of fish, a

paraphyletic group that includes most marine vertebrates. They possess a tactile sense called the lateral line, detecting water vibrations through clusters of hair cells called neuromasts. This heightened sensitivity to motion is particularly pronounced due to the dense medium they inhabit. Imagine the sensation of feeling every air displacement caused by other living things moving around you. The sheer volume of information would likely be overwhelming.

This prompts us to question, as Thomas Nagel famously did, “What does it feel like to be a bat? Or an octopus? Or a grouper?” Perhaps subjective experiences defy linguistic expression entirely. Describing diverse nervous systems through anthropomorphic lenses risks oversimplification and erroneous conclusions. Consider pain perception or learning abilities observed in various animals. Insects, for instance, have short lifespans, rendering cure of injuries less useful for them. Similarly, octopuses may not engage in tasks as humans expect them to solve. Wittgenstein wrote that “ the limits

of my language are the limits of my world ”. In this case, our definitions of mental attributes may overlook underlying physical bodies.

Returning to water, the sense of inadequacy experienced while diving into its silent depths and constrained by breath, heightens awareness of the ease with which instead diverse life forms inhabit it. Our perceived physical limitations, contrasted with the agility of creatures adorned with fins and tentacles, offer insights into their unique attributes and invite exploration of others’ nervous systems or minds. ■

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

MONOD, J. Chance and necessity. An essay on the natural Philosophy ofmoern Biology, Alfred A. Knopf, 1971.

REHBOCK, P.F. (1975). Huxley, Haeckel, and the oceanographers: the case of Bathybius haeckelii. Isis, 66(4), 504-533, 1975.

SCHRODINGER, E. What Is Life? Science and Humanism, Samsonian 1988.

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IN THE BOOKSTORE

LIBRIXIME

FOUR ESSAYS AND OUR TRIBUTE TO BOB DYLAN. PETER GODFREY-SMITH’S ANSWERS. A MEMORY FOR JAVIER MARÍAS. AT THE END, A BITTERSWEET TALE BY OSCAR WILDE.

192

William Dalrymple THE ANARCHY by Gianluca Beltrame

195

Donato Carusi DOES YOUR MAJESTIC READ? by Andrea Barenghi

198

Francesca Stavrakopoulou GOD, AN ANATOMY by Cristiana Facchini

201

Bob Dylan THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG by Armando Massarenti

204

François Hartog CHRONOS by Antonio Lucci

207

Memoir JAVIER MARÍAS by Armando Savignano

210

Author’s Answers PETER GODFREY-SMITH by Matteo Moca

214

DULCIS IN FUNDO THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE by Oscar Wilde

THE ANARCHY

THE

UNSTOPPABLE RISE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS AND RARE SOURCES TELL THE STORY OF HOW TOTAL AND UN-PREORDAINED DOMINATION DEVELOPED. THAT’S

CAPITALISM, BABY.

by Gianluca Beltrame

In June 1602, the East India Company’s first fleet, four ships under the command of Sir James Lancaster, dropped anchor in Aceh. India had a population of 150 million (about one-fifth of the world’s population) and produced onefourth of global manufacturing: it was the planet’s industrial locomotive and the leading producer of textile manufactures, responsible for a larger share of world trade than any other nation. On the other hand, England was, after the Anglican Reformation, a pariah state in Europe, isolated from the great Catholic powers, inhabited by farmers and ranchers, owing its (little) wealth mainly to the privateers who plied the seas: it had one-twentieth the population of India and produced just under three percent of the world’s manufactured goods. Add to this that the Grand Mughal army could count on some four million men at arms and one of the most powerful cavalries on the planet. How was it possible for a small state on a distant island to prevail and in short order conquer the richest empire in the world? The Scot -

tish historian, writer and traveler William Dalrymple tells the story in his The Anarchy (Bloomsbury Publishing).

It is an easy-to-read volume that relies on an extensive bibliography of not only English, but also (and often for the first time) Persian and French sources, which reaffirms a concept that is well established for historians but often escapes non-specialists: it was not the British Crown that conquered India, but a private corporation, the East India Company, one of the world’s first joint-stock companies, arguably the first multinational corporation in history. The East India Company’s aggressive capitalism is coeval with the rise of imperialism, and the two forces interacted, supported and nurtured each other, giving rise to immense power. Reading the history of the conquest and plundering of India we find advantages and disadvantages of public/private partnership, lobbying that borders on corruption of parliamentarians, privatization of profits and socialization of losses when the Company becomes “too big to fail”—all themes that sound fa -

miliar today. Dalrymple, whose ancestors served in India with the Company, has it well in mind, and writes, «as Ira Jackson, former director of Harvard’s Center for Business and Government, has observed, corporations and those who control them have now ‘replaced politics and politicians [...] as the new priests and oligarchs of our system». Furtively, corporations still govern the lives of a significant portion of the human race. The three-hundred-year-old question of how to balance the power and risks of large corporations has yet to be definitively answered. It is unclear how the nation-state can adequately protect itself and its citizens from the excesses of large corporations. No contemporary corporation could replicate the violence and incredible military might of the East India Company and hope to get away with it, but many have tried to match its success in bending state authority to its own ends.”

ANIMAL SPIRITS

The Anarchy is precisely the story of how a dangerously unregulated private society accomplished

a conquest comparable only to those of Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan. We are talking about a company initially founded by merchants who were not very wealthy (they even had some trouble getting all the membership fees paid) and had zero political clout: none of them sat in Parliament, and it took about two years before they obtained all the necessary authorizations to operate. Its headquarters was in an office of just five windows on Leadenhall Street in the City of London, where, still a century after it was founded, a total of 35 people worked. Make no effort to look for it: there is no plaque to remind you of it, and Lloyd’s building stands in its place today. In the Company’s founding license was, among others, the authorization “to move war.” It was, according to the schemes of the time, a kind of expanded authorization to “rush warfare” of the kind practiced by Sir Francis Drake. And in fact, the first expedition, the one that landed in Aceh in 1602, made a profit only

because it attacked and looted a Portuguese vessel loaded with spices. It was enlarged, however, because it was thought that the English merchants might clash with some ruler of some Pacific islet: in fact, the initial idea was to do business in the spice islands (Timor and the Moluccas), which were already garrisoned by the Dutch who repelled English attempts at infiltration. That was why the East India Company resigned itself to doing business with wealthy Indian merchants. And that was when a multinational corporation began to transform into an aggressive colonial power, with results unmatched in history, coming to monopolize two-thirds of English trade in the world. «By 1803, when the Company’s private army numbered nearly two hundred thousand men [more than twice that of the British Crown, ed .], it had quickly subdued or directly annexed an entire subcontinent. Incredibly it succeeded in less than half a century», Dalrymple summarizes. «The first real territorial conquests had begun in Bengal in 1756; forty-seven years later, the Company’s arm stretched as far north as Delhi, the Mughal capital, and

THE AUTHOR

almost all of India south of that city was governed de facto from the boardroom of a boardroom in the City of London. “What honor is left to us”, asked one Mughal official, “if we have to take orders from a handful of merchants who haven’t yet learned how to wash their backsides?”».

FATAL UNDERESTIMATION

Indeed, for a very long time, refined Indian officials underestimated the crude British merchants. Akbar, the first Mughal emperor to meet the British, had entertained plans to civilize the European immigrants to India, whom he described as «a mishmash of savages,” but later renounced the plan, deeming it impossible. An incommunicability that emerges from the portraits of the protagonists of these two centuries of history. As India slips toward disintegration, the refined and cultured Mughal rulers are taken over by bloodthirsty warlords, psychopathic serial rapists, and drug-addled warriors like the one who, high on opium, got off his elephant only to take a bullet in the forehead. Giant above them all is Shah Alam, a handsome, cultured and refined Mughal prince who witnessed the

William Dalrymple is a British historian and writer who spends most of the year in New Delhi, while returning in the summer to London and Edinburgh. He writes regularly for The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, New Statesman and The New Yorker Among his books translated into Italian: The Siege of Delhi, 1857. The Final Clash Between the Last Mughal Dynasty and the British Empire, Rizzoli (2007); Nine Lives. In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, Adelphi (2011); Return of a king, Adelphi (2015); Koh-i-Noor, Adelphi (2020), written with Anita Anand.

