Easter in Poland.

Hello, I'm on English lesson, and I'm sending you  greetings for Easter from Poland. ;) There is a lot of snow in Polnad, and  -12 at night. I feel like Christmas is coming... in April. ;)  I'm looking for a Christmas tree, have you seen one? ; )

Easter is coming

Hello from Poland :)
Happy Easter to all Comenius Schools.

Lis and the "Mad Flight"

                                                    9. On the secluded beach of Purgatory

                                                                                                            February 12, 2013
                                                                                            San Marcello Pistoiese, Italy

We earlier reported to the second canto of Dante's Divina Commedia (see above).
Guardian of the kingdom otherworldly 'middle' is Cato the Uticensis, a complex figure, on which it is appropriate to rest for a while.
Historically, he is a well-known political figure, described as having a sum righteousness, incorruptible and impartial and perhaps for this reason hated by many influential men of the time. Great supporter of Pompeo, he paid for his loyalty with his own life and he decided to kill himself while he was in Utica, because he was being chased by the soldiers of Caesar.
In the Commedia, as already mentioned, we find him as the protagonist of the first two cantos of the Purgatorio and even guardian of that kingdom, even if, as suicide, we expect him to share the terrible vegetable fate reserved to Pier delle Vigne in Inferno XIII and, in general, to the violent against themselves.
The choice of Dante, apparently incomprehensible, is actually fully justified if we analyze the reasons for the suicide of Cato himself, which occurred in 46 a.C in Utica.
The latter in fact chose to end his life as an act of extreme virtus, rather than give up the political freedom that now Caesar had reserved for the supporters of Pompeo.
In Purgatorio (vv. 70-75) is the same Virgil to indicate clearly the ethical impulse that motivated the suicide:

Now may it please thee to vouchsafe his coming/ He seeketh his liberty which is so dear/ as knoweth he who life for her refuses/ thou know'st it; since for her to thee not bitter/ was death in Utica, where thou didst leave/ the vesture that will shine so, the great day./

Precisely because of the keyword, liberty, we can understand why Cato, instead of Hell, is found to be the guardian of Purgatory, that is the afterlife where souls are purified and they find freedom from sin.
Using as interpretative model the Auerbach's figural thesis (see above) we can see in the image of historical Cato traits of figura futurorum, that is the political anticipation of the libertarian backing that will assume purely moral traits in its otherworldly size and, therefore, eternal.
In fact, according to Auerbach, the historical Cato is the 'figure' who gave up life in the name of individual liberty, while in Purgatory he appears, as unveiled or fulfilled figure, as the emblem of freedom tout court, that is the special power given to man to choose how to act through the use of free will and thus to save themselves - even dying - from eternal damnation. 

G.Mucci

Editorial supervision by Elisa Lucchesi

Lis and the "Mad Flight"

8. Never stopping to the appearance

13^th February 2013

San Marcello Pistoiese, Italy

Dante also wants to write a poem inspired by the ancient ones, and takes as his privileged model the Aeneid of Virgil. An epic perspective, therefore, crosses the Comedy.

This time it is, however, a new Christian epic.

In fact, Dante's journey explicitly recalls not only to Aeneas' journey in Hades, but also what Paul did in the third heaven, or even, according to medieval legends, hell itself. Classical and medieval sources are then taken to find a new legitimacy to the theme of the meeting with the deads.
Indeed, this latter is taken as the foundational structure of the design of a new Christian civilization which can recover even the vital instances of the ancient and pagan past and to select both from the history and the present episodes and characters that foresee a future of possible salvation.
With Dante, the encounter with the deads, therefore, stop being a single episode and also becomes the structural basis of the narrative and of an entire religious, ethical and political project.

In this sense, it is essential to speak of polysemy: in fact, the Commedia has different levels of reading and you can focus on the literal, the allegorical, moral or analogical, that is the spiritual, meaning.

A reading in a symbolic key of Dante's text makes extensive use of two rhetorical devices that enable us to understand the hidden messages of the text: the figure and allegory. Although at a first glance, they appear to be similar rhetorical trickeries, a more careful analysis shows profound differences.

