Events

‘Glory Box’, by Geoff Barrow (‘Portyshead’) drove the conclusive approval of ‘Agamemnon’, directed by Davide Livermore and  co-produced with ‘Teatro Nazionale’ of Genoa.          57° Stagione ‘Teatro Greco Siracusa’ 17 maggio – 9 luglio 2022 I.N.D.A. Istituto Nazionale Dramma Antico  www.indafondazione.org               

 “…Not present is here the son : right he, who ratifies mine and your own pact of love. Yet he should, Orestes.” [1] 

Let one’s own fellow pass to an emotional puppet, rather than offer appointments to be judged, makes of Clytemnestra the prototype of a slave.

An ancient gramophone is, not by mistake, close-up on the stage of ‘Agamemnon’ : even better it excellently plays its role as a support setting up any memory – but not a fanciful one – when it becomes a visual one, as this one can rely just on one’s hearing.

On the other hand, just beyond the terraces of the Theatre there is the cave dug, it seems, on a project by Archimedes and by now known as the ‘ear of Dionysus’ after the name of the tyrant who, while staying elsewhere, could listen to the speaking – amplified up to sixteen times – of anyone being inside.

What does amplify, then, and distorts and deviates the obscure silence of that intentional absence which is the removal itself, putting aside along a swift and stealthy replacement of a suddenly uncomfortable memory ?

That also says the stage of ‘Agamemnon’, where the director dedicated an accomplished scene, and the whole stand, to the supposedly loving affection by which the miserable Clytemnestra[2], burning with approvals and success, moves away from the palace the child, the young prince Orestes in an opera to another one dedicated. But Aeschylous[3], in his original text, offers as just faded her decision.

“Don’t be surprised : a brother, so kind, of yours in arms, Strofio of Phocis, is growing him.”[4]

One wonders what Orestes will remember about that dismissal by his mother, which the queen made – she says – in order to protect him, as the heir to the throne of Argos.

And we can’t forget that, just a few hours before, mythology has it that the youngest Astyanax was thrown by the enemies Achaeans down the walls of Troy on fire, in order he never become the king.

Aeschilous will put forward the recklessness of the divine ‘Erinyes’[5] to fill in the room left vacant of human reason : and that persisting sound on the stage, no more and not only a background which, at times, gets to cover up the acting, becomes however functional to a docility by which the ancient and still current characters pass to ‘objects’ of a superior Destiny which dominates everything, and everything de-imputes too.

“I enjoyed in the blood”, after the massacre declares with sweeping gestures Clytemnestra at whom, the vindictive and crafty ghost of a pleased Iphigenia smiles with the dagger in her hand.

One’s fellow, here, will never have a place as a partner : and, in the absence which is already a removal, the humans condemn themselves to do everything on their own, included crimes, but these ones accepted and justified in a devout submission to a higher, more separate Justice which can use the human way to un-restrain any common revenge.

“ ‘I must! And so be it’.

Then he tightened on his neck the shafts of the Destiny,

deviated his mind on a contrary course,

of a sacrilegious, obscene impiety : that was the turn

which pulled him, inside to dare the extreme.” [6]

Irreplaceability – which is so doubtful to anyone reads this hardest text – of a decisive revenge Aeschilous shows in his ‘Agamemnon’, making however of the tragedy just a prologue of what will come.

Davide Livermore[7] instead comes again to any human freedom and to a choice still enslaved which doesn’t un-chain from that revenge : and his direction is able to clarify the whole trilogy.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - August 1, 2022

[1] Clytemnestra justifies to Agamemnon the absence of their son, Orestes. Cited : ‘Agamennone’, p.63 in “Eschilo. Orestea” con testo originale, traduzione dal greco di Enzo Savino – Garzanti Editore SpA (1998).

[2] Clytemnestra admits to Agamemnon she attempted suicide during his absence.

[3] Aeschilous (525 b.C. – 456 b.C.) was one of the most important Greek poets (‘Prometheus chained’, ‘The Persians’, ‘The seven kings against Thebes’, ‘The supplicants women’, ‘Oresteia’ – ‘Agamemnon’, ‘Coefore’, ‘Eumenides’). He grew at Eleusis, a city of mistery rites near Athens, he fighted alongside Athenians, tecnically he innovated the tragedy introducing a second actor to dialogue with the Choir. After the success of ‘Oresteia’ (458 b.C.) he moved to Sicily and Syracuse. 

[4] Here is still Clytemnestra, while justifying towards Agamemnon because of the absence of their son. Cited : ‘Agamemnon’, p.63 in “Eschilo. Orestea” con testo originale, traduzione dal greco di Enzo Savino – Garzanti Editore SpA (1998).