WILLIAM DALRYIMPLE

Company’s ultimate conquest of India. As a child he had watched the Afghans conquer Dehli and walk away with what is probably the greatest booty in history (including the Peacock Throne set with the Koh-i-Nur diamond). He then narrowly escaped the assassination attempt hatched by his vizier and survived several battles against the British. He returned to Dehli after a long march, considered by all to be impossible, and thanks to his general, Mirza Najaf Khan, almost rebuilt the empire of his ancestors only to lose everything again upon the leader’s untimely death. At that point he had to witness the rape of his entire family and end up tortured and blinded (his eyeballs were literally gouged out) by what had been his favorite. And finally return to the throne “like a chessboard king” (as defined by the poet Azad), under the protection of the Company. Shah Alam went through as a protagonist what Indian historians already refer to as the Great Anarchy, the period of internecine wars, famine, and social upheaval that led to the dissolution of the Mughal Empire and that gives the title to Dalrymple’s six-year-long volume.

Although not made explicit, another kind of anarchy also guided the English conquerors: «Corporations have neither a body to punish nor a soul to damn, so they do what they will», as Edward, First Baron of Thurlow, Lord Chancellor of the Crown said during the 1788 trial of the East India Company. And indeed, one should look for no premeditated plan, no long-term strategy to explain the Compa -

ny’s behaviors. Local officials enjoyed the widest freedom of action: after all, they could not ask for permission from a board months away. So, everyone did his own thing, but, as is often the case even in today’s multinational corporations, they were very quick (unlike their Indian counterparts) to move from decision to action, to take advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves to them.

It is surprising how much chance there was in those historical happenings. The first British fort in India, the one at Madras, was built in the vicinity of a Company depot, Armagon’s workshop, only because the workshop leader, a certain Francis Day, was having an affair with a Tamil woman from a nearby village and wanted their meetings to be «more frequent and uninterrupted», as a source of the time reported. Before long, Madras became the first British colonial city in India, with its own civil administration, municipal status and a population of forty thousand. And, if one looks at their biographies, the British officials were not much better than the Indian warlords they faced. Robert Clive, the first commander of the Company’s armed forces, for example, was hardly less brutal and ruthless. A village thug who had come to India as an accountant, he was the prototype of the Company’s officers: adventurers willing to risk their lives and travel thousands of miles to the impossible climate of the swamps and jungles of Bengal for one purpose: if one survived, there was no better place in the world to make a fortune. And Clive returned to England as one

of the richest men in the country, only to take his own life in a horrible way, perhaps haunted by the ghosts he had brought with him from India.

This, too, is a difference that benefited the British: while the Indian warlords fought incessantly with each other, the British officials, while detesting one another, had a common goal: plunder. And with this goal they moved with fierce determination. «One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang term for “loot”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary this lemma was rarely used outside the North Indian plains until the late 18th century, when it suddenly spread throughout Britain», so begins Dalrymple’s book.

To the quickness in taking advantage of opportunities and the ruthless determination to pursue the goal, a third “dowry” must finally be added: the ability to attract enormous capital. And this the Company knew how to do both in the motherland (almost all British parliamentarians and powerbrokers owned its shares) and in India, where eventually the big local bankers preferred them as clients over the unreliable warlords. A perfect corporate case-history, then. However, like all success stories, it ends, when India passes directly to the British Crown, which makes it its most precious jewel, after having others do the dirty work. Today there are no shares in the East India Company, no headquarters in the City. All that remains is the name, the brand, owned by two brothers from Kerala who sell “condiments and fine foods” in London’s West End. ■

DOES YOUR MAJESTY READ?

THREE CENTURIES OF POWER, LAW AND LITERATURE

THIS

BOOK IS A BRILLIANT ESSAY TRACING THE INTENSE LINK BETWEEN LEGAL CULTURE AND LITERARY CREATIVITY AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EVOLUTION.

by Andrea Barenghi

THE AUTHOR

Donato Carusi is professor of Private Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Genoa. Among his previous publications: Che farò quando tutto brucia? Una lettura politico-giuridica di Antonio Lobo Antunes (Pacini Giuridica, 2019) and La legge sul «biotestamento». Una pagina di storia italiana (Giappichelli, 2020).

Fascinating and highly cultured, the book aims to bring nonspecialists closer to legal system as a historical and cultural product, offering at once an introduction to its “grammar” and an original history of literature, of surprising breadth, as a representation of “human relations” in which legal theory, “a practice with a high degree of abstraction and formalization,” is called upon to “bring order” and jurists to a “disciplined and functionalized practice of imagination” (“anything but foreign” to the work ahead of them) that in itself justifies their literary education.

The ease of reading hides, with a distinct light style, a deep understanding of the phenomenon in its historical evolution, and solid literary, historical and philosophical foundations: “to understand it at least a little requires patience, to master it thoroughly demands

dedication and the sacrifice of many other opportunities” (and for this the jurist “is fatally clued, and sometimes really victimized, by a certain inner narrowness or dryness”).

The book moves from the suggestion of the golden booklet dedicated in 2007 by Alan Bennett to the hypothesis of the “sovereign reader” (this is the happy Italian rendering of the very English title: The Uncommon Reader), induced by literary rapture to neglect or transform protocol duties and finally to abdicate, gaining the freedom to become an author herself.

But the title also reflects another suggestion, more specific to the path along which the reader is meant to be led, that literature, “a thermometer of the legal sensibility of a people,” “follows law in its phases,” that is, in the discipline of the actual facts that the development of historical events imposes,

DONATO CARUSI

and, when it “hesitates and temporizes,” “prepares its evolution” (so, in 1936, a little-known author such as Antonio D’Amato in La letteratura e la vita del diritto).

LAW & LIT

The volume - an outcome of the university courses on law and literature that the author teaches in Genoa - is aimed at the cultured reader even if not devoted to legal studies, and, on the other hand, could constitute teaching material in schools, if of literature one wished to offer a “historical” and “political” perspective, in a broad sense, lending itself, moreover, also to a piecemeal use of the twenty-two chapters in which Carusi’s work unfolds (accompanied by inviting anthological excerpts and the constant contextualization of the authors, while the lack of an index of names and characters is felt, however).

In the book, edited by Leo S. Olschki, two chapters are devoted ex professo to the problem of grounding and to Law & Lit, the latter movement that has formalized in American universities an approach of much more widespread and long-standing origin (“the self-conscious experience of complex and dynamic relations between legal culture and literary creation is by no means new,” the author in fact warns), while a further chapter focuses on Law of Literature (and thus on the problem of copyright, from the Queen Anne statute of 1710 to the Berne Convention of 1886, and therefore also on the social role of intellectuals).

The first of these chapters on Law & Lit introduces the subject to ground the need for an overlap between literary studies and legal

studies in university teaching.

For the author, literature’s greatest merit “is perhaps precisely this, to rival all the mental factors that stand in the way of people’s development,” namely, “what the urge for power within us and the real power around us systematically oppose, literary practice and enjoyment are worth an implement: the freedom of thought, the desire for knowledge and participation, and along with these the associative imagination - the faculty of establishing and arguing reasons of distinction among the like, relations of equality among the different,” which should be, precisely, the profession of the jurist, the inherently political character of which is repeatedly highlighted. The other chapter, on methodological issues, is mainly devoted to the relationship between law and literature in the Law & Lit movement, its importance, styles, and ideological articulations, and here the author in filigree reproposes the crucial problem of the status of legal science, the relationship between law and interpretation, the autonomy of the interpreter and the role of imagination in legal decisionmaking.

The declinations of Law as Literature , Law in Literature , and Law of Literature also serve to collate the various trends of scholarship and relationships with other movements in legal science overseas (Law & Economics, Critical Legal Studies, Black Studies, Women’s Studies), all the way to Martha Nussbaum, to whose thought (where “the frequentation of literature seems to be the very

condition of reasoning in political terms”) Carusi is very close, and in whose approach he recognizes the aptitude for “injecting into U.S. legal experience and political debate elements of the personalism of European Constitutions.”

A FRENZIED DEVELOPMENT

But the book does not limit itself to offering countless links and references to trends and theoretical problems peculiar to legal science: indeed, it can be said that its center lies in its depiction of “three centuries of literature” and history and of the “enthusiasm and bewilderment of an entire era” in the face of the frenzied technical, economic and social development and its consequences on human life (those on the impact of the railway revolution are, for example, among the most entertaining pages of the book).

This is a tightly-paced journey, which, divided as it is into historical stages, subject areas or geographical settings, can also be approached fractionally. One encounters there, among other things, the advent of the first embryo of mass culture with the rise of newspapers and the novel, and its social and political significance, with respect to which the author registers the reactions of the ruling classes, but also of high culture (think, for example, of the relevance of Søren Kierkegaard’s protest about mass communication: “it is the whole form of this communication that is, in its essence, false”).

On the legal level, the great passages of modernity unfold in the affirmation of the principle of formal equality, in the waning of the droit coutumier, in the affirmation of “equal” bourgeois law,

of the full capacity of subjects to act, of the unity of property law (previously stratified in a paralyzing fragmentation), and so, on the technical level, of the affirmation of the principle of typicality of real rights, functional to “a dynamic society and economy,” of the creation of anonymous societies from the Compagnie des Indes and the privilege of the iura regalia with which they were endowed to foster the nascent capitalist enterprise.

