Title: La dimensione del tragico nella cultura moderna e contemporanea
Edited by: Erica Faccioli
Year: 2015
Pages: 125
Editor: UniversItalia
ISSN: 2421-2679
Editorial
Immateriale, ovvero intangible è l’aggettivo coniato dai membri della Conferenza Generale dell’Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l’educazione, la scienza e la cultura (UNESCO), per defini e tra le molteplici espressioni del patrimonio culturale mondiale da salvaguardare anche quello rappresentato dalle Performing Arts. La Convention for safeguarding of intangible Cultural Heritage, fi mata a Parigi il 17 ottobre 2003, nella sezione dedicata alle “Arti dello Spettacolo” (Article 2 – Defin tions), afferma che: «The performing arts range from vocal and instrumental music, dance and theatre to pantomime, sung verse and beyond. They include numerous cultural expressions that refl ct human creativity and that are also found, to some extent, in many other intangible cultural heritage domains».
La Convezione estende la sua tutela anche a beni materiali quali, ad esempio, strumenti, oggetti, testi, costumi e spazi intimamente connessi alla creazione e alla realizzazione degli spettacoli e/o degli eventi performativi. Salvaguardare questo patrimonio mondiale signifi a apportare miglioramenti nelle infrastrutture, formando in modo adeguato personale e istituzioni per la loro conservazione. Nel documento si evidenzia, inoltre, come: «Cultural media, institutions and industries can also play a crucial role in ensuring the viability of traditional forms of performing arts by developing audiences and raising awareness amongst the general public». A questi principi s’ispira la nascente rivista, aperta a investigare e ad accogliere studi ed esperienze su un patrimonio culturale, che abbiamo il diritto e il dovere di tutelare e tramandare. Di esso esistono innumerevoli beni conservati, ma non ancora archiviati o catalogati, che attendono di essere valorizzati e studiati. Per non parlare delle testimonianze degli spettacoli disseminate in raccolte pubbliche e private, studiate in base al loro settore specifico di appartenenza e per questo motivo defraudate della loro origine comune. L’interesse suscitato nell’opinione pubblica attraverso esposizioni temporanee e permanenti, dedicate alle arti dello spettacolo, non trova un’analoga accoglienza negli studi museologici che cominciano, solo ora, a muovere i primi passi in questo terreno inesplorato. Le nuove tecnologie dell’informazione applicate ai beni culturali sono attratte dalle infin te possibilità che le arti dello spettacolo possono offrire: stanno nascendo musei virtuali e le prime ricostruzioni 3D di messinscene storiche nell’intento di attirare l’interesse di un pubblico sempre più vasto ed eterogeneo e di diffondere le conoscenze tutelando l’eredità del passato, che è il nostro presente. L’internazionalismo delle arti, che nel 1920 Vasilij Kandinskij accarezzava sperando che un giorno alle parole ‘Oriente’ e ‘Occidente’ sarebbe stata sostituita la parola ‘lontananza’, oggi è prassi quotidiana perché nel villaggio globale in cui viviamo, collegandoci in Internet, nulla è più vicino di ciò che è lontano. Ed è per tale motivo che il dialogo su ricerche, studi, scoperte, tentativi falliti e sogni da realizzare è una necessità per eliminare incomprensioni e fratture, congiungendo attraverso la meravigliosa lingua onnicomprensiva delle arti ogni espressione dell’attività pratica e teorica nei diversi campi dell’esperienza umana. Per questo motivo il Comitato Scientifico ed Editoriale di artidellospettacolo-perfomingarts conta soprattutto presenze di studiosi di nazioni diverse. La rivista artidellospettacolo- perfomingarts nasce con questi propositi e si fonda su questi principi. Essa accoglie e indaga varie tematiche relative al teatro, alla danza, alla scenografia, al costume di scena, alla moda per individuare punti di contatto con le altri arti figurative, letterarie, musicali e le nuove tecnologie applicate ai beni culturali. Ospiterà argomenti relativi alla loro conservazione e salvaguardia, curando anche problemi di archiviazione e cataloga zione del proprio patrimonio immateriale. Grande importanza è riservata, inoltre, al partnernariato con enti, fondazioni, centri di ricerca, istituzioni italiane e straniere, ai quali si offre la possibilità di collegamento e di contatto diretto, compresa l’informazione in tempo reale sulle loro attività, prevedendo la condivisione di eventi e progetti culturali. Consapevoli che solo conoscendo l’eredità del passato sia possibile contribuire alla costruzione del nostro domani, la rivista artidellospettacolo-perfomingarts inaugura il suo primo anno di vita con questo numero, dedicato alla dimensione del tragico nella cultura moderna e contemporanea. La varietà dei temi trattati che abbracciano un arco temporale enorme, dall’antico ai nostri giorni, e spaziano in ambiti disciplinari diversi è supportata dai contributi scientifici di studiosi italiani, francesi e russi. La rivista è inoltre corredata da riproduzioni di opere di artisti contemporanei, che hanno partecipato con tali creazioni originali all’edizione del primo numero, curato da Erica Faccioli, presentandole al lettore attraverso brevi narrazioni esplicative del pensiero dei loro autori.
