L’offerta di schiavitù: Una Fantasia BDSM (Italian Edition)

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The woman removed the cork off the bottle.

Immediately the two masked figures jumped, and the clown turned to them: The two bodies started to cover with green scales, and slowly settled to the earth rolling about, while the long hands of the trees behind the woman reached out and grabbed her by the waist. She screamed and immediately lifted the bottle to her mouth, gulping down a huge mouthful of wine. At that moment, the nightmare disappeared and everything was back to the way it was before. Meanwhile a boy coming down the street on his bicycle witnessed her eager drinking.

She gazed at the boy without answering. Don't you recognize me?

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Come on, I'll take you home. As she walked, her gaze remained fixed in front of her and she continued to repeat: They wanted me to believe Markus opened it, motioning the woman to enter. The woman turned to him and said: Were your parents serpents too? His sideburns also appeared to extend down his face, because of a light, unusual hair growth that had started to appear on this face.

In the morning he looked at himself in the mirror for a longtime, every time with the fear of waking up and not being able to recognize himself. He was not awaiting nor had asked for all these body changes. Because of them, he felt submersed in a fog of confusion and doubts. He had been able to surround himself with things and actions that made him feel serene and hopeful. His physical appearance was one of them. His black curly hair falling on his white forehead, his red lips framed under a small straight nose and his prominent eyebrows framing a lively but intense look, created an image from the past, right out of a Caravaggio painting.

This look he felt comfortable with made him feel safe. As a result, these morning inspections in front of the mirror revealed a frowning forehead that revealed preoccupation and disappointment. He had been living with his parents in a small, isolated house on the Umbrian hills surrounding Orvieto since he was five, since — that is — his father Josh he had ruined his life in that crazy merry-go-round that is New York City. He had then bravely chosen to move, in agreement with his wife Mary.

Both had been pondering that possibility for years and every detail had been taken care of with extreme care. Josh wrote articles on Italian customs, traditions and culture for the American market, while Mary worked in photography. Markus was not enthusiastic about their choice, even if he was familiar with those places since he was very young, as he had been vacationing there in the summer every year. He realized he was going to lose all his friends to find himself in a completely new place, without anything familiar to refer to. The family would talk about it at length in the evening.

In the end, he accepted the move, even if his decision was prompted more by his desire to make his parents happy, than to make himself happy. When the world turns upside down, the only way to remain strong is to lean against recognizable stable pillars. His family, his room, his bicycle and his first true friends were pillars of strength to Ughino.

Three years went by before he could give up the New York Yankees poster hanging in front of his bed, to make room for a poster of an Italian soccer team. He had learned to speak Italian perfectly and he attended the local middle school with notable success. Despite some initial difficulties, he was immediately cheerfully accepted by all his schoolmates and teachers.

The small realities of both the province and the country luckily did not destroy human relationships like urban centers do, revolting anonymous machines that they are. Markus then became friends with everybody, despite his initial distrust. Among all his friends though, there was one special friend, a girl: Unfortunately, destiny made this friendship hard for the boy, for Angela lived in Rome and only during the summer, and sometimes during some holidays, she would vacation with her parents where Markus lived and where her parents owned a small house inherited from an elderly aunt.

Angela was a year younger than Markus and they had become friends before he left New York, since both families had chosen the same place to vacation at. It was because of his great friendship with Angela that Markus learned to speak Italian quickly. For a couple of years, Markus and Angela had been enjoying more freedom with the permission of their parents. As a result, they would spend their days on the hills, biking along the wooded paths, looking for small animals and climbing trees, looking for hideouts. Angela was a lively, blond girl, always ready for any adventure Markus would suggest.

She was slim and agile like a gazelle in the fields and a squirrel on the trees. He never thought about the difference of the sexes too much, nor was this bothering him in any way. All this, up to that year when — in summer — Angela went back to the village again. Like Markus, she was growing and physically changing and Markus was aware of all these changes. The once-bold little girl had gotten taller, her hair was styled differently and had a different shine, and her clothes did no longer disguise the flat and dry figure of years past.

Her look had also changed and become so piercing it went right through you like a dagger. Markus was thinking about this, while hesitating for quite a few minutes in front of the mirror… Suddenly he heard someone knocking at the bathroom door. I will be back tonight. Your father is up in his den, writing. She would leave early in the morning with all her photo equipment and spend the whole day traveling through the hills and bordering villages. At night, she would come back with a good number of pictures, which, through the night, she would examine and make changes to.

Hidden in his den, he would write all-day long and send his work to editors by e-mail. After breakfast, Markus went into the garden, making his way towards the back of the garage, where Josh had set up a basketball court for him, using one of the garage walls. The boy would spend a lot of time bouncing the ball on the pavement, then throwing the ball into the basket.

All this physical activity calmed him down. As he was slowly swirling around, dragging behind him the ball bouncing on the pavement, that morning he thought of his friend Ughino, with all the problems his image would conjure up. So intent was his thought, that Markus stopped the ball with his hands and stood for a moment looking at the climbing roses that were decorating the garage door. Markus turned around and his face lit up. She threw it on the ground and they hugged happily, transported by the spontaneity of a gesture they were accustomed to since they were five.

Markus though realized he had perhaps been too spontaneous. He pulled away immediately, blushing. His face beamed with delight. Cheerful, playful and full of life. He was greeting everybody loudly But his mother has gotten worse. He told me himself and I actually saw it for myself. He said there is very little that could be done since she is mentally sick. They suddenly heard a loud noise of metal, stones and wheels coming from the access road to the village house.

The two got up and moved towards the lane that led to the main entrance. When they got to the corner of the garage, they had to move back to make room for a boy who was riding a strange three-wheel vehicle with great speed. Then he addressed both of them: I am very happy. Ughino started to get off the bike and then hesitated. Would you like some juice?

He looked at Markus and said: I have to continue my deliveries I just wanted to say hello. He looked at Angela, trying to let her know. She understood immediately and said: I have to go help my parents get set up. Then Ughino got off his bike, stopped pretending he was happy and hugged Markus. Then Markus pulled his bicycle out of the garage and pointing to the road said: He was ten years old, but because of the emotions and the grief that life had reserved for him, he could teach good judgment and maturity to his fifteen-year-old friends. The engineers of the municipality had tried various times to have the two legally evicted, as the dwelling was considered not desirable for health reasons, but every time, independent groups of people had dissuaded them and convinced them to defer action.

Paola, the mother, was still young, but she looked like an elderly woman. She was afflicted by many ailments and when she was able to rustle up a little alms money, she would always go home with a bottle of wine in her hands. Paola was an orphan and she had never known her parents.

She grew up in a convent and when she was twenty she had gone to work as an attendant at a summer camp for children on the Emilia Romagna coast, where she had met her first and last love. Salvatore, a tourist traveling in that area, invited her to dinner and they stayed together until morning, when Paola had to go back to work. The following days she waited for him in vain on the beach where they had met.

She looked for him in a futile search throughout the whole city, only to realize the only thing she knew about him was his first name. Salvatore had left her, much like her mother had done. At the end of the season, she returned to the village pregnant with Ughino, her mind totally empty. As the baby was getting bigger, the mother was withering away. Her body slowly sagged like a bamboo whipped by the wind and only alcohol could make her bear the eternal grief of life. Ughino understood immediately, since he was very small, that he had to take care of himself, as well as his mother.

So he would go to school and after school he would take care of the house, helping Paola as if she were a little girl. Despite his sad destiny, Ughino smiled all the time and he would play with his friends, who loved him a lot, any chance he got. The boy did not want his friends to pity him because of his condition, so often he would tell innocent lies to mask his meager truth. Sometimes, he was invited to lunch by families of friends, and was served with wonderful dishes of Umbrian tradition.

He would then thank the hostess by saying: Just the way my mom fixes it! Things were different with him. He spent a lot of time with him and thought of him as an older brother. Once, when school let out, a couple of older boys arrogantly stopped Ughino. It was Giovanni Montaldi and Piero De Lisis, sons of two wealthy businesspeople from Orvieto, dressed from top to bottom in fashionable clothes.

They did not have many friends at school, but their private alliance seemed to satisfy them and they did not feel they had to be friendly to other people. Always bold and arrogant, they had several times shown lack of courage in their actions. Therefore, they usually would bother the younger and the weaker kids. Ughino was one of them. One time, Giovanni and Piero started making fun of him because of his older shoes with holes, shoving him around as they spoke, while he was trying to resolve the situation with a smile.

Suddenly Piero kicked him and his backpack filled with his school notebooks fell in the sand. Then Ughino turned and saw the boy turning red, because an arm, behind him, was grabbing him by the neck. With a yank, Piero fell on the ground and immediately Markus was on top of him, beating him up, while a couple of friends were holding Giovanni back. During the summer, Ughino helped Mario, the manager of the only food store in the village, with deliveries to clients. Since during the summer holidays the number of people increased because of the arrival of all the people who owned a country cottage, the need for deliveries increased, as the store was getting bigger and acquired more clients.

So, Mario had given Ughino a bicycle he had modified for small deliveries: Little Ugo felt mighty proud when he was riding this unique vehicle and often he would come back from his deliveries full speed, doing acrobatics on two wheels. But when he went home, he left his cheerfulness outside the door, like a coat hanging from the door. The boy would put his love and patience clothes on and cross the door bravely. His mother would usually sit by the window, crossing her legs, with her foot constantly moving up and down. Her gaze was lost in empty infinity and nearly always she did not even know her son had come back.