Again, in the volume we find the relations between France and Germany in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, the literary and legal renewal (“societies [...] enfranchise themselves from the authority of the ancients, claim equal dignity vis-à-vis them and thus title to choose their own law for themselves”), the profound cultural upheavals and the relationship of the legal schools with Romanticism and the Enlightenment, the path to codification and German unification.

On a literary level, the 19th century is first and foremost “the century of Balzac,” who perhaps more than any other author portrayed the life of law in the Comédie humaine, denouncing and parodying it, but offering an accurate portrayal of the problems of the time (another author of ours, Giuseppe Guizzi, gave a painstaking account of this in his 2021 volume on The ‘Balzac Case’. Stories of Law and Literature). Then, through nineteenth-century “realist” literature, the perspective of mass society and the exploitation of the subaltern classes, with the taking shape of the autonomy of the labor relationship (initially regarded as a tenancy) and industrial relations, slowly and painstakingly achieved

from that time on.

Carusi’s investigation ranges in delimiting different subject areas with a breadth that cannot even be mentioned here. In “The Treatment of Bad Plants,” social deviance is investigated starting with the Inquisition; on the problems of female subalternity (“a room of one’s own”), he moves from the 14th century to the problem of the actual realization of equality; and then the horrors of the 20th century, with dictatorships, interventionism and wars (“fin de siècle,” “toward catastrophe,” “a people of saints, navigators and spirits pourers,” “fire,” these are passages to be reread carefully today); the avant-gardes, the collapse of empires, the crisis of the subject, to which “the unity of meaning is now denied and all that remains is to construct forms” (to borrow an expression by Natalino Irti quoted in the text) and thus also “the loss of unity of the law” (“journey to the end of the night”); the internal migrations in Europe and Italian emigration (“the undesirables of Europe”); the opposition of the blocs, the failures of capitalism, the tragedy of real socialism, and atomic terror (“exit to safety”); resistance, the affirmation of human rights, democratic constitutions, but also artistic movements, and so art for art’s sake, theater of the absurd, engagement (“European education”); then “America,” ending with “geographies of the novel,” “contemporary literature” and “its contribution to internationalism.”

THE WORLD IN A BOOK

It is ultimately a true “bookworld” in which Carusi outlines the arduous path in the modern

history of literature and law, finding in it, in continuity with his previous scholarly production,

«THE 19TH CENTURY IS THE CENTURY OF BALZAC, WHO REPRESENTED THE LIFE OF LAW IN THE COMÉDIE HUMAINE»

a common root in being instruments of self-awareness and human emancipation and liberation, of humanism and democracy, of equality.

It is, that accomplished by the author, a most refined exercise, which allows one to draw a profound insight into the mechanisms of literature and law in history, and their ramified political implications, then weaving a dense web of cross-references, made possible by the presence, on the one hand, of law and jurists in literary works (and often in the formation of men of letters), and on the other hand of literature as an object of study or as a collateral practice, or even as a testimony to the facts that require to be regulated (the “humanistic closeness to literary culture,” which Donato Carusi glimpses in the work of the coltured jurists), or denunciation of the insufficient or inadvertent or perhaps even unjust (but here an even more complicated chapter would open) consideration that the law reserves for them: quoting Pietro Rescigno, one of the most distinguished jurists “sensitive to literature,” one could in this case speak of the “poverty of law” and “the pain of the jurist who tries to redeem it.” ■

FRANCESCA STAVRAKOPOULOU

GOD, AN ANATOMY

YAHWEH HAS A CHARACTER, FEELINGS, AND WORLDVIEW. ABOVE ALL, HE HAS A BODY, WHICH THE OLD TESTAMENT REVEALS.

by Cristiana Facchini

God said, “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness.” But the reverse is also true. This seems to be the proposition that English biblical scholar, Francesca Stravrakopoulou, presents in her volume God, an anatomy (Alfred a Knopf Inc.). Divided into five parts and twenty-one chapters, the study of God’s body begins from the bottom and continues upward: from the feet to the genitals, from the chest to the hands, and finally to the head. It should be premised that Stravrakopoulou reads many passages of the Bible (particularly the oldest fragments) from a perspective that aims to de-theologize their interpretation in order to resurface theo-poetic tendencies that have been lost or have followed particular paths of transmission. Most importantly, the biblical God the author reconstructs is quite novel, even for those familiar with the contents of Scripture. It is not possible to chart all twenty-one chapters, which are rich in information ranging from the earliest Meso -

potamian world to medieval or Renaissance imagery. Much less is it possible to refer to the very rich iconographic apparatus that accompanies the reading of the chapters.

I will focus on the themes that most struck me. First of all, let us introduce Yahweh, the biblical God at the center of this powerful portrait (pp. 42-44). Hundreds of years of philological and exegetical exercise on the Bible enable us to say-without danger of being excommunicated-that the collection of texts that make up the Scriptures held sacred for Christians and Jews gathers heterogeneous materials, composed in different ancient styles, the composition of which has undergone many revisions, some of which have been attributed to the scribal schools that, having returned to Jerusalem by decision of Cyrus in the fifth century bce, put their hands on the preserved collections (prophetic oracles, mythical materials, legends, normative materials) after the destruction of the two kingdoms (that of Israel by Assyrian hands and that of Judah by Babylonian hands).

The God of interest to the author is the one we can attribute to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, that is, a deity who became known as Yahweh (a volcanic God, Sigmund Freud wrote), derived from the pantheon of deities headed by the Levantine god El. His physiognomy is based on a paradox, namely the biblical prohibition to make an image of God. How can we reconstruct the body of an invisible God in a world dotted with the mighty presence of deities? In fact, the Bible contains many images of the deity and, as many know, many anthropomorphisms that were well known to ancient and modern commentators and have always lent themselves to criticism, even of an anti-Semitic nature. Stavrakopoulou skillfully exploits these copious traces and information with which she reconstructs, with great details, the “anatomy of God.”

O ne can start with the feet. The feet of the deity are clearly visible in the ancient world, such as in the temple complex of Ain Dara in Syria (now destroyed by bombing), but also in many passages

of the Bible (God walks in the Garden of Eden). The feet anchor God’s presence on earth, among men and women, and in the architectural space that becomes his dwelling place, the temple. The biblical god, like the god of other surrounding cultures, makes his physical presence felt through his mightiness, through his “standing,” upright before men and women. Feet convey a variety of meanings, such as that of subduing and dominating; the feet of deities are feet that trample the enemy, as one crushes grapes after the harvest, soaked in the blood of defeated men. But they also leave traces of the divine gait, and with their feet God transforms space, making it sacred. The significance attached to divine feet also extends to the ritual treatment of human feet, as indicated by many biblical and New Testament accounts and practices that have been preserved among Jews and Muslims (going barefoot to pray or in certain ritual circumstances). Perhaps the best-known testimony is rendered in Christian

and Catholic culture by the rite of foot washing that is described in the Gospels: a rite that Jesus performs by reversing the cultural data of his time, according to which slaves washed the feet of those who entered homes (Mauro Pesce, Adriana Destro, La lavanda dei piedi, Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna).

THE FEET OF GOD

T o the contemporary reader this may seem a peregrine association, but among the metaphors used in the Bible to speak of genitals, feet appear very often. We find an explicit example of this in the biblical story of Ruth and in many other passages. Like El (the supreme God of the Levantine pantheon) and the Babylonian and Assyrian male deities, Yahweh also retains a warrior and priapean identity, an expression of a patriarchal society where the power of the divine seed fertilizes the world, creating it. It is in the context of these ancient conceptions that light can be shed on the ritual practice of circumcision. Like all ritual actions-incisions,

scarifications, tattoos—circumcision serves to socialize the body. In general, ritual manipulations directed at the genitals (male and female) signal the danger inherent in the orifices as places where the integrity of the body is weakened (as Mary Douglas had suggested in Purity and Danger). It also signals the potency of anatomical parts on which the generation of life depends. The Bible contains numerous ritual prescriptions directed at containing the danger and potency of fluids that are associated with the genitals (blood, semen, but also fluids related to disease or desire). Male circumcision is one of the best-known rites and marks the construction of male and religious identity, the entry into the covenant established between God and the Israelite males. The topic is obviously fascinating and complex, because of the centrality that circumcision assumes for those who identify with the people of Israel and because of the controversy around which Christian communities formed. Over the centuries, indeed Chris -

FRANCESCA STAVRAKOPOULOU

She is a biblical scholar and professor of Hebrew Bible and ancient religion at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on the history of Israelite and Jewish religion. These are topics she has also made accessible through outreach work on television channels such as BBC2 and Channel 4, where she speaks on the historicity of the Old Testament, the role of women in the Abrahamic religions, and the development of biblical texts.