The members of the General Conference of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural organization (UNESCO) have adopted the adjective “intangible” to describe, among the many world-wide cultural expressions that must be safeguarded, also that of the Performing Arts. The Convention for Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, signed in Paris on 17 October 2003, in the section dedicated to the “Performing Arts” (Article 2 – Definitions), states: «The performing arts range from vocal and instrumental music, dance and theatre to pantomime, sung verse and beyond. They include numerous cultural expressions that refl ct human creativity and that are also found, to some extent, in many other intangible cultural heritage domains». The Convention extends its protection also to material goods such as instruments, objects, texts, costumes and spaces intimately connected to the creation and realization of stage productions and/or performances. Safeguarding this world heritage means improving the infrastructures and providing an adequate formation to the institutions and to the personnel responsible for its preservation. The document also highlights how: «Cultural media, instietetutions and industries can also play a crucial role in ensuring the viability of traditional forms of performing arts by developing audiences and raising awareness amongst the general public». Th s new journal is inspired by these principles and is ready to investigate and welcome studies and experiences related to the cultural heritage, which it is our right and duty to preserve and transmit to future generations. Of this heritage, many goods are extant but they have not yet been recorded or catalogued and are waiting to be evaluated and studied. These do not include records of performances scattered in public and private collections that have been studied in relation to their specific fi ld and therefore overlooking their original common context. The interest aroused in public opinion through temporary and permanent exhibitions dedicated to the performing arts has not received a similar acceptance in museum studies that are only now taking their fi st steps into this unexplored fi ld. The new information technologies applied to the cultural heritage are attracted by the endless opportunities offered by the performing arts: the newly born virtual museums and the fi st 3D reconstructions of historical stage productions aim at attracting the interest of an ever larger and more heterogeneous public, and at disseminating knowledge, thereby protecting our past which is also our present. The internationalization of the arts, dreamt of by Vasilij Kandinskij in 1920, in the hope that one day the word “distance” would take the place of the terms “East” and “West” is at present a part of everyday life because, in our global village, whenever we surf the internet nothing is closer than that which is far away. For this reason, a dialogue on research, study projects, discoveries, failed attempts, and yet unfulfilled dreams is necessary in order to eliminate misunderstanding and division. Th s can be effected by using the wonderful, all-embracing language of the arts to bring together every expression of practical and theoretical activity in the various fi lds of human experience. For this reason the Scientific and Editorial Committee of the journal artidellospettacolo-perfomingarts mainly relies on contributions by scholars from different countries. The journal artidellospettacolo- perfomingarts has been conceived with these purposes and is founded on these principles. Th s journal collects and investigates themes concerning theatre, dance, scenography, stage costumes and fashion with the intent to bring to light points of contact between the other figur tive, literary and musical arts and the new technologies applied to the cultural heritage. The journal will host topics concerning the conservation and safeguarding of this heritage. Moreover, it will face problems relative to archiving and cataloguing its own immaterial heritage. Great importance is then given to the partnership with organizations, foundations, research centers and Italian and foreign institutions. All partners gain the opportunity to have a direct link and contact, which allows them to insert updated information on their activities and share their projects and cultural events. Since we are aware that only by knowing our past heritage is it possible to contribute to the building of our future, the journal artidellospettacolo-perfomingarts inaugurates its fi st year with this issue devoted to the dimension of tragic in modern and contemporary culture. Th s number deals with a wide variety of topics encompassing a huge time span. They range from ancient to modern times and concern numerous subject areas supported by the scientific contributions of Italian, French and Russian scholars. Furthermore, the journal includes reproductions of works of contemporary artists, who have contributed to the edition of this fi st issue with these original creations. Erica Faccioli, who edited this number, has introduced them through brief explanations of their authors’ thought.