Ughino thought his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world and he hoped every day that she would heal quickly. His continuous care and attention was not enough, he thought. Maybe he should take her to the hospital. But how could he love her more? He loved her more than himself! Every day he tried to be more affectionate. His heart would break, for he could not see any improvement. He would cook for her, talk to her, he cared for her hands and feet, and he would tell her about what was happening in school, but she would rarely answer, and when she did, only in monosyllables.

He would then go in the bathroom, turn on the faucet and cry his heart out, hitting his head with all his strength, crying rivers of steaming tears into the basin, clutching his heart because of the pain. She is completely mad. I met her yesterday and took her home. He tried to change the topic: Do you want to go to the beach with us?

Do you remember the last time, when she fled at night and we found her on the bridge? Who gets to the square first decides the punishment! Markus looked at him straight in the eyes and said: Let us through, I have to go to the store! Piero did not move. The left window of the car was lowered and a voice screamed from inside: Giovanni grabbed his bike and started pedaling towards the descent. But he did not need to; he already knew it was a heavy person with white withered skin, with his head dripping with sweat and black sun glasses perennially resting on his forehead.

Not because of you. Ughino got off his tricycle and said: He enjoyed watching the women in and out of the store, chatting, with bags filled with heads of lettuce and loaves of bread. Those images were engraved in his mind since he was small, even though they were not keepsakes from his own land.

He only remembered a lot of confusion and the icy cold of the huge supermarket in the city where he was born. The younger told the oldest: You see how nice and polite he is? Despite all the bad things that happened to him Just yesterday, I found his mother at my front door. She had finished the wine. Once in a while she comes over to my house too.

But what should I do? I would feel like I did Ughino wrong. But now we have to do something. And we can take turns caring for the boy. How much trouble can that polite boy be? I know he takes care of all the housework, he could even help me! He wanted to tell those women that if they really loved Ughino, the last thing to do was to separate him from his mother. He had to find a solution. Meanwhile, Ughino had left the store and was loading the bags on the cart. When they were alone again on the road, Ughino continued: Tell me about your idea.

But we know nothing about him; he has been living there by himself for years, since he first came to the area! But they call him Doctor Draconis, and I heard that he was a doctor. He may be able to help me. How did you come to think of him? Maybe because I heard he was a doctor, and maybe because nobody can help mom. What do you say? Would you go see him with me, and ask for his advice? Are you aware of what everybody around here says about him? There is just one thing She is a friend of mine and you can trust her.

Let me know when you intend to go. I have to go home now. Markus was happy to see him like that, even if deep inside he was doubtful of the decision he had made. He lived with his cat, Bastet, in a decrepit house, lost in a small wooded area between the villages of Sugano and Orvieto. Nobody knew what he did all-day, but if you walked along the house you could nearly always hear the sound of a clarinet, which — from the windows up high — would meander up to the top of leafy trees.

It was not a pretty house and it certainly did not bring a smile to the people passing by. The window shutters were hanging down like the eyebrows of sad eyes. The outside walls served as a perennial bed to the gigantic climbing vegetation and even the main front door was so misshapen that it appeared to be grinning with contempt and grief. In winter, he would always wear a long, black overcoat and a large hat with brims curved towards the bottom, while in summer, he would dress entirely in white. Shirt and pants were so big that his thin, tall figure would appear ghostly.

His face was thin and sunken under his cheek bones and his eyes were set deep and overshadowed by his sockets, blocked and hidden from any observer. His hair was long and smooth, down to his shoulders, by now partially grey, even though the age of the doctor was a mystery. When he would go to the village, he would speak to people in a very polite manner, often speaking in a polished style, not characteristic of that area. His speech was concise, just what was necessary and no more. Under no circumstances he had appeared hesitant when starting a conversation with unknown people.

He was heard talking in public only once. It was when, at the market, a mother was screaming to her son, who apparently had stolen a pen from a man who sold stationary. The woman hit him on the back, as she was screaming: I am hitting you also for having lied, for saying you did not steal that pen!

Hermes was the one who told him to lie. And who is this Er When they found out, the young Hermes denied it repeatedly; he lied with strength and courage to the God who was accusing him. Faced by such impertinence, Apollo started to laugh and forgave him. Children must lie, Hermes tells them to. When he would leave the house to do some shopping, he would walk on foot through the wooded area, dragging behind him a small four-wheel wooden cart on which he would load his supplies. The title of doctor had been given to him by the inhabitants of the village, as it looked like in the past he had practiced medicine.

No one knew, however, what kind of medicine, nor if he ever had taken care of, or healed anybody. The elderly ladies were very suspicious and if they happened to meet him, they preferred to go another way. Talk had it that he did not have any children and that he had moved to his house a long time before, following the untimely death of his young wife, whom, as a doctor, he apparently had not been able to save… Since then, he had been a recluse in his own house, a house where the only sound was that coming from his sad clarinet.

Doctor Draconis lived in that area in great privacy and this had created stories, testimonies and fairy tales about him. One of the stories about Draconis around San Quirico was that while he was travelling around the world looking for answers to his questions, young Doctor Draconis met and fell in love with Suseri, a Japanese girl. Once, unbeknown to him- he hid a poisonous spider in the pocket of a jacket hanging in the closet. As fate would have it, that morning, Draconis did not wear it when he left.

The spider bit her and she fell on the ground, where she died after a few minutes. When Draconis returned home, he found her on the ground and tried to save her, unsuccessfully. Word has it, that the grief was of such magnitude that the doctor from that day onward became a loner. The inhabitants of Porano had an addition to the story: Draconis would communicate with the spirit of the young Suseri through the sound of the clarinet.

Someone also said he had seen him at night go down the well in front of his house and come out only in the morning. No one could tell if the stories were true or born from the imagination of the people. The truth of the matter is that Draconis was, by then, an integral part of that environment, just like the woods, the houses, the vineyards and the vegetable gardens.

That afternoon he was going with him to the Orvieto library to pick up some books Josh had ordered the week before. He climbed on the seat of the jeep that was already in motion and they took off on the white road leading to the highway. Markus had an open and sincere rapport with his father and often shared his interests leafing through his papers, articles and books. When the family moved to Italy, through the whole delicate moving phase, Josh had been very close to his son, trying his best to offer him a strong and firm support at a time of great uncertainty.

As they were getting onto the highway, they met Ughino who was entering the road, going towards the Allen residence on his delivery tricycle. I have to ask Ughino something. I will be right back. I can come by around six. Be at my house at six. Markus was lost in thought. I often think about him and I am tempted to go visit him to write an article.

But Mary discourages me all the time On the other hand, not even Melampus was aware he was one! He was the first mortal granted divine powers by the gods. You know I love it when you tell me mythic stories! It was as if there was a universal mould for every occasion. Wait; let me think about the story He would understand the language of birds and insects because it seemed that two serpents, grateful for a favor, licked his ears. The man had been sick since he was a young boy, ever since he had witnessed the sacrifice of two rams by his father, when he saw him walking holding a knife covered with blood.

That sight made Ificlus sick, but no one understood that, with the exception of the two birds of prey that witnessed the fact. He ran to get the old knife that was still stuck in the trunk of a tree and made Ificlus drink the rust formed by the blood of the ram, dissolved in a little water. Somehow, he had to get rid of that terrible image from his childhood, and perhaps the blood of the ram reminded him of that.

And what does Melampus have to do with Draconis? It was just to show you that Melampus was a doctor without knowing it. They got out of the car and started walking towards the escalators that were climbing inside the hill like a worm making its way upwards inside an apple. All around, they were surrounded by the tuff walls of the gallery, the color of toasted hazelnuts.

The gallery was a steep climb, until it exited near Piazza Raineri. When they got off the escalators, the two turned to the right towards via Loggia dei Mercanti and when they stopped in front of the Piccolomini Hotel, they had to flatten against the wall to make room for a car with a powerful engine that was coming down the alleyway. Markus was familiar with that car. I am happy to see you. And since city hall gave us the license, it would be very useful if you could write an article for your American editors.

And the tourists would be very happy to know that here they could find the same food they eat in their own country! His small eyes hidden by the fat of his cheeks and his nose, flat above his swollen lips, made him truly grotesque. They said goodbye and as soon as the car was gone, Markus vented his disappointment: You even promised him you would write him an article?

But I did not tell him what I will write in the article! As they were paying for their snack, Josh heard someone calling him: Come sit with us for a little while! I find you very well. Looking towards the display case of the news vendor, Markus said: He said he is going to be at my house at six. We'll go there together. He motioned Markus who was approaching them. Then Angela turned to her mother saying: I will see you later, at home. Matilde used to go to the cemetery every week. She would clean and shine up the marble slab that had been guarding the memory of Anselmo, hear husband, for over ten years.

To her, that visit was a pleasurable break from her daily monotony and after having taken care of the flowers, changed the water and washed the marble, she would sit on the stool she brought from home, and chat peacefully with Anselmo's smiling picture. At the village, nothing new, except the seasonal tourists are coming and at least there is someone on the road.