Prior to God, an anatomy (translated in italian by Leonardo Ambasciano, Bollati Boringhieri 2022 ) she published Land of our Fathers: The Roles of Ancestor Veneration in Biblical Land Claims (2010) and Reading the Hebrew Bible (2012).

FRANCESCA STAVRAKOPOULOU

tians would abandon this practices. The author emphasizes its leading element in the construction of masculinity and its close association with the injunction of procreation, modeled on the pruning techniques of fruit trees.

God’s sexual activity is explicit in the biblical accounts: thus in Genesis Eve says she fathered Adam with God, signaling in Eve a mythological antecedent from Ugarit and related to the goddesses of life (Hawwa/Eva indicates life, p. 179). In addition, the author describes the relevance of the goddess Asherah as Yahweh’s wife, slowly ousted in the rewriting stages of the biblical texts by the exiles/reformers of the cult who returned to Jerusalem. Also important is the mytheme contained in a fragment of Genesis (6:1-4) and developed in the apocryphal books of The watchers and Enoch. Sex between divine beings (angels) and women produces giants who introduce chaos among humans and will cause the destruction of humanity with the flood.

The most disturbing part of this section is the one Stavrakopoulou devotes to the female personification of Israel, understood as city (Zion/Jerusalem), nation, territory, and its eroticization in the assumption of the role of bride, often unfaithful, adulteress and prostitute. Those familiar with the biblical texts in the Hebrew language, and in particular the Book of Ezekiel, are not surprised by the harshness of these pages, the brutality of several passages that we find in the prophetic texts where the narrative of the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the enemies passes through the idea that the blame for the defeat is to be attributed to the mari-

tal infidelity of the bride. Much feminist criticism has confronted the sexual violence and images of brutal misogyny found in the Hebrew Bible. The great American scholar Tikva Frymer-Kenski (Reading the Women of the Bible) had argued that the violence on the female body was to be read as God’s critique of the society of which he was the protector, a society that fell short of the norms and precepts he had given. In this text, however, the misogynistic and patriarchal aspects are deliberately staged as well as the discomfort that commentators have reserved for these images. Commentary or hermeneutic technique are valuable tools for betraying the meaning of the text or subverting it.

A MASCULINE POWER

The biblical God – like the Mesopotamian and Levantine male deities – is warrior and creator; he is immense and powerful; he is capable of loving and hating. His extraordinary presence is rendered visually by the fear and danger of looking him in the face. Moses who sees him on Mount Sinai will be transformed by this encounter so much that he acquires horns of light. God’s body is cloaked in extraordinary radiance, dazzling fire and brightness unbearable to the human eye. These images of the brightness of the deity also flowed into Proto-Christian texts until they became a fundamental element of Christianity in the Latin tradition, which ontologizes the ‘light-darkness’ dualism so relevant in the context of the Second Temple Jewish world. Particularly beautiful are the chapters in the fifth section devoted to the face of God and all the organs associ -

ated with it: voice, ears, mouth, nose.

Written with clear style and florid writing, smug in its irreverent and iconoclastic potential, Stavrokopoulou’s book is designed for the general public and accommodates trends in contemporary research. The structure of the chapters is elegant, starting with a case of contemporary news, politics or art and then swinging in a sweeping movement from conceptions about the deities of Mesopotamian and Middle Eastern pantheon cultures to Judaean and Israelite ones (Yahweh is the god of both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah) to human religious practices, with digressions touching on the birth of Judaism and Christianity. As in a mirror, images and conceptions of God are shaped by idealized human projections but also signal a religious movement away from ancient conceptions. The biblical God that Stavrakopoulou resurrects is a male, with a huge body, coppery skin color, scented with rain and frankincense, with long hair dipped in perfumed conditioners and a neatly trimmed beard, young and handsome, with powerful legs and feet that wear manicured sandals. It is a God who slowly dies, becoming invisible and concealed behind the smoke blankets of the sacrifices and protected by the Holy of Holies (pp. 430-31 in italian version). A God who seems to disappear in the religious mutations of the ancient world and in the philosophical debates of the medieval age, although some of his traces re-emerge, sometimes radically transformed in medieval Jewish and Christian images. ■

PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG

A BOOK «CHOCK-FULL OF WONDERFUL, FANTASTIC, TRUE STORIES». PORTRAIT BY STEPHEN ALCORN.

by Armando Massarenti

Bob Dylan has always been, in his own way, a philosopher. A philosopher in the way that talented self-taught people are generally “philosophers.” The autodidact does not follow predetermined patterns provided to him by others. He chooses for himself, from a distance, his own masters and builds up in the field, somewhat rocambulously, tools, practices and theories to orient himself, to learn, to absorb the universe he cares about and wants to make his own. In this case, that of songs heard on the radio, in records or at folk festivals. Understanding them thoroughly, without preconceptions, exploring their most effective mechanisms, the magical interweaving of words and music, the nuances and possible variations, cataloging them and then playing them and acting on what he has learned, testing the tricks of the trade and the skills developed up to that point. Dylan says he is not, strictly speaking, a poet. Songs are not poems with the addition of music. Nor that he is, at heart, a musician or a singer. Instead, of being an artist, that is, someone who knows how to put into practice, poetically, the ability to produce works (a record, a song, a show) taking care that they reach the hearts of an audience that is as wide as possible. In a word, that they are

successful. In this the Nobel Prize, awarded to him in 2016, was well justified, and the comparison (suggested by himself with due distinctions) with Shakespeare, appropriate. Measuring themselves against the audience for both is essential. Their art is popular. Bob Dylan’s artistic making is a constant learning by doing (or, if you prefer, a doing by learning): a continuous, reflective, monitoring of the spirit of the times, the moods of the public, and the most diverse forms of expression, originating in the voracity with which from a very young age he drank in the genius and fame of others, being able to recognize it, appreciate it, criticize it, imitate it, improve it, building his own style and planning, pragmatically, his own performances and his own success.

Dylan has always been, in his artistic practice, a kind of encyclopedist of the song, of which he knows, from experience, all its possibilities and limitations, treasuring them in his compositional activity. It is no coincidence that in recent years he has traced its history in an intense radio activity, edited a collection of the originals of the most famous covers, and, in his last albums (before Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020), tried his hand at three collections of standards re-proposing, among

other things, with his own unmistakable voice, the repertoire of Frank Sinatra.

In his latest book, the first after the Nobel Prize, analyzing a blues classic, Big Boss Man, he calls the performer, Jimmy Reed, “the essence of electric simplicity” and adds, “You can play twelve-bar blues in hundreds of variations and Jimmy Reed must have known them all. None of his songs ever touch the ground. They don’t stop moving. He was the most country of all the blues artists in the fifties. He is slick and laid-back. There’s no city concrete beneath his feet. He’s all country”. And only a deep connoisseur of musical genres could think of such a reckless comparison as the following: “Bluegrass is the other side of heavy metal. Both are musical forms steeped in tradition. They are the two forms of music that visually and audibly have not changed in decades. Both forms have a traditional instrumental lineup and a parochial adherence to form.”

Dylan is artist-encyclopedist-philosopher, however, he has no philosophy. The title of this book, Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Schuster, 2023) is deceptive, lying - there is no philosophical theory of song! - but it tells the truth. Just like his songs. The least successful are, not surprisingly,

BOB DYLAN

the most explicitly autobiographical ones, but in fact there is something of himself in almost all his output, where “truths” are filtered through a storytelling skill with an often mystical flavor and full of biblical references. It would be naïve to expect from this book a philosophical theory of modern song. And even a definition of what is meant by - and where “modern song” begins and eventually ends. Certainly, judging from these pages, the mother scene is 1950s America. It just so happens to be Dylan’s formative years, when rock and roll was born and musical genres such as blues, country, protest song, soul, and rockabilly were merging.

Everything, then, once again coincides with his figure as an artist, with his charisma and his ability to fascinate by telling stories, delivering them in the most appropriate form from time to time. Stories with protagonists who draw a fresco of American culture whose global centrality Dylan unhesitatingly celebrates. Among the songs analyzed, only three are by English songwriters (the Who, the Clash and Costello), one is Italian (Modugno’s highly praised Volare), while France peeps out with Trenet’s La mer but sung in English by Bobby Darin, one of the heroes of the volume in good company with more famous protagonists (Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, Cher, Judy Garland, Nina Simone... the complete list is easily found on the web and we recommend making a playlist of it. Very few women, and this is not the only sign of a certain Dylanesque “machismo”.