In fact, allegory is defined as the translation of an abstract and timeless concept in a concrete image that refers to a code known both to the writer and the reader: for example, in this regard, the famous forest of Inferno, allegory of the sinful conditions of life in which man can lose himself in self-destruction.

In contrast, the figure is in fact built on a character or a historical event. A true story becomes a figure of another one when it can be interpreted as foreshadowing of what is destined to be fulfilled in the future.

Such a kind reading is typical of the medieval Christian world: in this perspective, for example, the freeing of the Jews from slavery in Egypt foreshadows Christ's redemption and absolution from all sin.
We can find a clear example of it in Purgatory II (vv. 46-48) in which the souls, arrived on the beach in front of the mountain of Purgatory, sing unanimously the Psalm 113, In exitu Israel, a clear reference to eternal salvation that awaits man after the painful purgatorial purification.

So, according to the figural conception, the entire earthly life is a figure of eternal destiny.
Dante in his Commedia, however, introduces an important new perspective taking as a privileged point of view, no longer that of the land but of the afterlife.
In this way, all the author discovers, about the afterlife, is but the full realization of the facts and individuals whose earthly life was foreshadowing of what is now lead.

A great scholar of the Comedy figures was the German critic E. Auerbach, who has clearly shown that each occurrence of Dante's entire narrative isn't accidental at all, but designed in every detail to provide valuable information concerning the fate of humanity and not just the private life of Dante or individual historical events .
All other-world meetings symbolize the steps that every-man, in this case played by the pilgrim, must face. Each time you come across historical individuals representing not only the manners and customs of their times, but also the eternal and universal truths, since each of them retains an extraordinary realistic wealth.

In this way it is created a very close and vital bond between concrete and abstract, singular and collective, private and public.

Thanks to figural interpretation we can understand how the world of the deads conceived by Dante is a kind of open book on the values ​​and the true meaning of earthly life, but also the saving plan where the history of all humanity finds its complete fulfilment.

Greta Vacchiano.

Editorial Supervisor: Elisa Lucchesi.

Lis and the "Mad Flight"

7. "Is there a love to dying for?"

February 13, 2013

San Marcello Pistoiese, Italy

By quoting the fast apparition of Dido's soul in the book of the dead from Aeneid (cfr. supra) we have marked how the frowning spirit of the suicided queen engineers into Aeneas a strong regret.

However, it is worth focusing a moment on this tormented love story and on its tragic reveals, usually considered to be precursors of the proverbial hostility between Rome and Carthage.

In the Virgilian play, Aeneas arrives with the fleet of Trojan exiles near the Punic city at the behest of the goddess Juno, who, after having persuaded Aeolus, sets off a storm on the hero and his companions. To welcome Aeneas, in the city dear to Juno, the queen will be Dido, exiled from Tyre and the virtuous Sichaeus widow.

An overwhelming passion begins between the two, by the will of the goddess Venus, which is destined to a tragic outcome, since Fate does not allow the fusion of the two peoples by a marriage. The hero begins to prepare secretly the start thinking in this way to weaken Dido's inevitable pain of separation.

But the queen guesses that and Fame confirms that the preparations are full-swinging for departure: she spent the last night in a sleepless restlessness.

So at the sunrise, after some long night suffering, Dido sees the vacuum port and the leaving ships. Then she curses Aeneas and his descendants, hoping that an eternal hatred divides forever the two peoples. The love suffering of Dido, which makes her similar to a "cerva da freccia piagata (deer wounded by an arrow)", it will find peace at last in a painful and self-induced death, after a slow agony.

It is perhaps for this reason that his brief appearance, now as a spirit from shadow, in Aeneid VI is so touching: instead Aeneas that was appeared insensitive in Aeneid IV shows his very strong love for Dido, although they can not join in marriage pact against the wishes of Fate.