Fausto and Teresa are here too, and they say hello. I have always taken care of them you know, just like you used to do, and I remembered that in November you prune only the stems that didn't bloom during the season, leaving only the flowers dry on the other stems. Next spring you will have hydrangeas as large as watermelons! The lavender bush has grown a lot too. This time though, I am going to take all the branches off and make them into scented laundry baskets like my mother used to do when she was alive.

She told me that after the summer, Giovanna and she are going to city hall to convince them to put Paola Stoppa, that poor soul, in an institution, while Ughino is taken care of. Life was unkind to her since her birth, but now Ughino needs a normal life with a normal family. He needs someone to take care of him. This is another one of her lunacies: Did you know she comes on foot from Sugano? She never takes the bus and the road is very long!

She was holding a bunch of small wild flowers she had likely picked up along the way and from time to time, she would put one in the vases of the loculus. What are you saying? We give her wine, anytime she wants it! In the meantime, Paola seemed happy with her visit and she started moving towards the exit of the cemetery, lazily dragging her feet on the stone pavement.

When she reached the large entrance gate, she turned towards the tombs one more time and observed them, turning her head from right to left in a collegiate greeting and exited towards the road. From the back seat, Angela pointed to the woman and said: He then stopped in an open space.

Markus got out of the car and moved towards the woman. Then, running, he caught up with her. After they left, Josh asked: Do you have someone there? Markus helped the woman get out of the car and accompanied her inside. On the way home, Josh — deep in thoughts — could only say: He was trying to shoot a basketball, but he was probably too short for that.

He waved cheerfully to all of them and Josh stopped the jeep. I am going in, have fun and Ughino placed the ball on the ground, tucked his shirt inside his pants and said: As soon as they reached the highway, they crossed it, entering an alley in the front that ran along the perimeter of a thicket. The other side of the road was delimited by grassy fields that sloped along the side of the hill; the grass was very tall and, for the most part, dry.

We have to leave our bicycles next to the large oak tree. Then, they had left, for they thought they heard some steps coming down the stairs. Markus remembered that day well, because it was very cold and on the way back home it had started to rain cats and dogs. They arrived in the vicinity of the turn to the inside of the wooded area.

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The pair on the tricycle was moving slower and at every pothole Ughino would jump really high, almost falling to the ground. She was standing by the road, looking in the direction of a tree. We almost hit you! She turned towards them, her mouth open and in disbelief, pointing to the tree. It was standing still in the middle of the road and would not move Then it opened his mouth and I thought it was about to speak!

It had an acorn in its paw and Then it retreated to the tree Markus bent down and grabbed an acorn in his hand. Suddenly acorns began to pour from the tree, hitting the children from up high, nonstop, as a thick hailstorm. As they stopped, Angela slid on the leaves and fell right next to the trunk of the big chestnut tree. Angela was sitting on the ground, looking up high towards the top of the trees, in all directions. But what was wrong with those squirrels? It would have been impossible to use the bicycles. Unexpected notes, from very heavy to very light acute trills, the notes floated through the vegetation, to the ears of the children.

Two small bushes of red berries, like bony, bleeding hands marked the entrance to the garden. The three crossed the threshold of the fence, and found themselves in the green area in front of the house. The house seemed abandoned, as did everything else around it. In the middle of the area in front of the house, there was an old well made of rock stone, which brightly stood out against the green.

Angela and Markus kept approaching the front door of the house cautiously, when they realized that Ughino was moving towards the well. I want to see. You could not see the bottom, but along the side there was a long metallic ladder hooked onto a border stone. I thought there was some one Markus, was this here when we were here before? I remember it very well. Markus, you go ahead. Markus looked at his friends, sighed and lifted his hand to knock. He knocked three times. The music stopped immediately and a cat meowed.

The children heard noises of chairs and moved objects coming from the first floor, along with heavy steps on a wooden ladder and a muffled grumble. In the meantime, the cat must have reached the door, because the meows sounded much closer now and the steps were becoming heavier and sounder. The door snapped open, quickly, causing the three children to jump backwards. In his hands, he was holding a long wondrous clarinet made of ebony.

He was holding it like a club and between his feet— in a pair of leather sandals — standing upright, a grey cat with velvety hair was observing them annoyingly. There are many doctors around. He then turned towards the door and walked into the house, slamming the door. As he was climbing the stairs, you could hear him mumble: It was hard to tell whether Ughino was more frightened or disappointed after the short meeting.

He stayed on the side, staring at the closed door, without saying a word. Angela put her arm on his shoulders, pulling him back towards the garden. He then started walking behind his friends, his gaze to the ground, while the sky was turning red and the nocturnal animals lazily began to yawn and wake up.

After midnight, the sky filled with a multitude of stars and even the smallest ones were visible to the naked eye, from the hills that were void of the luminous shine of the metropolis. You could also hear better. You could hear noises that during the day were hidden in the neglected acoustic background: But for Ughino, that was not a peaceful night.

He kept turning in his bed over and over again, jabbering words during his agitated sleep, while thinking back to the images of a cold rusty ladder, down the bottom of a well. A continuous metallic noise resonated in his ears, caused perhaps by an object hitting the steps of the ladder. In his sleep, he thought that was caused by the heel of a shoe, hitting an iron pole. He forced himself to open his eyes and in the darkness of the room, he looked up high towards the small open window that overlooked a small vegetable garden behind the house.

The light of the moon lit the window panes, which were protected by metallic grids. In the square of light projected on the wall, Ughino noticed a large shadow that was knocking lightly on the metal grid. The boy turned on the light on his night table and a faint soft light lit up the bluish walls of the room.

Rubbing his eyes, he directed his attention to the small window, now able to see clearly what was happening. A large barn owl stood upright on the sill, hitting the metallic grid with its beak. The animal appeared proud and composed, as if taking pleasure in his wonderful attire illuminated by the moon. The light of the moon, in fact, made the whiteness of his facial feathers shaped like a heart really stand out.

Ughino loved all the animals in the countryside and the presence of the night bird truly did not bother him. The only thing that bothered him was the fact that the animal had woken him up, by hitting his beak on the grid. He had seen other barn owls during his summer nights on the hills, but that was unusually large.

I am tired of hitting my beak against the grid; it was beginning to hurt! The barn owl had spoken! His voice was similar to that of an unexpectedly disappointed old grouch. Ughino then got out of his bed and said: Come closer and listen to me. The barn owl continued: They are waiting for you there with all the instructions. I was dreaming of an iron ladder that was going down into But why do I have to go down there? I am a little scared.

I have no time to waste. If you want to help your mother, go down the stair in the well and you will realize that it is not dangerous. That said, I bid you farewell. Slowly the boy sat at the side of the bed. Should he go down the metal stair? On the other side of the coin, how could he trust a night bird that spoke like an ill-tempered old man? A grey feather was right next to the grid. Would anybody ever believe him?

He had to go. It was a lucky break he was allowed to bring Markus and Angela along.

Without them, it would have been a real problem. Yes, it was still night, but who could have slept after that encounter? Ughino looked at his old alarm clock on the night table. It was three in the morning. He grabbed his pants and shirt off the chair and got dressed in a hurry, silently. He pushed the door aside lightly, but in the semidarkness of the moonlight through the window, he saw an empty bed! Yet, he remembered he had wished her good night, the night before and that she was already in bed.

Maybe the barn owl had woken her up and she had gone into the kitchen to get a drink of water. The house, however, was immersed in darkness. He went into the small kitchen and turned the light on. As he was turning around, he thought he heard a soft noise coming from behind. He turned just in time to protect his head.

Paola, from behind, lowered the bottle she was holding on the head of her son with all her might. She let an angry cry escape. Ughino jumped to the side to avoid the woman. Luckily, the boy was so agile that he managed not to get hit. While he was jumping around, he grabbed a towel and wrapped his bleeding hand in it. Go away, you and your snakes! There was no other choice: Ughino then ran out of the door, climbing the stairs that were leading to the road. As soon as he got outside, he jumped on his delivery bicycle and started to pedal with all his might.

He pedaled and cried. He cried and sobbed. His bicycle, though, knew the way. Servo Inutile General field: E' un riflesso al " saeculorum " finale. Frutto delle preghiere dell'infanzia. Fin da bambino infatti, ho scorazzato nella chiesa di fronte alla mia casa.

Una chiesa povera, austera come i suoi servitori. Burberi e severi frati Francescani Cappuccini. Quelli con la barba per intenderci.

Ed ora sono qui. Se non osservassi l'orologio, uno Swatch da pochi soldi; un regalo delle mie figlie: Mi guardo intorno ed incrocio il volto dei colleghi. Nei loro occhi la medesima domanda: Vorrei poter sospendere tutto. Io non ho colpe. Ma rimango e in silenzio, mi rivolgo ai miei Santi.

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A San Giuseppe mio patrono. A San Giovanni della Croce di cui avevo un'immaginetta bellissima. A Santa Bernardetta che non posso dimenticare. Alla Madonna di sale che aveva mia nonna e che baciavo tutte le sere prima di andare a letto. Salvate, salvate la mia anima. Non potevi trovare una scusa? Bastava dire che non ti sentivi all'altezza. Bastava poco per non essere qui, cretino! Una paura atavica, ancestrale. Tutto quello che la mia formazione culturale non ammette.