Philosophy of Modern Song is chockfull of wonderful, unbelievable, fantastic, true, almost true or bordering on legendary stories, but also capable of exposing widespread falsehoods and awakening in readers a critical spirit on major contemporary issues, such as war, Native American rights,

political and cultural conformity and sectarianism, and the new social and mass media set-up. At the center are 66 songs that become extraordinary narratives and often coincide with real philosophical exercises, not always accommodating or agreeable. Dylan is also famous for his sublime ability to irritate his own fans and is hardly an example of political correctness. For example, the song Cheaper to Keep Her is the cue for the following reflection: “Soul records, like hillbilly, blues, calypso, Cajun, polka, salsa, and other indigenous forms of music, contain wisdom that the upper  crust often gets in academia. The so-called school of the streets is a real thing and it doesn’t just apply to learning to steer clear of hustlers and charlatans. While Ivy League graduates talk about love in a rush of quatrains detailing abstract qualities and gossamer attributes, folks from Trinidad to Atlanta, Georgia, sing of the benefits of making an ugly woman your wife and the cold hard facts of life. Or, in this case, Johnnie Taylor saves you a hefty legal consultation fee by telling you that it’s cheaper to keep her. Of course it’s cheaper to keep her. How could it not be? Divorce is a ten-billiondollar-a-year industry. And that’s without renting a hall, hiring a band or throwing bouquets”. There follows a violent tirade against divorce lawyers and, as an antidote, the proposal of a polygamist utopia for today’s society. Sometimes the encyclopedist Dylan (trained extensively as a radio host) after telling a story gets caught up in the pleasure of the list, listing all the songs that talk away about tears, shoes, prayers, the moon, old age, war. There are pop songs based on classic themes, songs that come best live, and songs that need a recording studio. About It’s All in the Game, sung by Tommy Edwards, it is said

that “sometimes a song needs to find its time. Other times you have to get it in the street next day.” And about I’ve Always Been Crazy, by Waylon Jennings: “Sometimes songs come in show up in a disguise. A love song can hide all sorts of emotions, like anger and resentment. Songs can sound happy and contain a deep abyss of sadness, and some of the saddest sounding songs can have deep wells of joy at their heart ” There are songs that are beautiful because they lack meaning, songs that are beautiful because they are overloaded with meaning, and many songs whose meaning lies entirely in their ability to tell somewhat incomplete stories while leaving the imagination to fill in the gaps. An exercise that Dylan himself performs at the beginning of almost every chapter with effective rewriting exercises, somewhat in the style of Like a Rolling Stone - “Once upon a time you dressed so fine...” - where the “you” directly involves the reader (and sometimes Dylan himself) by projecting him as the protagonist in the situations and dilemmas evoked by the songs. For example, beginning with Detroit City, sung by Bobby Bare: “Your life is unraveling. You came to the big city, and you found out things about yourself you didn’t want to know, you’ve been on the dark side too long”.

If you do not feel like considering it a philosophy book, take it as a singular artist’s book. Philosophy of Modern Song is replete with very evocative illustrations: concert posters, photos of landscapes and common situations, of bands, of films and documentaries. At the back of some chapters are small newspaper clippings from the 1950s advertising courses on how to learn how to play the guitar, piano or harmonica, or how to compose songs, in a week or so: “Money-back guarantee.” ■

FRANÇOIS HARTOG

CHRONOS: THE WEST CONFRONTS TIME

AN ESSAY THAT IS ACTUALLY “A HISTORY OF HISTORIES.” HARTOG IS FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES A HISTORIAN OF TIME AND RAISES A SCATHING CRITIQUE OF CURRENT “PRESENTISM”.

by Antonio Lucci

THE AUTHOR

François Hartog is director of studies emeritus at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Among his books are translated into english: Regimes of Historicity (Columbia University Press) and Chronos: the West confronts Time (Columbia University Press) and The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (University California Press).

What is time? Augustine, in the Confessions , attempted to answer this impossible question with a famous non-answer: “If no one questions me, I know; if I wanted to explain it to those who question me, I do not know.”

While before him both Plato and Aristotle had already grappled with the question of time in the philosophical sphere, after Augustine the history of the attempt to define time will be a real thread running through the entire history of both Western and Eastern philosophy and will become a central node for the sciences as well.

Time will, from time to time, be mythologized and measured, made as calculable as possible through increasingly precise instruments or traced back to the irreducible life experience of the individual, be transcribed into mathematical formulas or narrated in fictional form.

Cultural historian François Hartog, a student of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Reinhard Koselleck, two of the authors who have been most influential in the twentieth century in proposing new ways of thinking and writing history-after analyzing specific aspects of ancient Western history in his early works, has devoted two of his most recent works, Regimes of Historicity and Chronos: the West confronts Time (both Columbia University Press) to the attempt to think about time conceptually.

THE “HISTORICITY REGIME”

T hese two works by the historian are characterized by a threefold lateral “deviation”: in them, in fact, Hartog seeks to make neither a philosophical history nor a scientific theory of time, nor even a history of the ways in which time has been measured. Rather, Hartog’s proposal is both

conceptual-theoretical and methodological. He, in fact, proposes categories that are useful both retrospectively for understanding the experience of time that has been made in certain cultural-historical contexts and prospectively, that is, that they also have possible heuristic value for future analyses of the concept of time. It is with this in mind that the Hartogian concept of the “regime of historicity” should be understood: it describes first of all the way in which different cultures have understood themselves (and other cultures), articulating in their own and peculiar ways the dimensions of past, present and future, attributing different meanings to them depending on the contexts in which these interpretations have developed. Secondly, as a consequence, the concept of “regime of historicity” becomes a useful tool to define also the particular ways of experiencing themselves and others that members of individual cultures have developed from these specific ways of thinking about time. If the regime of historicity definable as “passatism,” peculiar to the ancient world, experienced present history as a repetition (and degradation) of the past, and the “modernist” regime experienced progress toward the future as a priority temporal dimension, capable of retrospectively illuminating the actions of the present, the “presentist” regime of historicity—the present one—crushes both the past and the future onto the now, which extends indefinitely and monotonously.

CHRISTIAN TIME

I t is from this conceptual horizon that Chronos takes off, which

is presented as a huge and very detailed fresco capable of reproducing the story of how, from the Greek regime of historicity through the Christian world and secularized Modernity, that we arrived at the presentist way of thinking historicity proper to the contemporary world (and its crisis).

H artog’s chosen starting point for understanding presentism is the analysis of Christian time: indeed, it too, according to the French historian, is a regime of historicity dominated by the present, albeit by a particular, apocalyptic-type present. In order to understand how the regime of Christian historicity took shape, Hartog chooses to take a primarily conceptual path, which is articulated from three dimensions of temporality: Chronos , Kairos and Krisis . The former is a two-faced concept, rooted in the mythical dimension that ancient Greece had reserved for the eponymous father of Zeus who devoured his children. Chronos, in fact, is both the time of eternity, and of human time, that which passes and is measured, the time of change and of the irremediable finitude to which we are consigned. Kairos, on the other hand, is a qualitatively different time from Chronos , which opens on the instant, the unexpected, the favorable occasion. It is the time of propitious action, which humans must learn to recognize in order to make an impact on homogeneous-Chronos time. Krisis, finally, “while not being directly temporal implies an operation on time” (pp. 10-11): harking back to the Greek etymology of the term—which indicates both

the court’s judgment on a case and the doctor’s judgment on a disease—Hartog points to this third temporal operator as the dimension through which the first two come into contact. For it is only through a “cut” (the Greek verb krinein , from which “crisis” also means this), a sharp decision, that it is possible to fit into the homogeneous course of time through effective action. The history of Western culture, according to Hartog, will be nothing but the history of the articulation, reformulation, competition and concurrence of these three temporal operators. The articulation of the three moments is evident in the Christian regime of temporality: there will come a day—that is, a specific, determined, breaking time ( Kairos )—when divine judgment ( Krisis ) will put an end to the homogeneous order of time ( Chronos ), forever changing its quality, the structure itself.

KAIROS AND KRISIS

C hristian presentism, then, unlike contemporary presentism, is a presentism that can subsist only as a field of tension opening up between the forces of Kairos and Krisis : “ Chronos is, as it were, fixed and dismissed by Krisis and Kairos . From that moment a conjunction of the two concepts operates, although Kairos takes on the task of expressing the approach of the decisive moment, the imminence of the Day of Judgment and the coming opening of a completely different time for those who will have made the crossing” (p. 64). This conjunction operates throughout the period from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages,

FRANÇOIS HARTOG

and its tools will be those of calendarism and the reform of the ways in which time was marked, measured, delimited, ritualized with clocks and calendars, the ringing of bells and the succession of holidays and festivals.