Index
This issue of the journal is dedicated to the topic of the tragic in modern and contemporary culture: articles of many scholars from different disciplines (theatre, literature, music, philosophy, architecture) begot a complex path originating different perspectives on the possibility of the existence of the paradigm of the tragic as well as on its forms and its aesthetic and philosophical inflections. The volume is enriched by the contribution of artist/contemporary scholars offer the reader original considerations staring from their works.
Download La deriva del tragico THE DRIFT OF THE TRAGIC Enrico Aceti If the tragic reveals itself, if it has a foundation of reality, it is primarily necessary to research and understand the where and when of this event which, as it seems, has been accompanying the human being since a distant past. Starting from the suprahistorical foundation in which the tragic lies as an originally universal category, it is therefore required to trace the drift of temporal and spatial contingencies which have been supporting the outlines of this experience of the soul from ancient Greece to nowadays. If the tragic has a dimension, it means that it takes place within a when and where, through which it encounters the necessary place for the conditions of its existence, representation and therefore of reality, occurrence. But if the tragic does not occur, is it then possible to trace it and unravel a residual, inalienable, atomic dimension? Is this experience today still present in us, in our culture, in the signs we use and of which we are made? Does it exist or does it no longer exist? Could the absence of the tragic in the modern world be a provocation of the tragic itself denuded of all dimensions? From a particular moment of our history the tragic seems to have taken this direction.
Le tragique de l’absence d’être dans le théâtre contemporain THE LACK OF BEING AS THE ROOT OF THE TRAGIC SENSE IN THE CONTEMPORARY THEATRE Michel Corvin I want to explain how, in the contemporary european theatre, the tragic sense of life does no more arise from confrontation against and between insuperable and contradictory values (as in the greek tragedy), nor from the impossible settlement of a tragic state (in Beckett’s, Ionesco’s theatre), but from the radical impossibility to say: “I”. The subject of thoughts and acts is elusive, scattered, separated from himself. So that the identity is unattainable. The human being is a kind of list of crude and destroying strenghts.
THE UPSIDE-DOWN WORLD OF SAVVA MAMONTOV AND THE HYPOSTASIS OF LIGHT BY VERA KOMISSARZHEVSKAYA Donatella Gavrilovich Savva Mamontov identified the sacred and tragic essence of modern theater in the titanic struggle between the narrow-minded materialist conception, dominant in Russia in the nineteenth century, and the hidden spiritual energies of the Russian people. Searching for the “Truth in Beauty”, he renovated the religious and choral origin of the theater. The children of his artistic circle recited biblical tragedies written by him. Among them there was also Konstantin Stanislavsky. And the adults instead recited farces and comedies! The theater returned to be an instrument of spiritual and social education and the whole community became involved in it as a rite. Into the groove of this experimentation also came Vera Komissarzhevskaya. She believed strongly in acting is as a service to the Russian people. It was like a mission for her, a call from God. The Russian people nicknamed her “Joan of Arc” and she led the people, as long as she lived, free of restrictions and compromise. In a gradual process of spiritual refiniment Vera Komissarzhevskaya came to transfigure herself, when she recited, up to embody itself in the concept of the tragic.
MUSICAL METAPHORS OF THE TRAGIC IN BRODSKIJ Elena Petrušanskaja–Averbach Object of this essay is the heuristic role in Brodskij’s poetry played by metaphors containing music-related lexemes. These metaphors include usual poetical “images of sound” and other words of the broad vocabulary of music. Some specific tragic metaphors including the words “piano, sharp, chorus, vibrato, aria, flat” together with some examples of the usage of metaphors based on musical realia will be here investigated. Their combination with the context, their functions and contents are peculiar, different from those of traditional poetry. The analysis shows that these metaphors conceal, dimming them, some particular facets of the tragic, revealing metaphysical depth. We discover in a sense an increase in the size of the tragic in the perception of the world by an individual deprived of his native land, who also for this reason “moves beyond his boundaries” and perceives the surrounding reality as an impressive “portrait of the tragedy”.