Anni di studi, anni di materie astruse come fisiologia, anatomia, patologia che impediscono di riconoscere quello che la fede non ha mai messo in dubbio. Rivolgo gli occhi a padre xxxy e tutto si placa. E' la sua voce che calma tutto. E una grande pace mi prende. La mia gola articola in silenzio: Sono venuto con il pellegrinaggio che la mia Diocesi organizza ogni anno. Un viaggio in treno di millecinquecento chilometri, un convoglio di ventiquattro carrozze per ottocento pellegrini; una bolgia pazzesca.

E' la quinta volta che vengo con loro ma prima, per altre tre volte, da giovane, con un gruppo di amici, sono stato in questo posto. Mi si permetta, anche se potrebbe suonare blasfemo, di far riferimento alla mitologia. Ad Omero in particolare.

Al canto delle sirene che irretiscono Ulisse. E' come se ci fosse un richiamo. Del consumismo sfrenato che circonda l'area sacra. Molti osservano di non aver visto nulla di particolare. Tanti sorridono ricordando le innumerevoli e variegate manifestazioni della fede popolare.

Troppe persone sono ritornate da Lourdes a mani vuote. Era sufficiente leggere, prima di partire, il Vangelo di Matteo. E' questo quello che succede a Lourdes. A Lourdes quelli che sono ciechi nella fede: Quelli che zoppicano nella fede: Quelli che hanno una fede macchiata, piagata: Quelli che sono sordi al richiamo della fede: Quelli che sono morti nella loro fede: A tutti quelli che ascoltano: Caricare, senza disturbare alcuno, il mio tasso di nicotina nel sangue. Stavo appunto tirando a pieni polmoni che ti vedo arrivare costui. Avrei compreso in seguito l'importanza che quest'ultima rivestiva per lui.

Posso fare una domanda? Il tono nasale e stentato mi fece subito capire che si trattava di un francese. Il vestito scuro, accompagnato da una camicia grigia, ed in particolare la piccola croce sul risvolto della giacca mi fecero pensare che fosse un sacerdote. Stavo per raccogliere nella mente una splendida risposta nella sua lingua che tra parentesi, amo tanto, quando lui mi precedette nuovamente. Non mi meravigliai per la sua perspicacia dato che indossavo un camice bianco e un fonendoscopio mi usciva di tasca. Avrei sempre potuto rifiutarmi in seguito, una volta conosciute le problematiche.

Chiesi di che cosa si trattasse per potermi organizzare con eventuali sussidi terapeutici. Un prete, un malato, gli psichiatri.

Stavo per dire che del paragrafo sulle ossessioni avevo studiato solo il titolo quando lui riprese: Quella sera, a cena, non stavo nella pelle. Non mi seppi trattenere e parlai con due miei colleghi di quello che mi era successo. Anche loro convennero sull'importanza di quell'esperienza. Nessuno di noi aveva mai assistito ad un esorcismo, se di questo forse si trattava.

Si, malati psichiatrici ne avevamo visti anche noi ma nessuno che avesse manifestato qualche tipo di possessione. Avrei ringraziato in seguito per la loro presenza. Il giorno dopo, oggi, ci siamo trovati tutti e tre puntuali all'appuntamento. Il prete, padre xxxy ci aspettava assieme ad una suora. Nell'attesa che venga il malato, che ora sappiamo essere una malata, il padre ci spiega tutto quello che dobbiamo fare, quello che possiamo e quello che non dobbiamo fare. Mettetevi poi ai lati del malato.

Non correrete alcun pericolo se vi atterrete a questi consigli. E questa sarebbe l'indemoniata? Vengo distolto dalla sua presentazione. So che siete preoccupati ma Io non ho mai fatto male a nessuno. E ci vorrebbe che questo simpatico criceto, possa farmi male! Hai dormito troppo poco. Il sacerdote si avvicina e saluta la ragazza. Strano, osservo, il prete non le ha dato la mano. La ragazza mi squadra e poi mi strizza l'occhio.

Si china verso di me e sussurra: Sai, sono tre mesi che mi vede, due volte alla settimana. Qui non ci siamo! Mi sa che sto sbagliando tutto. Quando parla di Babilonia. Dopo, sono stata benissimo. Ma di cosa sta parlando? Quasi quasi me ne vado. Ad un cenno del padre lo seguiamo nella sacrestia. La ragazza viene mandata avanti, nella chiesa e il prete si rivolge a me. Dopo entriamo anche noi nella chiesa. E' una chiesa a navata unica. It appears that the great Platonic themes of love, beauty and good- ness have destroyed him.

In love, he has lost himself in the pursuit of the other, and now his black bile has overtaken him entirely as he rages uncon- trollably, his body on earth and his rational senses completely absent. He is beyond being able to save himself At this point the ultimate demon- stration of his incapacity for both knowledge and imagination is the fact that he has also lost his memory, the starting point for all Platonic voyages of discovery.

Mad Orlando fails to recognize even Angelica, the former object of his love, for all recollection of her was destroyed The crazed Orlando dragging horses to pieces is a mirror image of the paladin Astolfo, who rides to the heavens on a great flying creature of the imagination. Astolfo, who represents an alternative relationship between imagination and knowledge, salvages Orlando's senses and returns him to the battle. In the process, the reader discovers that Orlando's separation from himself was both literal and humorous — he has no brains Significantly, the character that rescues Orlando is also one who is familiar with both love's delusion and the voyage of education, knowledge and self-discovery.

Like Orlando, Astolfo was a lover who had lived enthralled by superficial beauty. He had fallen prey to the aged sorceress Alcina, who entraps men with a false image of youthful idealized beauty. Astolfo thus appears in the Furioso as a former lover, and as one who has already been punished and has learned his lesson. Follow Your Natural Profession"; Note the terms ingenium, used in this passage as "nat- ural bent," and genium.

When Astolfo leaves his arboreal body and recovers his human form he also leaves the passion for human beauty behind, at least for the duration of the Furioso. Astolfo first appears in the Furioso when he departs from the level at which Orlando remains for the first half of the poem as he searches for his beloved Angelica. Astolfo has another enlightening experience when, after being freed, he visits Logistilla's domain. Logistilla, the daughter of Love, is understood by most critics to represent reason, a connection evoked also by her name. Logistilla in fact embodies both the ideas expressed by Landino on the pleasure of beauty leading to education as well as an important aspect of Ficino's philosophy on contemplation.

The language Ariosto chooses to describe Logistilla's domain makes the connection to Neoplatonic ideas unmistakable. Through her beauty and virtuosity, Logistilla at first inspires reverence, so that the viewer continues to contemplate her presence Astolfo and Logistilla highlight the concepts of beauty, contemplation, poetic imagination and knowledge, and all of these play a role in Ficino and Landino's philosophies.

For Landino, the thinker is educated by exploring the encyclopaedic form of poetry, which is the means to recall to memory a distant world and the Neoplatonic search for all knowledge. He emphasizes the ability of the poetic imagination to lead away from the human world, and he also underscores the importance of such distance in the search for knowledge. Landino's space is distance: Ficino, on the other hand, transforms the distance of Landino's poetic imagination by linking creativity to melancholy, which brings poetry into the domain of Saturn, the planet of contemplation.

The melancholy of Saturn, or Chronos, enables genius to be tied to time. With Saturn's time, space results in distance. Poetry, as the art involving both rhetoric and time, is intimately bound up with memory, which itself is traditional- ly the eye of the imagination. Seekers of — 13 — Julia M. Cozzarelli knowledge collect and look into themselves, distancing themselves from the external world in the closed-off space of the imagination. Ficino refers to the traditional idea of contemplation as a way to reach truth, but it is contained in the idea that it is the centre of the self that must be analyzed.

With the contemplation of the inner self, one can then move to the anal- ogous higher realms. Ficino stresses the importance of gaining knowledge through looking inwardly and knowing oneself, and this is an important aspect of Logistilla's education. Logistilla's palace is fdled with jewels that reflect every virtue and vice of the person who looks into them. Orlando, the man who is the most alienated from his true self than any in the poem, never meets with Logistilla.

It has been said that Ariosto uses Logistilla's realm to demonstrate that reason fails in its education. One proof for this is the example of Ruggiero himself, the most prominent failure of one of Logistilla's pupils. It is here that Astolfo gains enough knowledge to control the winged hip- pogryph with which Astolfo and his imagination are able to take flight.

Some critics posit Logistilla's education as unsuccessful in the Furioso because, despite her contentment, goodness and beauty, her visitors soon wish to leave. Kisacky interprets this to mean that for Ariosto people are "not ready for a life of reason and self-control" Although this is in part valid, if we re-examine Ficino we can find another explanation. Even as love could bring danger to the thinker by hindering contemplation, con- templation itself holds certain risks.

This risk is clearly demonstrated when Ficino refers to the "human" causes of divine contem- plation. Ficino sees melancholy as the soil from which the search for knowledge is born. In the De vita book 2, chapter 16 he writes: Therefore, the Ficinian contemplation Logistilla incites can be endured only for so long, and then the thinker must move on, using the knowledge he has gained to its best potential and applying it to life. Indeed, Logistilla's visitors are inspired to continue to seek out knowledge, for both Ruggiero and Astolfo, once they are able to fly, decide to travel around the world.

Although Ficino and Landino follow opposite approaches in their search for knowledge, they both believe that the creative imagination can lead to truth. Their common ground is the Platonic concept that the indi- vidual and the cosmos are mutually interconnected. Through Astolfo's balanced love of knowledge and its resulting flight, we will be able to examine what Ariosto says about poet- ry and the world of knowledge from that distant vantage point.