In addition to these concrete tools, the Christian historicity regime also devised, according to Hartog, a series of conceptual tools useful for thinking about the relationship between divine and human time: accomodatio—that is, “the way God was able to put himself on the level of man and speak his language” (p. 109) e.g. through the Mosaic Law and the Incarnation— translation— the way in which the historical alternation between temporal powers and the simultaneous postponement of apocalyptic time can be explained—and renovatio/reformation—the way in which renewal is thought of as a re-proposition of the past. Despite the enormous operations of adaptation to the Christian regime of temporality that such conceptual operators had enabled, modernity will mark a moment of rupture with respect to it: both the movement of renewal following the Renaissance and the coming into contact of European peoples with Amerindian peoples will cause unstoppable changes in the way Europeans perceive time and, consequently, perceive themselves.

TODAY’S PRESENTISM

Attempts to include in the Christian regime of temporality the portions of the world and cultures that had suddenly become part of Western history would make increasingly evident the limitations of the conceptualities previously devised to account for

the relations between Chronos , Kairos, and Krisis. Despite the efforts, particularly of missionaries, to read the history of Amerindian peoples, for example, in the light of biblical and theological categories, and those of power (both religious and temporal) to assimilate them into their own regime of historicity, it will quickly become apparent that the coherent time that had been so painstakingly established with the construction of the Christian regime of historicity was slowly but surely coming to an end. However, Hartog blames modernity, the process of advancing scientific mentality for the ultimate crisis of the regime of Christian historicity, rather than the movements and contacts of men and goods associated with the so-called “geographical discoveries.” Buffon, Condorcet and ultimately Darwin, by hypothesizing in their studies very long timescales for the formation of the Earth, living beings and species, will, in fact, bring to a point of collapse previous attempts to combine the truths of faith revealed in Scripture and the ever-increasing scientific knowledge accumulated about our planet and its inhabitants. The contemporary age thus becomes, finally, “presentist” in the secularized sense we know today: crushed on a present that is only an intermediate moment between an infinitely long and qualitatively indifferent before and after.

According to Hartog, however, the tyranny of the contemporary presentist regime is only a temporary phase, and not the beginning of what many theorists in the Postwar period called an “end of history” in which the present

would be protracted, in a more or less peaceful regime of triumphant neoliberal consumerist capitalism, ad libitum. According to the French historian, in fact, presentism, over the past twenty years, has had to reckon more and more with the overbearing return of both Kairos and Krisis to the stage of history. First, because contemporary presentist Chronos is, so to speak, multi-speed: there are portions of the world, whole geographical areas and populations, that are excluded from it. This produces inequalities, and thus discordances both between different perceptions of time and between the different perceptions that individual populations have of themselves and others. Moreover, because the contemporary presentist Chronos is threatened by the apocalyptic horizon we now call the “Anthropocene”: this, according to Hartog, who argues in the conclusion of his book using Bruno Latour’s arguments, could be the name for a new regime of historicity, one that takes us out of the presentist quicksand. In fact, the ecological imperative to which the climate upheavals summarizable under the concept-collective “Anthropocene” call us, could lead to a new political and historical consciousness-raising that calls for action that is global and includes both human and non-human actors.

Thus, it will be from the new way of understanding appropriate action ( Kairos ) at the time when a decision ( Krisis ) leading to a change in the fate of historical time ( Chronos) is absolutely necessary, by virtue of global climatic changes, that the regime of historicity of humanity to come will result. ■

JAVIER MARÍAS

HE WAS THE NARRATOR OF THE UNSPOKEN, THE SKILFUL AND DISENCHANTED WRITER OF A REALITY THAT FADES INTO MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS. HIS PASSING WAS A SERIOUS BEREAVEMENT FOR CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN LITERATURE.

by Armando Savignano

THE AUTHOR

Madrilenian, writer, translator, essayist, passed away in September 2022 at age 70. A prolific narrator, he has received numerous international awards, many also in Italy. First great public success with Tomorrow in the Battle Think of Me, a book published by New Directions 2001.

The sudden death of Javier Marías took everyone by surprise. I had had the opportunity to meet him in his paternal home, being the son of the Spanish philosopher Julián Marías, whom I had the adventure of knowing and frequenting and to whom I dedicated several of my writings.

Javier Marías spent part of his childhood in the United States, where his father taught, as he was forced into exile for his opposition to the Franco dictatorship. His was a human and literary affair sundered by important works, among narrators of Hispanic extraction but especially in European literature. It is unthinkable to dedicate a memoir to him apart from his narrative production.

A SUCCESSFUL DEBUT

In 1989 he had presented in Madrid his novel All Souls, centered on his experience while at Oxford University, a book that would earn him the “City of Barcelona Prize.” Since this first novel, Marías has approached an Anglophile sensibility, distancing himself from contemporary Spanish literature. In All Souls, the story is told of a

Spanish lecturer who sets out on the trail of rare books, including those of the eccentric adventurer John Gawsworth; meanwhile, he has an affair with a married woman, in a sense the climax of an English sojourn that takes on the characteristics of an exile from himself. The plot is almost nonexistent; a series of literary and existential digressions by the narrative voice prevail.

Javier Marías came to international attention in 1992 with the novel A Heart So White , which moreover won the “Critics’ Prize.” A few emblematic passages such as “I didn’t want to know, but I knew...”, a sentence that contains an entire poetic, remain impressed on many. In that book, moreover, there appears an unmistakable first-person voice that attempts to synthesize narrative and reflection in verbose subordinates that -- in the service of an indecipherable plot or moral dilemma -- obsessively reproduce the complex path of thought.

NARRATIVE MATURITY

Between 2002 and 2007, the great work: the monumental trilogy ti-

tled Your Face Tomorrow, which represents his approach to the Civil War, taking its starting point from a tragic episode inspired by the story of his father, Julían Marías, who was unjustly imprisoned between May-August 1939 because of a fellow student’s complaint.

A raw nerve for him were family affairs, so much so that in 2012 he turned down the “National Literature Award” (given for the novella Falling in Love). He said on that occasion that he would not accept any state honors, as they had been denied to his father - as well as other prominent writers.

Marías, as is well known, was inspired by Shakespeare, but by a Bard hinged in the Spanish tradition, from which flowed that living suspended between a state of presence and absence, not of consciousness but of real life. There is an obvious reference to the classic dream-reality distinction, present as much in the English playwright as in Calderón de la Barca and throughout the Hispanic tradition.

ELEMENTS OF CRITICISM

Javier Marías’ novels represent a long moral reflection conducted with the weapons of perfidy and disenchantment. The recurring themes of his fiction are the polyhedral nature of reality with allusions to the perspectivist theory of his father, Julián Marías, who had in turn borrowed it from his master Ortega Y Gasset. Another identifying feature of his work is the impossibility of arriving at an exhaustive explanation of the reality that surrounds us. And even the narratives of the past are susceptible to multiple readings and interpretations.

Not unlike the events of life, which are often contradictory and

lacking in purpose, Marías confesses that his novels do not obey a preordained pattern: “I am the opposite of the novelist who already knows everything before I start writing; I know more or less where I want to go, but I don’t follow any chart and therefore sometimes I find myself at a precipice without knowing it was there. Rather, I observe a discipline whereby I never correct what I have written. To writing I apply the same principle of knowledge that, by force majeure, belongs to life: one cannot change what has been.”

Marías has the unique ability to unveil by not revealing; in this way he leaves space and time for the reader to reflect and speculate on what he is reading. The plot, while important, is nonetheless almost secondary in the narrative, which, in the concatenation of facts and events, seeks to leave open the agility of thinking.

The construction of the narrative tends to delay the progress of the plot and develops in incidents and digressions, into which fruitful dialogues are inserted. The digression, which continually appears in the course of the narrative, as if it had a life of its own, represents perhaps one of the main elements peculiar to his style.

His works are characterized by an evocative interweaving of reality and fiction that almost seems to insinuate narrative unreliability in the reader, with writing that is distinct and distant from any form of realism and, nevertheless, imbued with facets of real facts and aspects often referable to the author’s own life. Marías’s works are generally devoid of any connection with reality: mental lucubration predominates, often resulting in meta-narrative... Indeed, in his novels, he devotes

special attention to the relationship between the textual world constituted by the narrative and the reality that exists outside that world; the role of the reader is crucial in critically discerning this relationship and the theoretical link between writer, text and reader. Reading articulates a kind of superstructure through which meanings emerge from the confluence of the writer’s creative genius and the reader’s revictimization.