Abstract
VOICES FROM CAPTIVE WOMEN. CHORAL DRAMA AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE TRAGIC ESSENCE Ester Cerbo Euripides’ play Trojan Women was first performed in Athens in 415 b.C. The tragedy represents the poor destiny of the Trojan women, who survived the disasters of war and whose destiny is to serve as mistress for Greek leaders. It’s a choral tragedy, where the pain sentiment is shared by characters and chorus, by individuals and community, and this represents the real essence of tragic. Shortly before World War I, Franz Werfel, Expressionist author, continues and remakes Euripides’ drama, and published it in 1915. In this remake the chorus gains a very important role, due to the enhancement of rhytmic and musical elements, and plays on the modern stage the most archaic attribute of the tragic form.
“LA TUA MORTE È UNA COMETA”. ANAMNESIS OF THE ELEGIA PER CARLO MICHELSTAEDTER Alberto Caprioli The Elegia per Carlo Michelstaedter by Alberto Caprioli, composed between 1997 and 1998 on commission of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, focuses on a poem written by the young poet and philosopher from Gorizia – now considered as the most influential Italian thinker after Leopardi – who committed suicide in fall 1910 after having completed his dissertation La persuasione e la rettorica. In the same years of James Joyce’s journeys to the Trieste of Italo Svevo, the visionary and pure Michelstaedter dreamed to hear Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata played in every square of the town by law. The Elegia by Alberto Caprioli creates its own musical form starting from the rhetorical and linguistic structures of a poem written by Carlo Michelstaedter in june 1907. The score makes use of irregular meters, imaginary atmospheres and sounds, as a result of an extensive research on the new potentialities of the instruments, particularly the oboe, pushed to the limits of a maximum virtuosity – not only from the technical, but mainly from the expressive point of view. The oboe d’amore of Bach’s times fleetingly appears in a brief central episode. The intent of Alberto Caprioli’s music is to engage the audience in a different participation, nearly ‘on the stage’, in which – with Luigi Nono – the perception of dynamics brought to the threshold of silence becomes a metaphor of listening. The essay starts from some considerations of various kinds (philological, linguistic, aesthetic), in order to join a synthesis of the concept of tragic as a musical experience that goes far beyond the conventional patterns of the concert: to search for other spaces, other sounds, other audiences, in order to seek a deeper ethical awareness of the value of music as a message.
PRIGOV’S THEATRE: FROM CONCEPTUALISM TO TRANSDIMENSIONAL TRAGEDY Mario Caramitti Always referring to himself as Dmitrii Aleksandrovich, in a life-long “living classic project”, Prigov was one of the main figures in the artistic and literary Russian landscape in the second half of the Twentieth century. As a playwright, he is the author of two longer texts and about twenty short plays. Some of his theatrical texts are still unpublished and are here given for the first time, upon analysis of family archive, an overall presentation. Writing for theatre, Prigov approaches tragedy as a living literary genre, intermixing, in a dense flow of intertextual links, traditional patterns and conceptual art strategies. As a result, he transpones aesthetic fruition in a totally new “transdimension”, where theatre as truth, theatre as fiction and reality itself collide and collapse, confronting reader or the whole audience with the astonishing gravity of a black hole.
BEYOND THE TRAGIC CATHARSIS. ALIENATION AND ESTRANGEMENT IN THE AESTHETICS AND THEATRICAL PRACTICE OF VS. MEYERHOLD, B. BRECHT, AND YU. LYUBIMOV (1901-1963) Francesca Di Tonno This article examines the tragic catharsis by means of its opposite, namely that effect of estrangement theorized and practiced during the twentieth century through the writings and practice of theatrical masters such as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Bertolt Brecht and Yuri Lyubimov. Through a comparative analysis the alienation is addressed both as a theoretical moment from the Russian formalists, both as a useful practice in the performances produced by Bertolt Brecht and Yuri Lyubimov.