If he could, he would have gladly stopped on the shores of Carthage, but as he sadly

says, "la legge dei numi […] con la sua forza mi urgeva -the law of the gods [...] urged me with his strength-" (Aeneid VI, 461-463).

What emerges from that is a deeply pessimistic view of human existence: the two unfortunate lovers are configured as unaware of their destiny and manipulated like puppets by the gods to achieve some purposes which, however they exist, are characterized as inscrutable.

On a closer inspection there is a truly tragic perspective, whose echoes can still be marked in a contemporary artistic and literary production (cfr. infra, in this regard, the considerations raised-up on the play "Paladini di Francia -Paladins of France-").

Martina Castelli, Alice Guerrini, Maria Ferrari.

Lis and the "Mad Flight"

6. “Father and son”

February 13, 2013

San Marcello Pistoiese, Italy

In the VI book of Eneide, the son of Venus and Anchises get off Cuma, an ancient greek colony, where the oracol of Sibil, the prophetess, lies.

This one is deeply in love with Apollo and suggests the hero to invoke mercy of God who's temple lies in a place near the cave. Aeneas, after invoking Phoebus, asks the prophetess to take him  to Hades to meet the father Anchises.

Sibil shows Aeneas the difficulty of the task and warns him that he cannot obtain what he wishes before placing some symbolic actions after which he will be allowed to enter the Hell with the help of his guide. 

After overcoming the imposed actions, Aeneas can start his own descensio ad Inferos. After going past the vestibule and being carried by Caronte over the Stige's swamp, he will meet some souls, including the one frown and hostile of Dido, who suicided herself precisely because of him (compares infra). Then, he will reach the coveted Anchises who, after the firsts crying words shared with the son, will calm him about the destiny of his descent and the Roman future.

So, In this book (Eneide VI), the encounter with the dead marks not only a generational deal, but also the transmission of an egemony and a power able to link myth to history. In fact, Virgil's production differs from Odyssey, in which we can find only a succession of generations that founds a mythology and at the same time a sense of community based on social and political relations.

Just in this renewed prospective the hero undertakes an after-life trip searching for not a fortune-teller, but his own father (compares Odyssey XI).

Moreover, Anchises himself will reveal Aeneas what future deserves to him and his descendants, not his mother, as it happened in Odyssey XI. So, the announcement of future glory is evident in a continuity between patrilineal generations.

Besides, the novelty of Anchises' prophecy consists of a political omen in which there are important historical references.

The private feelings of Enea (the love for his father, the remorse for the suicide of Dido) become part of a common historical frame and political project.

The appearance itself a aversa (adverse) and inimica (inimical) Dido (vv. 469 and 472) goes beyond the personal vicissitude and alludes to the carthaginian revenge and to a conflict which will cover with blood the Mediterranean for over a century.

Gloria Ceccarelli, Francesca Santi

Lis and the "Mad Flight"

5. Insights on Homeric catabasis

February 13, 2013

San Marcello Pistoiese, Italy

The encounter with the dead in the canto XI from Odyssey is without any doubt composed of more parts, showing different sources and next superimposing. Nevertheless, in its different parts, it shows an own basic coherence. The discordances in the content let the mythopoetic shade intact, which links strictly the public sort to the private destinies both to the framework itself and the single episodes of the play.

In contrast with the Homeric tradition, in which the dead are not allowed to dialogue, because they aren't gifted with any emotions or thoughts at all, here the unnatural encounter takes place by a shamanic libation which not only gives them the word, but the ability to spread the truth:

“E quando là le famose larve dei morti/ avrai supplicato, un montone sacrifica/ e una pecora nera volgendone all'Erebo il capo/ e volgi te stesso al cospetto del fiume:/ anime spesse vedrai apparire dei morti” (Afterword you will have begged there the famous shadows of the dead, make a sacrifice a ram and a black sheep turning its head to Erebus and turn yourself towards the river: thick souls of the dead will appear to you).

Odissea X, vv. 526-530

Each encounter, in which the dead, telling the past life, reveal the sense to Ulysses, transforms into a particular attention to the generational range.