His last two novels, Berta Isla and Tomás Nevinson, investigate what does not happen or what could have happened but did not. Against the backdrop of real incidents (notably some of the Ira and Eta bombings), Tomás Nevinson’s story is a reflection on the acts and behavior beyond which it is not permissible to go, on the attempt to escape the worst evil, and above all on the problem, which is difficult to solve, of establishing with certainty what that evil will be. Tomás Nevinson is a novel about knowing how to wait, but also about the fatalism imposed by circumstances. All this was already apparent in the novel Berta Isla, in which the protagonist shows that waiting is not necessarily denying herself life, nor escaping it, since it can also be faced, traversed, despite its contradictions and darkness. Marías keeps events in suspension, lingering on secondary details of the narrative, making the waiting grow to the point that even the reader becomes its accomplice. It is possible to individual a metaphysics intrinsic to Marías’ literature that, as in the thought of Ortega Y Gasset, presupposes an ethically engaged understanding of the real. ■

THEORY AND REALITY FOR A PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

NATURE, THE UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IS REAL, THE SPACES ALLOTTED TO SCIENCE IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD. THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY, THAT IS, «HOW THINGS, IN THE BROADEST POSSIBLE SENSE OF THE TERM, HOLD TOGETHER».

Pby Matteo Moca

eter Godfrey-Smith is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, but he is also an avid diver along the Australian coast. What is the connection between these not-exactly-related activities? An interest in how the mind works, how it projects a specific world for us. The answer may come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with his work, but for those who have read, for example, Other Minds (Adelphi), there will be no surprise, since the volume is devoted to the intelligence of cephalopods, namely cuttlefish, octopus and squid, and is moved by Godfrey-Smith’s multidisciplinary gaze that combines biology, philosophy of science and mind with accounts of his underwater observations. Raffaello Cortina now publishes Theory and Reality. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (with translation by Silvia Tossut), a book that is based on the university

lectures Godfrey-Smith has given during his 30year career (and thus a book that also lives on the comments and questions that the discipline and students have posed to the author over his many years of teaching, as evidenced by this author-revised edition).

Theory and Reality , is, in fact, structured as a history of the philosophy of science and covers a very broad span of time, from the Vienna Circle to the most current considerations, obviously passing through the revolutions of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. One of the most valuable aspects, in addition to Godfrey-Smith’s expository clarity and his ability to highlight the most problematic spaces in the subject, lies in his ability to place these questions on the horizon of contemporary thought. Questions about the nature of reality, the possibility of explaining the concept of science, how we understand the

Peter Godfrey-Smith. Courtesy di Dan Boud.

AUTHOR’S ANSWERS

world, or our relationship to our surroundings are obviously timeless questions to which the philosophy of science and this book, which brings together its basic tenets, can certainly give a solid hermeneutical foundation. Considering the increasingly pervasive space of the scientific universe in everyday life, what are the challenges that philosophy of science can and should take up? And what are the fundamental spaces of the present (climate change, conservation of animal species, animal consciousness) in which it can intervene? Godfrey-Smith’s book repeatedly suggests these themes. Thus, in this interview he delves into the contemporary spaces that his book opens along with the prospects that the philosophy of science promises greater awareness about our relationship with the world.

In your book Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science , in the chapter devoted to naturalism, you quote Wilfred Sellars’ definition of philosophy formulated in 1962. He said that this concerns “the way things in the broadest possible sense of the term hold together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” Does this definition center the nature of philosophy for you?

I think that the Sellars formula is the best short summary of the nature of philosophy, yes. But I would add two thoughts. First, a person might think that the Sellars formula does not distinguish philosophy from some other activities – from physics, perhaps, or science as a whole. Those both might be seen as trying to work out “how things hang together.” So once one has given that quick definition from Sellars, one should follow up. Philosophy tries for a particular kind of breadth. It is not about the relations between different physical forces, for example, but more about the relations between all of physics and the domain of morals and other values, about the relations between the actual and the possible, and so on. It is broad in that way. There is no sharp dividing line here, though. The mind-body problem is both a philosophical question and a scientific one. Second, in Theory and Reality I qualify my endorsement of “naturalism” by saying that my view of philosophy is very open. One never knows where the next interesting idea and

movement will come from. Perhaps one might use the same thought to qualify an endorsement of the Sellars definition.

Your book follows a century of debates about science, from early twentieth-century empiricism to contemporary issues; it is an introduction to the philosophy of science and, in particular, to some of the topics of this great discipline such as knowledge and rationality. So you move on a wide and complex ground, you comment on the various theories and in the book there is no lack of presence of some debates that are central today and that, apparently, in some cases go beyond the academy. What do you think is the place of philosophy of science in contemporary society?

I think that the role of philosophy of science might naturally grow in the years to come. That is because science itself has a growing importance in our lives. The Covid-19 pandemic is a good example of this. Since 2020, newspapers have been filled with articles that use quite complicated concepts from biology and epidemiology. Policies that affect everyone have been based on idealized models of the spread of the virus. The term “science” has acquired new rhetorical and justificatory roles, too. All this provides material for philosophical reflection. The rewrite of Theory and Reality was completed just before the pandemic began, and the production stages took place during the pandemic. I did not change the text to add material about Covid, because it is still unclear how things will turn out. The problem of human-caused climate change is another area where science has acquired new roles in our lives, and philosophy of science has new work to do as a result.

In the last chapter of the book, emblematically entitled The Future , you reflect on some changes in the organization of science that, with the material you present in the course of the book, can be thought of differently than we would do without having read the book. One of these changes pertains to the weakening of the idea of science from its tradition of untethered research, “made up of scientists who follow their hunches without worrying too much about the practical applications of their work and externally established

priorities.” How important is self-determination in science and what does it mean for researchers and scholars?

I have come to think this is very important. The situation has changed quite a lot in the last few decades – has changed between the two editions of my book. Before the turn of the century, many scientists I know felt they had more “freedom of movement” than they do now. This problem is probably more acute in some countries than others. Certainly it is significant in Australia, where funding is quite closely tied to priorities set by the federal government. I think this trend is unfortunate. Thinkers as diverse as John Dewey and Thomas Kuhn have rightly sensed that a good deal of the power of science derives from the ability of people to explore freely and “follow their nose.” I would like to see changes in funding policies that go back in this direction.

In your book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, you focus your attention on the intelligence of cephalopods, cuttlefish, octopus, and squid. In that book you write that for you doing philosophy is “a matter of putting things together, trying to put the pieces of

very large puzzles together in a meaningful way”. You write that philosophy must also be “opportunistic”, that “it makes use of any information” and that it is constantly crossing its boundaries. For example, in that book there are also questions about animals and environmental ethics. What can philosophy do about these issues?

At the moment, I am writing a book that follows up Other Minds and Metazoa, and looks explicitly at these questions. It will have a chapter about our relationships with animals in farming and experimentation, and a chapter about environmental ethics. (The working title is Living on Earth .) The book is not only about these matters, but they are one part of the book. As I work on this project, I am having to work out in a more considered way my positions in meta-ethics and other parts of value theory. I have to work out what kind of status ethical claims have, or can have, and these problems are especially difficult and interesting in the case of environmental ethics. As I see it, my books about animals raised all sorts of questions that I was not able to answer, and now I need to try to answer them. I think that I will be able to give a better reply to your fourth question in about a year. I hope so, anyway. ■

THE AUTHOR

Peter Godfrey-Smith, an Australian, is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, working primarily in the philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind. He also cultivates interests in the general philosophy of science, pragmatism (particularly the work of John Dewey) and parts of metaphysics and epistemology.

He has taught at several universities, including Harvard, Stanford, the Australian National University and also the CUNY Graduate Center. Godfrey-Smith received the Lakatos Prize for a 2009 essay, Darwinian Population and Natural Selection, which also discusses the theory of evolution from a philosophical perspective: in fact, it is a refutation of so-called "intelligent design" or scientific creationism, which is prevalent especially in America.

In 2016, he published Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, translated into Italian by Adelphi (Altre menti. Il polpo, il mare e le remote origini della coscienza). With the same publisher came out in 2021 Metazoa. Theory and Reality (Cortina, 2022) is a 2002 essay, but the author has revised and actualized it.

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE

A boy in love, a flower that cannot be found, the supreme generosity of those who manage to recover it... But love crashes on the sad shore of banality.

Oscar Wilde

She promised she’d dance with me if I brought her a red rose,” cried a young heart-broken student. “But there’s not one in this whole garden.”

From her nest in the oak tree, the Nightingale heard him, and she looked out through the leaves, and wondered.

“Not a single red rose anywhere!” he cried, and his eyes filled with tears. “It’s amazing how happiness depends on such little things. I’ve read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy, but my life is wretched because of a red rose.”

“Here at last is a true romantic,” said the Nightingale. “Night after night I have sung of him, though I didn’t realize it. Night after night I have told his story to the stars, and now I see him.”

“The Prince gives a ball tomorrow night,” murmured the young student, “and my love will be there. If I bring her a red rose, she’ll dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I’ll get to hold her in my arms, and she’ll lean her head on my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there’s no red rose in the garden, and so instead, I’ll sit by myself while she passes me by. She’ll pay no attention to me, and my heart will break.”