[5] ‘Coefore’ ed ‘Eumenides’, the two following tragedies making the whole tragedy ‘Oresteia’ are dedicated to the fury of the ‘Erinyes’ and to their ennobled domesticating in favour of humans, which appointed them as ‘Eumenides’, i.e. holders of a specific religious cult.

[6] The Choir reports thoughts and words of Agamemnon when sacrificing his firstborn Iphigenia. Cited : ‘Agamemnon’ pp.22-23 in “Eschilo. Orestea” con testo originale, traduzione dal greco di Enzo Savino – Garzanti Editore SpA (1998).

[7] Davide Livermore is director of opera and theatre since 1998, as he’ve been playing any theater role since he was youngest. He opened the last four seasons at the ‘Teatro alla Scala’ of Milano (‘Attila’ by G. Verdi, 2018-2019; ‘Tosca’ by G. Puccini, 2019-2020; the Concert ‘A rivedere le stelle’, substituting the opera due to Covid19 pandemic; ‘Macbeth’ by G. Verdi, 2021-2022). Since 2019 he directed for the ‘Teatro Greco’ of Syracuse : ‘Helen’ by Euripides (2019), ‘Coefore’ and ‘Eumenides’ by Aeschilous (2021), ‘Agamemnon’ and ‘Oresteia’, by Aeschilous (2022). Since 2017 he is collaborating with the ‘Royal Opera House Muscat’ in Oman.

Not so recent[1] – it is from 2018 – but really up-to-date and enlightening : where the integrity of Freud comes once more in your aid, right where Jacques Lacan gleefully smiled to the undefendable ones, men and women not interested to the truth. Will they really exist ?

As soon there is room for the dark, the unspeakable and the unbearable, to the ‘time’ you can make any vault, tactful or voluptuous, coloured or grey, and finally come back to the starting point, ready for the next round of dancing : it is not the most reassuring ‘time’ but at least is the ‘time’ of an object, something you can – again and again- twist or somewhere support, caress, even gaze.

It remains that Manu Larcent, shrewd author of this unexpectde graphic novel, doesn’t read in Freud the shaman put forward by Jacques Lacan[2] : therefore we thank him, and first of all because he could sweep away – so nicely - that sly stink which many reduced to chains, and moreover uselessly tangled but somehow comforted, come on.

In short, the fetish to catch in order to escape the depressing imputability would be again, and still, ‘the soul of the winner’. 

The time of a thought getting to knowledge as an experience leaving our unconscious, does serve and usefully one's own analytical work, and others : skilfully masked – here is Igor Tuveri[3] and recognizable! – plays the main role of the intelligent servant,  who no one indeed can do without in real life.

It is ‘I’, but English language does keep ‘AI’[4]. Curious obstinacy, huh ?

Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio 5 luglio 2022

[1] ‘Tempo da cani. Un’avventura rocambolesca di Sigmund Freud’, di Manu Larcent - ‘Coconino Press – Fandango’ 2018 (titolo originale : ‘Une aventure rocambolesque de Sigmund Freud – Le temps de chien’/ ‘DARGAUD’ 2002)

[2] ‘La scienza e la verità. Lezione di apertura del Seminario 1965-1966’ in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Bibliot. Einaudi (2002) Vol. II, p.873 e pp.875-876

[3] Igor Tuveri, co-founder (2000) with Carlo Barbieri of the publishing company ‘Coconino Press Srl’.

[4] ‘Artificial Intelligence’, o ‘A.I.’ : there are those who would like it to be replaced to our human imputability of satisfaction and unsatisfaction.

‘For a  juridical conception of love’.[1]

It is the concluding an analysis work, surely it is too : where trusting his, or her own analyst is crucial for the work of both, patient and analyst, who infact ascribe themselves as allies and fellows, up to partners indeed, in re-forming an effective defense for the subject ‘en souff(e)rance’[2].

Trust is already Faith – and already in the memory of a child, not at all naivety or ingenuousness : however it will be a possible mistake in ascribing the treachery of his, or her own trust to point out a naivety and a not-innocence then, for which also a child can hold himself, or herself, responsible[3] : unconscious is legal as doesn’t cause but rather ascribes the offer received by a partner, coming into the reality by this way.

The Report proposed by Maria Delia Contri offers then an indispensable plug to maybe an articulation of ‘Tre capitoli’[4], by which Giacomo B. Contri offered his own experience of a conclusive analytical work, without making an ‘infantilism’ with the child also a psychoanalyst was.

This also proves a definitive distance – which Maria delia Contri well argued – from the Lacan’s doctrine, by which “The first obstacle to its scientific value is that a connection with the  truth as a cause, in its material aspects, has been neglected in the circle of its labour.”[5]

By Lacan, a subject would remain splitted between truth and reality, able just to protect himself – or herself – “on one side by a phobia, on the other side covering with the surface on which the subject will put up a fetish”[6] : the psychoanalysis then “…grows the side of material cause” of the ‘truth’ of a subject, as a ‘lack’ himself, or herself ?