In fact, the first soul which Odysseus recognizes in Hades is the one of Elpenor who invokes a sense of mingling among the living, a burial that the descendants can see and recognize in order to preserve the memory:

“ma bruciami, ornato dell'armi che avevo,/ e un tumolo innalza sull'ido del mare/ grigio: che giunga anche ai posteri il nome/ di quest'uomo infelice” (But burn me together with the weapons I had, and lift a tomb on the Ido of the grey sea: let my name, the name of this unhappy man, arrive to the descendants too).

Odissea XI, vv. 75-78

The continuity in which the Homeric dead are interested, does not consider the individual, but a meaningful part of the values of a community. So that the sort of humanity is always integrated in an universe of signs that shares both to the mortals and to the gods, thanks to which we are able to build a circularity of the meaning between the living and the dead.

In an analogy with the XXIV chapter of Biblical Genesis in which the servant Arram is sent by Abraham to find a wife for his son Isaac, the divine sign designating the chosen one can be found, according to Tiresias, Ulysses will be able to see the sign in order to put an end to the hostility of Poseidon and finally return to Ithaca (Odyssey XI compares vv. 133-183).

Even in the encounter with his mother, it is Anticlea herself who becomes the symbol of the coexistence between a private feeling and an important social interest, until now bypassed and left aside in a way that is altogether too modern. As the daughter of Romantcism a large number of twentieth century critics stressed the "private" part of the interview, the feelings between mother and son.

However, we cannot ignore the emotional and personal involvement of the final part of the meeting:

“Perchè, madre, svanisci, sebbene/ io brami di stringerti a me, così/ che anche nell'Ade abbracciati possiamo/ di questo triste gemente colloquio godere?” (Why are you disappearing, mother, even if I crave to hold you tight, so as, even in Hades, we can be glad of this sad and moaning encounter, by staying embraced?).

Odissea XI, vv. 208-211

Odysseus shows strongly his desire to verify the words of Tiresias regarding the royal privilege of Laertes and Telemachus, and the faithfulness of Penelope (Odyssey XI compares vv.180-190).

The episode focuses on a structure of a sequence of parallelisms in which the perspective of social hierarchies and political power are never neglected: Laertes sleeps with servants, Telemachus feasts with the important people of the city, and Penelope, who cries every night, allowing no-one to usurp the throne of Ulysses.

Giovanni Albergucci, Matteo Bizzarri

Woman's Day

Hello,

Do you know what is celebrated tomorrow? It's the Woman's Day. This day was born in Russia due to woman's needs of better life/work conditions and the right to vote. In the next years many countries joined this cause. Despite of some countries did not joined it we think this is a really important day for us because in this day we give some value to everything woman did! 
Join us in this cause and tomorrow (8th March) do something special because woman is primordial in the society.  

Lis and the "Mad Flight"

4. The strange metamorphosis of Tiresias

February 13, 2013

San Marcello Pistoiese, Italy

A recurring theme in the course of literary history is the analysis of the encounter of all often well living character with that of a dead one. This phenomenon has been discussed from the times of Homer on.

According to Luperini, each culture elaborates a sense of identity by telling itself its own history thus putting itself into a relationship with the past. In fact, literature passes on what should not be forgotten by selecting in time the poetic contents of different authors.

From Homer to Dante, for the classical authors, the encounter with the dead has a fundamental and mythopoeic function, which tends to build a future in relationship to the past. With Homer it will initiate the Greek culture which will conclude with the desecrating and ironic figure of Lucianus from Samosata.

 Both Homer and Luciano treat the theme of the meeting with the seer Tiresias in a different way. In Homer's Odyssey the soothsayer tells Odysseus the meaning of life, while in the dialogues of Lucianus he invites him to seize the moment with this words:

 "Fra tutte le cose cerca soltanto questo, passa il momento presente adattandoti al meglio, ridendo di tutto e non prendendo nulla sul serio"

(Among all things seek only this, the present adapting yourself as best you can, laughing of everything and not taking anything seriously.)

