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