“Here indeed is a true romantic,” said the Nightingale. “Surely love is a wonderful thing. It’s more precious than emeralds and diamonds and gold.”

“The musicians will play their instruments,”

said the student. “And my love will dance to the sound of the violin. But she won’t dance with me, because I have no red rose to give her.” And he flung himself down on the grass, buried his face in his hands, and wept.

“Why is he weeping?” asked a butterfly, who was fluttering about after a sunbeam.

“He’s weeping for a red rose,” said the Nightingale.

“For a red rose?” cried the butterfly. “How ridiculous!”

But the Nightingale understood the secret of the student’s sorrow, and she sat silently in the oak tree, and thought about the mystery of love. Suddenly, she spread her brown wings and soared into the air. She passed through the grove like a shadow, and sailed across the garden.

In the center of the grass stood a beautiful rose tree, and when she saw it, she flew over and landed on a branch.

“Give me a red rose,” she cried, “and I’ll sing you my sweetest song.”

But the tree shook its head.

“My roses are white,” it said. “But go to my brother who grows near the fountain, and perhaps he’ll give you what you want.”

So the Nightingale flew over to the rose tree by the fountain.

“Give me a red rose,” she cried, “and I will sing you my sweetest song.”

But the tree shook its head. “My roses are yel -

low,” it answered. “But go to my brother who grows beneath the student’s window, and perhaps he’ll give you what you want.”

So the Nightingale flew over to the rose tree that was growing beneath the student’s window and repeated her request for the rose. But this tree also shook its head.

“My roses are red,” it answered. “But the winter has chilled my veins and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I’ll have no roses at all this year.”

“One red rose is all I want,” cried the Nightingale. “Is there no way I can get it?”

“There is a way,” answered the tree. “But it’s so terrible, I can’t tell you.”

“Tell me,” said the Nightingale, “I’m not afraid.”

“If you want a red rose,” said the tree, “you must build it out of music by moonlight, and make it red with your own heart’s blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn, and your blood must flow into my veins, and become mine.”

“Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,” cried the Nightingale. “Yet love is better than life, and what is the heart of the bird compared to the heart of a man?”

So she spread her brown wings and soared into the air. She swept over the garden like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed through the grove. The young student was lying on the grass where

she had left him, and the tears were not yet dry in his eyes.

“Be happy,” cried the Nightingale. “You shall have your red rose. I’ll build it out of music by moonlight and stain it with my own heart’s blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true romantic, for love is wiser than philosophy.”

The student looked up from the grass and listened, but he could not understand what the Nightingale was saying, for he only knew the things that are written in books. But the oak tree understood, and felt sad, for he was very fond of the little Nightingale who had built her nest in his branches.

“Sing me one last song,” he whispered. “I’ll be lonely when you’re gone.”

So the Nightingale sang to the oak tree, and her voice was like water bubbling from a silver jar.

When she had finished her song the student got up, and went to his room and began to think of his love. After a time, he fell asleep. And when the moon shone in the heavens, the Nightingale flew to the rose tree and set her breast against a thorn. All night long, she sang against the thorn, and the cold moon leaned down and listened.

She sang of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the top branch of the rose tree, there blossomed a marvelous rose, petal after petal, as song followed song. It was pale at first, but grew darker as the bird sang louder, and a delicate flush of pink came over the leaves. But the thorn had not yet reached her heart, and so the rose’s heart remained white, for only a Nightingale’s blood can make the heart of a rose red.

Her song grew wilder as she sang of love, and the marvelous rose became crimson, like an eastern sky. But the Nightingale’s voice grew fainter, and

THE STORIES OF OSCAR WILDE

her little wings began to beat fast.

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air.

“Look!” cried the tree. “The rose is finished now.” But the Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her heart.

And at noon, the student opened his window and looked out.

“Why, what a wonderful piece of luck,” he cried. “Here is a red rose! I’ve never seen a rose like this in all my life. It’s so beautiful!” And he leaned down and plucked it.

Then he put on his hat, and ran up to his professor’s house with the rose in his hand. The daughter of the professor was sitting in the doorway, and her little dog was lying at her feet.

“You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,” cried the student. “Here’s the reddest rose in all the world. You’ll wear it tonight next to your heart, and as we dance together, it will tell you how much I love you.”

But the girl frowned. “I’m afraid it won’t go with my dress,” she answered. “And the prince’s nephew has sent me some jewels, which cost far more than flowers.”

“How ungrateful,” said the student angrily, and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter.

“What a silly thing love is,” he thought, as he walked away. “It’s not half as useful as logic, and in fact, is quite unpractical. I shall go back to philosophy.” And so he returned to his room and pulled out a dusty book, and began to read. ■

Almost everything is known about him: the legendary judgments, the biting aphorisms, the “dissolute” life, including the tormented homosexual relationship with the young Alfred Douglas. All circumstances that earned him great notoriety and also the most perfidious comments of the Victorian age, as well as a trial and a two-year sentence of hard labor for gross public indecency. The most successful books of this universal writer, exponent of decadentism and British aestheticism (but Wilde was Irish by birth), are still read today: from a novel like The Picture of Dorian Gray to the most intense works such as the tragic and moving De Profundis. His stories, especially the fairy-tale ones, are much less known. This version of The Nightingale and the Rose is the original one from 1888.

CONTRIBUTI

Andrea Barenghi insegna

Diritto civile nell’Università del Molise; si è occupato in particolare di contratti, della circolazione e della tutela del mercato delle opere d’arte, di rapporti tra imprese e consumatori, di trasparenza bancaria, di rapporti patrimoniali tra i coniugi. Tra le sue pubblicazioni, un Manuale di Diritto dei consumatori (Wolters Kluver, 2020).

Gianluca Beltrame laureato in storia contemporanea, ha sempre fatto il giornalista: è stato, tra l’altro, caporedattore cultura (e poi caporedattore centrale) di Panorama e direttore di Rolling Stone. Attualmente, è docente del corso di laurea in Cultura giornalistica presso l’Università Statale di Milano.

Cristiana Facchini, è ordinaria di Storia del cristianesimo presso l’Università Alma Mater di Bologna. È membro del Collegio di Dottorato in Storie, culture e politiche del globale. Dirige Annali di storia dell’esegesi e Quest-Issues in Contemporary Jewish History .

Antonio Lucci è Visiting Scientist presso il Dipartimento di Scienze filosofiche dell’Università di Torino. In precedenza ha svolto attività di docenza e ricerca per università europee, tra cui la Freie Universität e

la Humboldt Universität di Berlino. Fa parte del Comitato Editoriale di Prometeo. Tra le sue pubblicazioni: La stella ascetica. Ascesi e soggettivazione in Friedrich Nietzsche (2020).

Armando Massarenti è filosofo e giornalista, caporedattore del Sole 24 Or e e firma storica del supplemento culturale Domenica . Autore di molti libri, ha ricevuto numerosi premi e dirige la collana Scienza e filosofia per Mondadori Università.

Matteo Moca è dottore di ricerca in Italianistica presso l’Université Paris Nanterre e l’Università di Bologna. È insegnante e cultore della materia per l’insegnamento di Letterature comparate presso l’Università di Bologna. Ha pubblicato la monografia, Tra parola e silenzio. Landolfi, Perec, Beckett (La scuola di Pitagora, 2017). Ha dedicato saggi all’opera di Landolfi e si occupa, tra gli altri, di Elsa Morante, Anna Maria Ortese e Georges Perec.

Armando Savignano è stato ordinario di Filosofia morale al Dipartimento di Studi umanistici dell’Università di Trieste. Ispanista, è anche il direttore scientifico delle opere di MarÍa Zambrano. Ha pubblicato il saggio Miradas al pensamiento español. La Edadde Plata , Editorial Sinderesis.

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Some articles in upcoming issues

Pier Luigi Accendere Ten years without Giovanni Reale – AndreA

BArenghi Death of the Author and (de)generated Art – giAcomo

Berchi The rigor of the Angels – emiLiAno BrAncAccio The economic conditions of Peace – PAtriziA cArAveo The dark side of Light (artificial)

– LuisA cifAreLLi e nAdiA roBotti Marconi the visionary – rositA coPioLi Federico&John, a story of art and friendship between Fellini and Alcorn – nunzio LA fAuci Dante’s discoveries – PAoLo mAriA mAriAno Complexity and Time – mAriAgrAziA PeLAiA Sparkling

Readings – giAcomo PerAzzoLi Matteotti, the body of the crime –gAsPAre PoLizzi Philosophy and its “tradition” – cArLo ALBerto romAno

Conceptions of punishment and ideologies of justice.

The next Prometeo, June 14