LYUDMILA ULITSKAYA, MEDEA AND HER CHILDREN: A VICTORY OF THE IDYLL OVER THE TRAGEDY Syska Katarzyna The present article examines the role of tragic and idyllic mode in Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel Medea and Her Children. The idyll and the tragedy are not only literary genres but particular “modes of perception” (F. von Schiller) or aesthetic modalities (V. Tiupa) ‒ broader categories that determine the structure of the world presented. A novel – as a syncretic genre – may include several aesthethetic modalities (modes) provided that one of them became an aesthetic dominant. In Medea and Her Children by Lyudmila Ulitskaya one can find noumerous references to the ancient myth of Medea abd to its literary version – a tragedy by Euripides. Those references can be indetified mainly in the construction of main character (Medea Sinopli) and plot structure (martial infidelity of Medea’s husband). Space and time indicators in the novel have also a lot in common with the ancient tragedy chronotope. However a close reading of the text shows that Ulitskaya constructed the fictional world presented according to the rules of idyllic chronotope (M. Bakhtin). Tragic modality was evoked merely to be discredited. Traditionally fragile idyllic world and characters in Ulistkaya’s novel turned out to be strong enough to neutralize destructive potential of a tragic mode.
‘ЖИЗНЬ ПОБЕДИЛА СМЕРТЬ’. ON HYBRIDIZATION BETWEEN ‘TRAGIC’ AND ‘ABSURD’ IN D.I. KHARMS SHORT STORIES Irina Marchesini Arguably, Daniil Kharms’ short proses express the tragedy of Soviet society in the Thirties. Interestingly, in achieving this result, the artist exploited several techniques that were originally used in classical Greek tragedy and, beforehand, in satyr plays. To analyse the previously unexplored relationship between Kharms’ texts and the tragic, the present contribution focuses on some narrative devices, such as parataxis and repetition. Paradoxically, by using an anti-mimetic imagery these sketches seem to be giving a depiction of reality that is more loyal than the representation promulgated by Socialist Realism, which in turn appeared as mere constructions. Considerable importance is given to the cultural and historical context in which the examined works were produced, in order to clarify the similarities between the function of the tragic poet both in ancient Greece and in the early Soviet context.
Abstract
THE MIND OF DAEDALUS: MYTH AND POIESIS OF ARCHITECTURE Elisa Poli This paper investigates the possible link between architecture and “sense of the tragic” in art cultures. In order to understand whether and how it is possible to establish a relation between the discipline of design and the sense of tragedy, is proposed here a mythological approach. Who is the architect? What is his archetype? The hypothesis that is advanced here concerns the possibility, going back to the origins of the myth of tragic and to those of the architect, to find a common matrix. To achieve this goal it was decided to start looking through the analysis of the word “architect”. Highlighting the semantic roots of this figure has been possible to identify the profession with a mythical determined character: Daedalus. The hypothesis, almost always proved, for which any myth arises from a collision, from a wound that carries the indeterminate to become determined, was applied also in this case. Daedalus is, for all intents and purposes, a tragic myth as, we believe, in part have demonstrated the hypothesis presented here.
GIAN LORENZO BERNINI: UN’IPOTESI SULLA “MACCHINA DEL SOLE” Leila Zammar L’articolo propone un’ipotesi sul funzionamento di una macchina teatrale che Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) utilizzò più volte per creare una realistica impressione del passare del tempo: la macchina del sole. L’ipotesi si basa sul confronto fra un disegno di una scenografia, finora inedito, corredato di appunti esplicativi di pugno di un paggio dell’entourage dei Barbe-rini e un acquarello, attribuito al Bernini. Osservando bene i due disegni sembrerebbe che entrambi si riferiscano ad una stessa scenografia teatrale. Una prima conferma di questa impressione è data dai documenti da me analizzati, che dimostrano che il paggio fu effettivamente coinvolto nell’organizzazione di una rappresentazione in cui Bernini usò la macchina del sole. Un’ulteriore conferma è data dal fatto che lo stesso paggio non prese più parte a spettacoli teatrali perché successivamente ricoprì ruoli che lo videro impegnato in questioni diplomatico-militari, che lo portarono lontano da Roma.