Lucianus, Necyomantia, 21

 However, Lucianus's words lack that sense of "black" melancholy, that characterizes Giacomo Leopardi, who represents the dead as silent beings burdened by a strong physical torpor that makes them insensitive and completely estranged from the world of the living: in Paralipomeni, like in the Dialogo di Federico Ruysch e delle sue mummie (Dialogue of Federich Ruysch and his mummies), the dead are "voices of nothing", because they don't communicate values, memories or emotions.

In the concept of the universe of Leopardi the after-world of the dead is still apparently that of the ancients, but the dead show a net break with the world of the living and have became meaningless figures. In fact, it is with the poet from Recanati  that modern literature begins: in modern times death is not able to answer the need for existential significance and so, just as in Leopardi's texts, death speaks no more.

Asia Pagliai, Ilaria Sichi

Lis and the "Mad Flight"

3. A walk through the meadows of Asphodel

February 13, 2013

San Marcello Pistoiese, Italia

“Classical authors have not only an literary importance but they found a civilization”.

More or less with these words Romano Luperini opens his speech dedicated to the theme of the dead from Homer to Dante.

Through a path in diachrony he aims to analyse the topic highighting, in the first place, the difference between the ancient world and the modern world.

In the ancient world, the poem was composed primarily in order to found a civilization and was therefore especially epic poetry. Less important was the weight that was attributed to lyric poetry, although this does not exclude even a large production (think, in this regard, of the Liber of the famous Latin poet Catullus).

Lyric poetry, moreover, assumes preponderant value only from the nineteenth century on the basis of one of the greatest exponents of Italian Romanticism, Giacomo Leopardi, wo gives to the subjectivity of the self and a private dominant dimension. Luperini, moreover, states that in order to give meaning to life you need to ask the basic questions, and through a psychological process, making its own history in relation to the past.

This is what both the individual and the community are called to do.

Benedetta Giampietri, Simone Orsatti

Lis and the "Mad Flight"

2. A halfserious dialogue between Lis and her poetic inspiration.

February 13, 2013

San Marcello Pistoiese, Italia

CALLIOPE: Even this Comenius week has finally come to an end, and they are all going back home. Why did you want to stay here, Lis?

LIS: You know, Calliope: I liked Italy. The beauty of the cities you showed me captured me, and I want to learn more about these places. I would like to talk with people, to plunge into their traditions.

I want to continue all the things we started together!

But, these days something is missing, my friend.

CALLIOPE: Come on, tell me! I am all ears.

LIS: I need to make a comparison.

My God, this doesn’t mean that you have to discriminate the good from the bad, the best from the worst.

It's all about information.

Modern society has introduced all of us into "Globalization" and I think it's very important to defend our culture so that it doesn't get swallowed up by this global-idea and thus disappear from the face of the Earth; it seems that the most importantant thing is to know others.

I have to know how the people of my same age live here in Italy, their points of view, how they grew-up and how they face adulthood.

CALLIOPE: You girl, have asked an interesting question, and it deserves to be answered. This is your final activity, which will complete your trip here. In all respects, I would like to introduce you to the method which your peers here use to lay the foundations of their adulthood.

In the building next to us, as you know, there are various classes of the Institute. Very soon, the High School students will discuss with an important literary critic, Romano Luperini, about a subject that touches me deeply: that of the dead. I understand that it may seems gloomy, and you are right! But the answer you are looking for comes from them, the dead, as a constitutive part of the Past.

These people think that it is necessary to know the Past of their civilization so as to be able to deal with what life has in store for them in the future. In the Past we can find all the attributes necessary to plan a better Future. By knowing its own history, a community obtains wisdom, and learns how to avoid the mistakes of the past.

LIS: What does all this mean, Calliope? The future needs novelty, it is made up of novelty!

CALLIOPE: Would novelty exist if things were “already known”?

Everything would be new! There would be no progress!

But now! Come into the classroom and listen!

In the words of an old master: "Sapere aude!".

Giovanni Albergucci