When Astolfo learns to control the hippogryph, the type of imagina- tion he represents is evident — he is the embodiment of the poetic imagi- nation, as is the creature he rides on his journeys. In book 13 of the Theologia Platonica, human beings are also the link between heaven and earth. Marinelli states that, as a "surrogate" for the poet, Astolfo alone shares his perspective Mazzotta sees the voyage of Astolfo on the hippogryph as the "freedom of the esthetic imagination" "Power," The creature is a microcosm of the poem: It moves in concert with the imaginative workings of the text and marks out the space of the poem.

Ariosto's delib- erate delay in providing the reader with a full description of the animal a process that takes the first four cantos of the text makes the unveiling of the beast, never before encountered in literature, still more climactic. This emphasis on the hippogryph and the creative imagination serves to under- line the imaginative basis of love and desire in this text.

Once Astolfo decides to ride the hippogryph, he embodies the creative genius at work as he combines elements from several bridles in order to shape one that can best control the beast Astolfo has learned his lessons at Logistillas so well that he can create his own bridle for the hip- pogryph. Orlando, on the other hand, never experiences the flight of the hippogryph.

Orlando's primary role in the Furioso is as a character divided from himself, losing his reason due to the overwhelming force of passion, madness, and melancholy's black bile. And for most of the story, Astolfo has something that Orlando does not: Prepared properly, Astolfo can wield the power of the imagination, which he uses to embark upon a voyage of discovery. Astolfo and the hippogryph embody the imagination's connection with the desire for knowledge. Astolfo's adventures are a fantastic ironic gloss over the great literary traditions of the past.

He even mimics Dante's voyage towards knowledge in an abbreviated whirlwind tour through Hell and up to Earthly Paradise. The hippogryph is also seen as the juxtaposition of nature and art, representing the poet as imitator and inventor Jossa, Ascoli observes that the hippogryph's fusion of myth and reality "forces the question of the relation between reality and imagination, nature and artefice" Others have also concluded that the hippogryph symbolizes creative imagination.

Kisacky high- lights the connection with Pegasus, symbol of poetic inspiration, and interprets the hippogryph's flight as representing the panoramic vision of the poet; she also notes that the characters who fully control the beast are creative ones It is clear from the overall structure as well as the small details of these scenes that this voyage is a parody, and not a true spiritual journey as had been the case with its source. Ariosto expands on the literary traditions of the past to create a lunar episode that is fascinating and ambiguous, while also infused with humour. Astolfo's urge to explore the moon is laced with Platonic terminology.

John in the earthly paradise. John states that Astolfo was chosen to restore the wits of Orlando, who had been deliberately made to lose them by God. John, God had inspired Astolfo's desire to travel and has assisted him in coming to the moon with the gifts of the horn and the beast of the imagination. Like Landino's poet, Astolfo is portrayed as divinely inspired to create and to soar to great heights, bringing home a divine message hidden beneath beauty and education. However, despite this noble mission, and the build-up of the text along Platonic and Neoplatonic lines, first-time readers of the Furioso might be surprised to find their expectations of a spiritual voyage ending in the bizarre lunar set- ting Ariosto depicts.

When Astolfo reaches the wondrous moon, he finds vast allegorical mounds of items lost from the Earth below. John spells out the hidden allegory of each heap for both traveller and reader, who are not expected to be able to interpret the meaning on their own. Cozzarelli beauty on the surface. The biggest heap on the moon contains brains, which are gaseous and stored in vials. This mound is so extremely large because human beings are more prone to lose their reason than anything else, and this is also why folly "pazzia" is the one thing that stays perma- nently on the earth.

John that cause one to lose one's wits. As in Ficino's De vita, the pur- suit of physical love results in a movement away from the self Ariosto takes this opportunity to make an ironic comment through the mouth of St. John, who states that there were many brains lost by sophists, astrologers, and poets Astolfo finds and inhales some of his own lost brains, and locates Orlando's brains, clearly labeled and stored in the largest vial.

Ariosto's treatment of the moon can be read as collapsing the charac- teristic vertical direction of the epic. The attempt to escape to the moon as a way of transcending human action is a dead-end voyage, as the moon turns out to be far from the shining and mystical place imagined. The moon has even been read as a "repository not of meaning but of unmean- ing" Quint, This demonstrates that the Earth and moon are actual- ly interchangeable.

Despite this passage's religious imagery, no divine truth is discovered. The moon is not a higher plane, but reflects instead the disconnection within the human being, the separation of the mind and the body that occurs when one loses oneself in the pursuit and the image of the other. It is here, in a part of the epic focused on the voyage of knowledge and the danger of the imagination, that Ariosto situates a discussion of the poetic imagination.

John clarifies for Astolfo a scene they are witness- ing on the moon: Only the poets, represented by a pair of swans, are able to salvage some of the names of the deceased, which are then permanent- ly enshrined. John interprets the scene as a demonstration of the corre- spondence of earth and moon, with the moon reflecting the divinity of earthly immortality. Despite this explanation, what the moon reflects is not spiritual, but worldly; the immortality of fame. John praises poets for immortahzing the worthy, but the majority of his speech is a bitter warn- ing directed towards patrons.

Poets are "i sacri ingegni" "the heaven-sent geniuses" and sting ' patrons deserve obUvion, for friendship with poets would have saved them from Lethe's waters John later observes that he, too, is a writer hence his empathy , and has been rewarded for praising Christ with the great fortune that cannot be erased by time or death Given the context, and despite the spiritual significance of this character, this reward can be read as immortality through fame.

In this passage, St. John also makes it clear that all manner of patrons can benefit from being friendly to poets, for through poetry even the disgraceful can be glorified. Appropriately, given the structure of the Furioso itself, St. John cites examples from epic literature. In this famous and much-debated pas- sage, St. Greece was van- quished, Troy triumphant, and Penelope a whore"; John's monologue is preceded by praise of Ariosto's patron, juxta- posed with the lunar mound of burst crickets that represent, no less, poet- ry in praise of patrons.

But this passage also brings us face to face with the question of the value of language — do the signs on the earth used by poets lead us to a higher truth? Or do the poets "lie" without a higher purpose? These issues lie at the heart of both the Furioso and the life of its creator. On the moon, Ariosto connects poets to the earth by linking poetry and history. Ascoli reads this passage as bringing the level of the Bible down to that of poetic lies For Quint, finding meaning in the world itself is not possible when the text, the instrument of meaning, points only to the "higher truth" that poets lie Cozzarelli is demonstrating the fact that poetry can create its own history.

The ancient heroes are such because of the poet, and the original reality no longer matters. Poetry creates reality and shapes the world. Paradoxically, however, it is also true that Ariosto is constantly remind- ing us of poetry's fictionality and telling us to explore beneath the veil. Routinely, the narrator interjects to assert the truthfulness of some charac- ter or event in his text, most often when presenting us with scenes that exceed the bounds of credibility.

This technique adds to the humour of the text while simultaneously warning readers to be conscious of what they are reading. The questions of poetic language and its relationship to truth again recall Landino and his discussion of Dante's Commedia. Ariosto evokes Dante's ideas on language that converge in the figure of Ulysses in Inferno 26 by including a Homeric reference in the centre of his discussion on poetry.

Ariosto also brings his characters to the moon in the chariot of Elijah, which figures in Dante's passage. John's eyes, "flame-like" during his monologue, recall the tongues of flame enveloping Ulysses that illus- trated the deceptive potential of language. In this passage, however, Ariosto is not recalling only Dante; he is also evoking Landino, the Dante scholar.

Landino was a great proponent of the idea of the divinely inspired poet, as was Ficino in his more formal philo- sophical discussions. She reads Ariosto's text as an invitation to interpretation, rather than embodying one underlying truth. Carroll, also, uses the moon scene to posit Ariosto's irony as a criticism not of all literature, but of overly literal interpretations of texts For Dante and Landino the creative poet- ic imagination, the Hnk between reason and the passions, is the very foun- dation of knowledge.

He presented the imagination as the means to the highest of goals, while also acknowledging its perils and its appar- ently irreconcilable double nature. Landino, instead, does not dwell on the dangerous side of the imagination. For him, there is an ethics of the cre- ative imagination, as is apparent in his commentary on Ulysses' "folle volo," where he notes Ulysses' artifice and his consequent condemnation to Hell in the circle of fraud It is wrong, however, to assume that simply because Landino is aware of rhetoric's ability to lead astray this also means that he is portraying the poetic imagination as doing the same.

Landino makes it quite clear that rhetoric is not to be confused as being the equivalent of poetry. For Landino, poetry is an encyclopaedic form of the creative imagination; it is higher than, and encompasses all the other "human" arts. Although Landino is forced to admit that artifice does exist, he is very reluctant to condemn the fraudulent side of the imagination when it is involved in the poetic process. The creative imagination, in poetic form, is capable of transcendent vision.

For Landino, Ulysses' voyage fails because he has no poetic vision. He attempts to reach knowledge-the vision of Purgatory — but he is not capable of finding the hidden truth.