Really nothing ‘causes’ any individual thinking, nor the ‘truth’ of the subject indeed : and the questions by the university students, which were not long in coming, referred to the indispensable essay published by Freud in 1924, and named ‘The economic problem of masochism’.

“…I care to be remembered about a juridical conception of love, and about the science of thinking (i.e.  the unconscious)”[7]: the legacy is, by me, ‘the hundredfold down here’ of an analytical cure as it is a work experience with a certain outcome, whose confirmation is up only to the patient, as a qualified partner in the cure.

The ‘reduction’, demanded by Lacan, is really a ‘subtraction’ in view of a ‘generalizable’ science – so distanced and ‘divided’ by the truth of a subject – and already ‘removal’ of that ‘drive’ pointed by Freud as not-istinctual at all, human ‘law’ indeed.[8]

Maybe there are patients who prefer competence to ‘consolance’ : the latter too, from now on, the Training of Psychoanalysts should take in duly account.

Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio / May 21, 2022

<Original painting by Gianni Russomando>[9]

[1] ‘Per una concezione giuridica dell’amore’ is the title of the Report presented by the psychoanalyst Maria Delia Contri last May 9 at the ‘Università degli Studi’ in Milan, in the context of meetings organized by the university students of ‘Pensare con Freud’. Maria Delia Contri is maybe the person who most closely accompanied Giacomo B. Contri in his professional and human path : engaged in her own analytical work between the 70s and 80s, in 1973 participated with Giacomo B. Contri and other colleagues in the foundation of the psychoanalitic Association ‘Scuola Freudiana’ which moved from criticizing the scientific nature of Lacan’s doctrine; later, in 1980, with his ‘Letter of Dissolution of E.D.P.’ Jacques Lacan himself dissolved the ‘Ecole Freudienne de Paris’ he had founded, and which also Giacomo B. Contri had joined. Maria Delia Contri, who for many years has edited the introductory Report of the annual Symposium work sessions of ‘Società Amici del pensiero’, is the author of ‘Ordine contrordine disordine. La ragione dopo Freud’ – SIC Edizioni (2016).

[2] ‘La scienza e la verità’, Opening Lesson to the Seminar 1965-1966 / ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’ – Vol. II, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Bibliot. Einaudi (2002), p.875. Jacques Lacan correctly shows the subject ‘en souffrance’, the subject who is going through his, or her own analytical work, in order to re-build a proper destination. The same Lacan had introduced the word in ‘The stolen letter’ (Lecture delivered on April 26, 1955) : in the French language infact ‘soufferance’ (pain) and 'souffrance’ (mail ready for despatch) are pronounced in the same way but with a different meaning, only due to the presence, or absence, of the letter ‘e’.

[3] ‘Ereditare da un bambino. Perché no ?’ Isbn 978-88-91081-63-6 Grup. Editor. ‘L’Espresso SpA’ (2014) : in this essay I refer to a few questions posed by Freud on the ‘Case of child Hans’ (1908), I explain what can be the individual competence in the cure of thinking and even a child has : Hans pathology was a zoophobia from which he could heal, without any further relapses.

[4] ‘Tre capitoli’, Giacomo B. Contri - Contributo 7 gennaio 2022 to the Symposium ‘Amore’ 2021-2022.

[5] ‘La scienza e la verità’, Opening Lesson to the Seminar 1965-1966 / ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’ – Vol. II, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Bibliot. Einaudi (2002), p.881

[6] ‘La scienza e la verità’ / ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri  - Bibliot. Einaudi (2002), p.882

[7] It is the ‘incipit’ of the ‘Letter’ Giacomo B. Contri sent to us last December 16, 2021 and that himself then included in his Contributo ‘Tre capitoli’ of January 7, 2022 to Symposium ‘Amore’2021-2022.

[8] ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri - SIC Edizioni (1994 e 1998).

[9] Gianni Russomando, biography : “I’m born in Vercelli (1956). Graduated at ‘Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli’, I can describe me as a simple ‘amanuense’ (medieval hand-painter). Far from expositions and competitions, it’s not a long time I’m on social media with a very personal aim : to give just a flash of quiet to anyone watching at my simple works.”

A misunderstanding : it is in the universe of people where two are starting up[1].

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – May 12,  2022

[1] “Civilization has not started at all with the repression of sexuality, but with its exploitation, that is its insertion in one project, or system, or functioning, like what Freud called, or better what we call Society when translating and what instead we should translate Culture – the Freudian word is Kultur.”, cit. by : ‘La tolleranza del dolore. Stato, diritto, psicoanalisi’, Giacomo B. Contri – SIC Edizioni 1977, p.33