Remo Bodei, one of Italy’s foremost intellectuals speaks on four giants of Italian culture.The Italian Cultural Institute and Co.As.It. are proud to invite you toPirandello e la dissoluzione della personalità (talk in Italian)Friday 10 March, 6.30pm
Time, eternity, history: Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli (talk in English)
Thursday 9 March, 6.30pm, Italian Cultural Institute, 233 Domain Road, South Yarra
FREE EVENT. RSVP essential: bookings.iicmelbourne@este
Time, eternity, history: Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli
My task will be to sketch a conceptual and historical analysis of terms such as “time” and “eternity”, and “history”, in order to restore them to their original set of implications and to brighten up the colors that have been lost or altered in the course of centuries. In this way, we will be able to measure the distances between Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli.
For example, we derive the concept of eternity from our notion of time, imagining eternity as a very long time, extended to infinity. For millennia, however, “eternity” has been synonymous with “life” or, better, with plenitudo vitae (plenitude of life), a stable possession of a never-ending and simultaneous life, the complete opposite of time, which is instead a haemorrhage of life, a loss of fullness.
Dante describes his journey in the afterlife as a path “from man’s time to Divine eternity” (Paradise, XXXI, 38), from our earthly life, constantly chasing after fulfillment, to the endless joy of paradise. Far from having a duration, an extension in time, eternity is, therefore, as un-extended as a geometrical point. It is a “point / in which all times are present” (Paradise, XVII, 17-18). Even Petrarch’s “three parts of time” (past, present, and future) coincide in eternity, according to his Triumph of Eternity.
In Machiavelli, on the contrary, the concept of eternity vanishes altogether, and we are left with the time of human history, the time in which individuals are irrevocably immersed during the brief span of their existence.
FREE EVENT. RSVP via Facebook, Co.As.It. – Museo Italiano, Language & Cultural Centre or email: [email protected]
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Pirandello e la dissoluzione della personalità (talk in Italian)
Friday 10 March, 6.30pm, Co.As.It. – Museo Italiano, 199 Faraday Street, Carlton
FREE EVENT. RSVP essential: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/pirandello-e-la-dissoluzione-della-personalita-talk-in-italian-by-remo-bodei-tickets-32110116222?utm_term=eventurl_text
THIS IS THE FIRST OF THREE EVENTS HELD AT CO.AS.IT. - MUSEO ITALIANO TO MARK THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF ITALIAN DRAMATIST AND NOBEL PRIZE WINNER LUIGI PIRANDELLO
Pirandello e la dissoluzione della personalità
Seguendo le posizioni di alcuni “medici-filosofi” francesi (Théodule Ribot, Paul Janet e Pierre Binet), che alla fine dell’Ottocento avevano distrutto l’immagine di un io monolitico e di un’anima immortale, Pirandello ha spinto sino al virtuosismo l’analisi delle scissioni della coscienza, ha descritto il prodursi di personalità sdoppiate o multiple e ha trattato con acume le fratture e le deformazioni psichiche. Ha così sperimentato le configurazioni della coscienza scissa di un individuo, simultaneamente o alternativamente sedotto dalla tranquillizzante sicurezza di essere “uno”, dall’angoscia e dallo sconcerto di accorgersi di essere “centomila” e dal sollievo derivante dall’ascetica decisione di azzerarsi per essere “nessuno”. Ben sessanta opere di Pirandello – tra racconti, romanzi e drammi – trattano della scissione (duplicazione o moltiplicazione), della perdita (vera o simulata, come nel romanzo Il fu Mattia Pascal) che scopre di non essere unica e compatta. La società ci incatena al principio di individuazione perché vuole vincolarci alle nostre azioni e ai nostri pensieri (in quanto preludi all’agire), fissarci a un unico e permanente io. La natura fissa ciascuno in determinate fattezze corporee, attribuendogli determinate ascendenze familiari; la società pretende poi di classificarlo secondo propri parametri. Entrambe, però, cospirano nel trasformarlo in un “individuo”, perché lo vogliono – alla lettera – indivisibile e sempre uguale a se stesso, ossia “integro”, cosciente, responsabile.
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Italian philosopher Remo Bodei, now professor emeritus at the University of Pisa, has taught for many years at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He studied for many years in Germany and taught in various European and American Universities. He is a Fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia University and of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei. His scientific interests were initially focused on German classical philosophy, then on political philosophy; in the last two decades, he has concentrated on the theory and the history of oblivion, delusion, and individuality, and on the nature of passions and desires. His books have been translated into fifteen languages.