He has rhetoric, but he does not have the divine gift of poetry. He moves beyond the limits of his inborn ingegno and so fails in his quest. In his ethics of the creative imagination, Landino reiterates the prima- cy of the search for knowledge. Ingegno not only prefigures, but shapes the voyage itself, leading the traveller into a realm of seeing beyond rational capabilities. See in particular pp. Landino reiterates this in the Prolusione Dantesca: Although Landino clearly values the creative imagination, he lauds it not as a sign of a unique individual human mind, but as a gift selected and granted sole- ly by God.

For Landino, however, the imagination that is not divinely inspired is limited by personal experience and ability, and this, in turn, limits the voyage towards knowledge. Ariosto seems to address Landino's concerns about poetry and divinity by having St. John posit Astolfo's voyage to the moon, and his desire for knowledge itself, as being inspired by God. For Landino, it was not the voyage of the imagination itself that leads one astray-it was how the creative person employs the will in selecting the direction of its path that leads either to condemnation or to praise.

There are other aspects of Ariosto's discussion of poetry that recall both Landino and Ficino. Poetic madness and contemplation, like the double flame in Inferno 26, illustrate the close connection between rhetoric and prophecy. Landino stresses the divinity of the poet, and Ficino, too, discusses the poet as being divinely inspired. Landino's and Ficino's con- ceptions of the creative imagination can be seen as confronting two alter- nate ways of seeing: The prophet speaks from exile, but the words spoken are directed towards the human world. Divine fury makes Landino's poet prophetic, for the language of the poet- ic flight is distant from the human world and surpasses all human arts.

But the poet is able to speak to the people and to lead them towards knowledge also through his divine experiences. Ficino mediates between prophecy and mysticism and collapses their boundaries. In the Theologia platonica, he places the poet second after the philosopher among those who separate themselves from their bodies while in this life bk 13, ch 2. It is contemplation that creates this common activity.

Ficino is aware of the mystical aspect of contemplation, but we have seen how he also warns of the dangers of such self- alienation and iso- lation. If this separation is car- ried too far, the thinker will lose contact with himself as well as with the human world. Ficino roots poetic and prophetic divine fury into a medicinal frame- work, joining the Platonic abstraction to the condition of human flesh and to the madness of the lover.

The danger of the boundlessness of the flight of the imagination is not just a philosophical danger, but a physical one as well. While Ficino understands the value of inner contemplation, he is still too closely linked with the human realm and with the process of living to allow the contemplator to disconnect permanently from that world. Nonetheless, the imagination plays a large role in the Neoplatonic search- es for knowledge: Throughout Ariosto's epic we have seen the warnings and demonstra- tions of the danger of separating from the self, especially through love and its resulting madness and loss of reason.

In this regard, Axiosto's poet seems less akin to Landino's divine poet than to the poet tied to the black bile of Ficino's De vita. Like Ficino, Ariosto moves towards a tone of acceptance of the dangers and duality of the imagination. In his Platonic works Ficino emphasizes imagination's negative pole, but still asserts the superiority of philosophy. Ariosto reworks these ideas within his own context and plays upon them, preserving some of their meaning while also parodying them. In the Furioso there is a fundamental sense that poetry has great value, even though its divinity is parodied.

But the idea of divinely inspired creativity is downplayed while, instead, the effects of love's passion on the poet are highlighted. In this sense, Ariosto shadows Ficino's genius, for he empha- sizes his own humanity. Lie is aware of the fact that melancholy is a part of the human being and a necessary ingredient in creation. Ariosto's work takes Landino's assertion that poetry leads to knowledge as a point of departure.

But instead of Landino's knowledge of the divine, what is ultimately emphasized in the Furioso is Ficino's concept of the importance of knowing one's human limitations. For Ariosto, Landino's assertion that poetry leads to knowledge is eclipsed by Ficino's concept of the importance of knowledge of the self Moreover, this self-knowledge, which allows the poet to manage his passions as best he can, leads to greater poetic ability. For although poetry may lead to truth, the clearest truth Ariosto is cele- brating in the Furioso is his very own human poetic skill and his ability to use it to dazzle the reader.

The narrator's self-reflexive comments serve not only to call attention to the fact that we are reading a poem, but also, and more importandy, to call attention to the poet's creative skill and to his control of the story. While he is professing to be "one of us" by constantly acknowledging his own weakness in the struggle against madness, he is actually placing himself above the text and in control of the reader's desires and thoughts.

While the beauty of the text may spark the reader's desire to read on, the path has been chosen by Ariosto. The poet resembles Astolfo, soaring above us on the shimmering wings of his creation. But this is not an uncomplicated act. Like Ficino's poet, as well as his critic, Ariosto's genius is a struggling, human genius — one who not only knows the depths of suffering and depression, but must also accept that sadness and the downward flight of the imagination as indispensable elements of the genius with which one is gifted. Through melancholy, the poet and his creation are intimately linked to love's passion.

Ariosto uses this concept to illustrate the close connection between reason and love's madness not only in human life, but also in the workings of the imagination. He does this in order to place the poetic imagination above all else. Mazzotta successfully posits the perspective of the narrator, who is both inside and outside the work, as demonstrating the poet's "play of the poetic imagination, whereby the poet confronts and is enmeshed by the ambiguities of all values but transcends them" "Power," Both Astolfo and the poet work from a point of relative detachment, for they are able to see themselves and the world as the comedy it really is.

Orlando, however, is not a poetic creator but a passive reader and so he plunges into madness because of the shattering of his fictional image through the truth that was contained in the poetry of Medoro. Johnson Haddad uses the imagery of Orlando reading the poem to connect him with Medusa, Perseus and Narcissus, representing the dark side of self-con- frontation and poetry, for it can lead to creative failure and madness Masciandaro also connects Orlando to Narcissus in that he is unable to accept the fact that Angelica is the other, not shaped by his own image of her As Mazzotta has noted, Orlando's madness lacks the fluency of language, which needs to be retrieved by the imagina- tion "Power," The irony may be that while poetry and the imagina- tion make Orlando insane, his senses are restored thanks to Astolfo's flight of poetic imagination.

What in particular Astolfo brings to Orlando is the ability for a critical reading of creativity and poetry — he should be aware that it is human-made and be able to read beneath its apparent reality. In the Furioso, the culmination of the themes of reason, love, madness and imagination converge with Astolfo's restoration of Orlando's senses. At the same moment, Orlan- do is also "cured" of his love-sickness-although this is probably not a per- manent cure, Astolfo and the narrator will both lose themselves in love again The lovers in Ariosto's world display many conflicting aspects of human nature.

The imagination of desire and poetry's flight demonstrate that when the balance between these faculties is lost, black bile's melan- choly takes over and madness and loss of self results. Paradoxically, melan- choly both works through the imagination and depresses its creative work- ings, which can also lead to madness. This potential for madness, howev- er, is necessary for life, love and poetic creation, so the poet must accept the reality that the passions are part of us and are capable of ruling us.

There is a basic dichotomy underlying the Furioso; as in Ficino's text, you cannot remove the passions from the self, but the hope is that through rea- son you may also come to know yourself and so be capable of checking pas- sion's destructive power. While love and the imagination drive the poem and Orlando, and, ultimately, lead to the demise of both, it is the imagi- nation and love that also shape them and give them life. And it is the col- lapse or the deliberate discarding of desire that ends the imaginative move- ment of the poem. The paradox is that if passion and the potential for madness are eliminated, art also fades: Ariosto's Orlando furioso shows that imagination is the focal point of the limitless activities that distinguish human beings from other living creatures, as well as from each other.

Orlando's madness tied to the hori- zontal nature of love's imagination and Astolfo's voyage to the moon con- nected to the vertical movement of the creative imagination's poetry are at opposite poles. Yet, behind these issues of love, insanity, and the thirst for — 25 — Julia M. Cozzarelli knowledge lies the very basic notion of language as the basis for all human reality. The very different, yet ever fluctuating ties that these two charac- ters share with the creative imagination support their roles as personifica- tions of different approaches to language and life.

As perceived by Ficino, these poles are, however, inseparable one from the other. There is no one figure in Ariosto's text that can be used as a key to unlock the door to earth- ly happiness; all the individual portraits must be gathered together into one unified frame that illustrates the complexity of human nature and of what has often been considered its distinguishing feature-the creative and poet- ic imagination.

Oxford University Press, Orlando Furioso. Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton University Press, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. The Case of Rodamonte. De Panizza Lorch, Maristella. Three Books on Life. Carol Kaske and John Clark. State University of New York at Binghamton, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer. University of California Press, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic. The Poetics of Self-Confrontation.

La fantasia e la memoria: Magic in Boiardo and Ariosto. Battista and Bernardo Sessa, Scritti critici e teorici. Romance Epic Narrative in the Italian Renaissance. Wayne State University Press, University of Missouri Press, Notes on Orlando's Folly," pp. Dante Vision and the Circle of Knowledge.

Ronald Bogue and Mihai I. State University of New York Press, On the Latin Language De lingua latina. Harvard University Press, Stocker, Judit Sexual Warrior. Vorrei esprimere la mia profonda gratitudine a Laura Sanguineti White e ad Andrea Baldi, del dipartimento d'Italiano di Rutgers, per l'incoraggiamento e il sostegno offertomi nelle ricerche su questo soggetto. Alla dinamica che contrappone le figure dei consiglieri nelle tragedie dellavalliane allude Sanguineti White, Dal detto alla figura, Lo scontro, che in entrambe le tragedie oppone l'eroina al consigliere fraudolen- to e i servi fedeli ai servi malvagi, ha sempre per oggetto le emozioni e le passioni del sovrano.

La figura di Judit esempla in maniera particolarmente riuscita i dilemmi posti dal complesso rapporto fra la dimensione etica dell'agire umano e la sua efficacia concreta. Per l'appunto, non simula, dissimula. Della Valle, dal suo osservatorio di piccolo funzionario soggetto alla ruota della fortuna, assolve e giustifica l'utilizzo dell'unico strumento a dispo- sizione dei sottoposti per conservare un margine d'intervento autonomo nei confronti tanto del potere politico quanto della Chiesa. In Tasso l'opposta valu- tazione delle due giovani donne si basa sull'antitesi dei fini perseguiti ed esula da ogni considerazione intorno al mezzo adottato.

Della Valle ha ben presente la percezione sociale del ruolo, del com- portamento e persino del corpo della donna. Judit, in particolare, viene evocata nel prologo in termini di suprema bellezza: L'origine controriformista della lettura di Judit quale figura della Vergine e le imprevedibili conseguenze di tale accosta- mento vengono sondate nel saggio di Pietropaolo, "ludit, Femme Fatale of the Baroque Stage.

La descrizione della bellezza delle eroine, l'attenzione al loro abbigliarsi e le scene di seduzione sono da ricondurre a quest'ottica, prima che ad una specifica intenzione edonistica o voyeuristica dell'autore. Tuttavia, il suo invito ad Aman rappresenta per lui un'ascesa in termini di prestigio e di potere: Le due regine della terza tragedia. Isabella e Maria, sono invece delle vere sovrane, le cui caratteristiche saranno da esaminare insieme a quelle degli altri monarchi delle tragedie di Della Valle.

E il potere dato loro dalla bellezza, che seduce e innamora, legando il volere dell'uomo ai loro disegni. La protagonista tace a tutti i suoi progetti, persino alla serva Abra, alla quale pure mostra un animo coraggioso ed ispirato, che confida nella grazia e nella misericordia divina. L'eroina ebrea lascia agli interlocutori il compito di interpretare i suoi pensieri, senza svelarsi, a differenza del verboso Oloferne, che indulge ad una con- tinua, e forse compiaciuta, autoanalisi". Non abbiamo una descrizione caratterizzante di Judit; la sua avvenenza, ripetutamente menzionata e cele- brata, resta priva di connotati precisi.

Di lei conosciamo solo il colore dora- si veda in proposito l'analisi di Sanguineti White, Dal detto alla figura, Sotto le vesti di donna imbelle, timorosa e compiacente, combatte la propria guerra per la salvezza della patria, facendo leva, scientemente, sulle aspettative maschili. Vagao vede in lei un'umile prigioniera, desiderabile agli occhi del condottiero e dunque capace di guadagnare al servo-con- sigliere un insperato controllo sul proprio capo.

Si tratta di un episodio centrale per importanza e incidenza strutturale, dove alle lusinghe dei sensi si somma la fascinazione della parola, capace di legare e avvincere. Il ruolo chiave rivestito dalla parola rende questa scena di seduzione particolarmente suggestiva dal punto di vista metatestuale. E possibile infatti riconoscere in questi versi una riflessione sul potere persuasivo della parola e dell'immagine, elementi costitutivi di ogni opera teatrale. Fra 1 molti possibili esempi si veda, in particular modo, la risposta di Oloferne alle pressioni di Arimaspe, ai w.

Per un diverso giudizio sulla ricezione di Judit tramite gli epiteti usati dai suoi interlocutori si veda Sanguineti White, Dal detto alla figura. Nel trasformare la rhesis in ekphrasis Della Valle aggiunge un ulteriore livello al proprio intervento metatestuale. L'autore intrec- cia questa indagine conoscitiva ad un'analisi sui rapporti tra parola e immagine, condotta facendo continuo ricorso al campo metaforico della visione come pittura interiore, operazione che incoraggia la lettura della scena della toletta di Judit quale intenzionale presa di posizione all'interno del dibattito sui rapporti tra poesia e pittura.

Attraverso la sua dettagliata descrizione dello svestirsi e del successivo abbigliarsi dell'eroina, Vagao lusinga la fantasia del padrone sulle gioie del- l'eros che questi si attende e ne accarezza il desiderio, rispondendo appieno all'invito di Oloferne che lo esorta ad un resoconto minuzioso: Tutto di', nulla lascia.

Tessari rilegge la natura obliqua della seduzione di Oloferne entro il "dramma cosmico" che a suo avviso strut- tura l'intera tragedia. La forza d'attrazione della bellezza, possibile strada di accesso a Dio, diviene fonte di labirintico smarrimento per il principio maschile rappresentato dal comandante assiro. Questo motivo viene sviluppato nel successivo intervento di Oloferne, che, interrompendo la narrazione del servo, esclama: Vaga figura formi a l'alma, del ver piena. Viene qui rapidamente delineata una vera e pro- pria teoria della ricezione: A differenza dei suoi interlocutori, Oloferne non sa misurare il potere della parola come arma di offesa e di difesa, ma rimane prigioniero di una con- cezione materialistica ed elementare dei conflitti.

Tale consapevolezza affiora invece nei commenti del coro, che, a con- clusione del racconto di Vagao, approfondisce l'analisi dei rapporti tra parola e immagine segnalando le differenze tra i due strumenti e decretan- do il trionfo della resa verbale, ovvero della poesia: Smuove, travolve, accende, e contra lei un cuor mal si difende. In questo passo, il coro si sofferma sugli effetti della parola e dell'immagine, insistendo sull'uso manipolatorio a cui questi mezzi possono essere piegati.

Della Valle, dunque, non solo interviene nel se- colare dibattito sul rapporto tra pittura e poesia, ma assegna alla propria indagine un valore conoscitivo ed etico in sintonia col tema fondamental- mente politico delle sue tragedie. La censura morale del coro assume, quindi, valore di ammoni- mento per gli spettatori, sottoposti, nel quotidiano, a sollecitazioni simili. Al tempo stesso, in un'ulteriore torsione cognitiva, la tragedia cerca, a sua volta, di 'sedurli' proprio nel momento in cui svela i meccanismi della per- suasione.

Dopo questa premessa sull'insidia di un discorso congegnato ad arte, inteso a soggiogare il destinatario, il coro passa ad una notazione sul potere dell'immagine e della parola: Il primato della parola viene sancito dal ritratto — in versi — che Vagao delinea per il proprio signore. La rhesis del mezzano si trasforma in ekphrasis, descrivendo un vero e proprio quadro, anzi un dittico, in quan- to comprende anche la tavola elaborata dall'eroina. Dapprima sembra che sia Vagao inconsapevole stru- mento divino a gestire le passioni del capo assiro.

Vagao premette, infatti, al pro- prio racconto la sintesi dei pregi di Judit: Accecato da un pregiudizio misogino, Vagao non riconosce nella "vaga favella" della sua interlocutrice la stessa arma manipolatrice di cui egli si serve nei confronti del proprio signore. Nel costruire il proprio quadro, il servo dedica ampio spazio all'evo- cazione degli apparati fastosi che fanno da sfondo alla toletta della bella ebrea cfr. L'eroina accetta la sfida e si mostra in tutto il suo splendore. La sua bellezza e il suo fascino sono le armi con cui assume il controllo della situazione fino a capovolgerla, facen- do del voyeur un proprio strumento tramite il quale inebriare e confondere Oloferne: Bisogna tuttavia prestar fede solo in parte a tale strategia di autorappresentazione: Nella descrizione della Judit Della Valle sembra aderire alle teorie di Castiglione, solo che qui l'eroina non mostra una mano o un piede, ma tutte le sue grazie segrete.

L'eroina persegue, infatti, i propri scopi senza mentire. Le basta tacere, senza dover accettare, ad esempio, il fine che implicitamente le attribuisce Vagao: Judit non simula, ma dissimula "onestamente": L'eroina ebrea vince la sua battaglia con le proprie armi, rima- nendo fedele a se stessa e alla sua causa fino alla fine. Tutte le sue parole suggeriscono un'attesa fervida, ma pudica, della notte in arrivo: E come se l'ebrea volesse dichiaratamente prendere le distanze dalla hyhris colpevole degli Assiri.

A questo punto la protagonista passa alla controffensiva, invitando Vagao ad assistere a quel che resta della sua toletta: Questa scena costituisce il secondo pannello del dittico w. Davanti al servo di Oloferne, e quindi per suo tramite nell'immaginazione del duce assiro, ella non a caso si riveste. Judit costruisce se stessa come opera d'arte, orientando tramite una "divina favella" la percezione visiva della propria bellezza.

Raffaelli, Semantica tragica, L'eroina finisce col gestire il gioco, sovvertendo dall'interno le regole imposte dagli avversari. La scena dell'abluzione costituisce il momento chiave di questa dis- simulata esibizione. L'eroina mostra al mezzano l'origine naturale del pro- prio fascino, in un passo di ricercata fattura: L'analogia con la pit- tura viene introdotta dall'eroina nel momento in cui assume un ruolo atti- vo nel definire la propria immagine. Vagao, in veste di poeta, sottolinea gli effetti del rituale di Judit: Judit raffina la propria bellezza servendosi di mezzi puri e legittimi.

Nel primo quadro, infatti, la protagonista, ignara dello sguardo del servo, si spoglia, divenendo emblema della naturalezza che seduce nel suo manifestarsi, mentre nel secondo, tracciato consapevolmente da Judit, l'eroina si riveste, arricchendo il proprio fascino tramite l'artificio.

Se, infatti, la rhesis di Vagao ampli- fica la messa in scena dell'uso strumentale della retorica e delle arti visive, costruendo una rappresentazione della lotta controriformistica per il con- trollo delle coscienze, tale figurazione si colloca all'interno di un discorso di carattere etico sul mondo, come illustrano i commenti del coro. La diversa statura morale dei due antago- nisti si associa, infatti, a due differenti strategie di comportamento. Vagao mente, si mostra servile e adulatore nei confronti di Oloferne e, se neces- sario, nei confronti di Judit, sebbene manipoli l'uno per brama di potere e disprezzi l'altra come prigioniera di guerra.

Le figure femminili, in particolar modo, sembrano le depositarie privilegiate della misteriosa e imperscrutabile azione divina, proprio grazie alla posizione marginale in cui vorrebbe confinarle lo sguardo maschile. Rutgers University Opere citate Accetto, Torquato. A cura di Salvatore Nigro. The Invention of the Renaissance Woman. Pennsylvania State UP, Introduzione di Amedeo Quondam, note di Nicola Longo. A cura di Adriano Prosperi.

Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance. A cura di Marylyn Migiel e Juliana Schiesari. Cornell Univesity Press, La Nuova Italia, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Esemplari di tipologie femminili dalla letteratura europea. A cura di Vanna Gentili. Storia e Letteratura, A cura di Andrea GarefiPi. I La scena del testo. A cura di Carlo Ossola. Centro studi sul teatro medioevale e rinascimentale, Retorica e drammaturgia secentesche.

The Essays of Joan Kelly. Chicago University Press, Women of the Renaissance. A cura di Enrico Cernili et al. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Eemme Fatale of the Baroque Stage" pp. Women in Italian Culture. A cura di Ada Testaferri. Semantica tragica di Federico Della Valle. Dal detto alla figura. Le tragedie di Federico Della Valle. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, Pitture di sperati diletti" pp. Tragedie, commedie, pastorali nella drammaturgia europea fra ' e ' A cura di Silvia Carandini. Despite his acknowledgement of the possible religious symbolism in the poem and his recognition of parallels between this episode and Marino's Dicerie sacre, Giovanni Pozzi reads the scene as a sign of Marino's acknowledgement of the debate between different poetic styles and his defence of his own new style.

Much of the passage's difficulty lies in deciphering the meaning of the nightingale, both as a symbol in Marino's time and as a specific entit ' with- in Marino's poem. Giannantonio, "Natura e arte, This interpretation, while interesting, fails to take into account the musician's regretful attitude toward the dead bird, his blaming him- self for the death, and his burial of the nightingale. Mussio tion of the musician's song, an essentially positive, negative, or neutral and naturai figure?

The musician's grief at its death may be explained without recourse to allegory, but his enigmatic gesture of burying the bird within his lute cannot. The nightingale's large role in both the religious and secular literary traditions also makes it a rather charged figure. In troubadour poetry the nightingale served a variety of functions; it was a marker of the natural as opposed to the human; it also represent- ed springtime, sexuality, and a renewal of life;5 it was a companion to the mournful lover or one that disputed with the lover.

Marino's reliance on Famiano Strada's Prolusiones academicae for the nightingale scene. Imitating the style of Claudianus, Castiglione recounts a story in which a lute player, toward sunset, finds shade beneath All translations from Marino's texts cited are my own. Coelho offers a translation of 52 of Strada's 58 lines, omitting a translation of the final four lines describing the nightingale's death and lines Coelho, "The Lutenist," Then the nightin- gale of the neighouring wood, called the muse of the place, the harmless "inoxia" siren, hears him and comes near him, and resting on the branch- es just above him, sings back to itself whatever the musician plays.

Strada's version, written in Latin, continues to emphasize the competition between the two — the musician exploring all the potential of sound of his instru- ment and the nightingale replying until its voice cannot match the great- ness expressed by the musician. At this point the nightingale dies. Coehlo and Pozzi have analyzed to a certain extent the differences between Marino's version and his source text. Yet there remains much to be explored in the comparison. Influenced in part by Petrarch's nightingale poems,ii Marino alters radically the situation of the episode, redefining the two cen- tral characters of the scene and the relationship between them.

One of the principal ways in which Marino's version departs from its source text is that it makes explicit that amatory situation of the musician. In contrast, Marino emphasizes the amatory quality of the lute player's music: The musician himself is described as a "solitario amante" VII, The flight of Marino's lover recalls the speaker in Petrarch's sonnet 10 who runs toward nature and away from the "palazzi," "reatri" and "logge" and the temptations to virtue that these locations in the city imply. The "shade" of night is less shelter from the sun than a flight from the psychological reality of the Marino, L'Adone e Commento, Pozzi cites Petrarch's sonnets 10 and 31 1.

For other examples of theme of the lover's flight to woods see Petrarch's , , , , in the Rime sparse. The double covering of the thick forest and the dark sky stresses the lover's entrance into a pristine natural world in which the lover's imagination mingles: Because this world is closed off from the one he flees, the lover hopes to find consolation in it. His arrival at the forest is a purposeful flight from something, not as in Strada's episode, a fortuitous opportunity to escape the day's heat. By emphasizing the amatory situation of the musician Marino directs our attention to the lute player's emotional state and mutes the theme of competition so important in Strada's version.

In Marino's version the nightingale is felt to be more an intrusion upon the solitary lover than a mere competitor for musical supremacy. While Strada and Marino both feature the increasing frustration of the musician at hearing his music repeated, Marino stresses throughout the emotional quality of the lute player's song. As soon as the musician hears his notes repeated. Strada has him increase the level of difficulty, without any reference to the music's emotional colouring: As in Petrarch's sonnet , where one finds the grieving lover that is accompanied throughout the night by the nightingale, "et tutta notte par che m'accompagne" "and all night it seems to accompany me" , here the "miser rossignuol" VII, Although Marino's lover will soon lose his focus on his love and turn toward defeating the nightin- gale, this space allows Marino to establish a more complex relationship between the lover and the bird.

The redefinition of the singer as lover prepares for Marino's most important manipulation of Strada's text — the deepening of the relationship between the nightingale and the man. While Strada describes the bird coming near to the musician, Marino stresses its wilful descent from high in the trees, and while Strada has it rest on the branches, Marino has the nightingale come to rest on the singer's head.

Neither Strada's verses, nor Petrarch's two "nightingale" poems can be sources for the nightingale's actions in this scene. While in sonnets 10 and the nightingale's lament is a reminder of the speaker's deeper cares and a spur to virtue, these poems depict a rather loose relationship between the lover and the nightingale. Both figures are absorbed in their own sorrows, and there is no indication that the nightingale has any deeper interest in the lover than in using his music as a catalyst for the expression of its own song.

In contrast, in Marino's version the nightingale is pushed to the centre of the scene — no longer is it merely part of the landscape, as in Petrarch's "nightingale" son- nets. No longer is it a separate, solitary mourner that only casually affects the soul of the lover. No longer can it be merely a reflection of the poet in love. Now it is an active participant in the other's sorrow. It descends, lamenting and repeating to itself the lover's sorrowful words, having inter- rupted its own sweet murmuring in its own language to investigate the intrusion of the lover's words VII, The bird descends to the low- est branches as it listens and repeats the words of the lover, until it rests on the head of the lover VII, Interpreting Nightingales, I have not found such an instance.

Mussio descending and slowly but continually drawing near the lover: The descent of the nightingale to the top the lover's head appears forced and unnatur- al. Pozzi explains it as Marino's evocation of an allegorical icon of Music, which featured a nightingale upon the head of a human figure. More likely, this physical closeness signals its emotional closeness to the musi- cian, its deep participation in his sorrow, and its ptirity of motivation.

It does not seem poised for a normal competition, for it does not take the normal opposing position and attitude of one entering into an agon with another. Its descent to the head of the musician is both a bold and inno- cent gesture. If this is to be a "pugna," as Marino's language at several points seems to demand, then it will be a competition of a different type. Marino mitigates the competitive aspect of the scene further by stress- ing the nightingale's desire merely to repeat, imitate, and emulate the singer.

The nightingale's efforts are evident throughout its interaction with the singer. As it descends to the head of the musician, it repeats his notes: Pozzi notes that other allegorical figures in these cantos, however, have their sources in Poliziano and Claudianus Marino, L'Adone e Commento, Colombo notes how Marino manipulates the images to his own purposes, often transposing features of one of Ripa's icons onto another Colombo, Cultura e tradizione, The accompaniment of the nightingale to the lover found in the lyric tradition is intensified to a degree not found else- where.

The connection between the nightingale's sympathy and its repeti- tion is felt in Marino's phrasing which describes the repetition as occurring even as the nightingale nears the lover: The simultaneous movement toward the lover and the repetition of his words suggests that the imitation is no mere disinterested echo. Indeed, Marino seems to reinvest the sonic repetition with Echo's desire for contact with her beloved.

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