Events

“Not that everything remains to be done, but it’s just still to be done, that is what I call the legal thought of love, or of its own benefit.”[1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8bZ7vm4_6M Mozart, Symphony n°40 in G minor KV550 Leonard Bernstein. Someone can hazard that Mozart, able to play the piano well at only five years, wasn’t able-bondied : what fancies hover about, and who knows why.

Mustafa, a five years child from Syria, did land at Fiumicino airport (Rome) last January 21st : he was able to move not only his family – father, mother, two little sisters – and the Government of two different Nations, that is Turkey – where the child was living in precariousness with his parents escaping from Syria – and Italy, but also the international Organization[2] which offered specialists and facilities, other than all the people who, just on Mustafa route, are accompanying his transfer or, properly, travel which is at last, and even, a pleasure.

The aimed goal is to supply Mustafa with his first legs and feets, and his first arms and hands which he doesn’t yet know as he’s born without any limb due to nerve gas unloaded on him during his gestation from a bomb at Idlib, in his own Syria at war. Medical operators, wisely careful, anticipate however a satisfying result, and realistic possibilities for Mustafa to get anything his own fellows already do : even studying, they quickly said but we could pick up the words.

Mustafa, who was smiling at his landing in Italy and accustomed to do by himself everything he can, that is very very little indeed compared with his able-bondied fellows – however doesn’t like sleeping, as he confirms without any hesitation when required : “What you don’t like, Mustafa ?”

And about his answer, he meekly repeats without any change, we’re already listening many theories, included the one by which the child, happy by now as heh is distant from the war, won’t fear any more to fall asleep.

How then can they build a reliability[3] all those approaching Mustafa – included his own relatives – if they get away from the marriage with a ‘legal thought of love’ which doesn’t deny thinking :  ‘never hurry, never worry’ ?

Souff(e)rance[4] indeed is now charged with, as it does turn toward a thick and harmful distress like the polluting fogs to which we try to adapt ourselves : until ignored and systematized it will be the enemy of a ‘salus’ which is by no means, as a matter of facts,  non-existent.

Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio January 24, 2022

[1] Cit. in “Tre capitoli” by Giacomo B. Contri, ‘Contributo 7 gennaio 2022’.

[2] https://www.vaticannews.va/it/chiesa/news/2022-01/famiglia-sira-caritas-siena.html?s=03 

[3] “…So that three are my concluding items : Law, Science, Trust”, cit. in “Tre capitoli”, by Giacomo B.Contri ‘Contributo 7 gennaio 2022’.

[4] ‘Il Seminario su “La lettera rubata” in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Biblioteca Einaudi (1974 e 2002) pp.7-58.

An ancient engine leaves the stage, after driving around two killers : ‘Eumenidi’ by Aeschilous has just been well performed and directed by Davide Livermore at the ‘Greek Theater’ of Siracusa (Sicily) last July-August 2021. Excellently then Davide Livermore put again the same matter into ‘Macbeth’, in these days at ‘Teatro alla Scala’ of Milan https://www.teatroallascala.org  : an elegant auto-mobile of ancient times driven on the stage as un-chargeable means of murder. (‘Eumenidi’ was commented in ‘Discharging anxiety in the Law Court of gods’ https://tutorsalus.net/https://www.tutorsalus.net/index.php/en/events-2/289-anxiety-absolved-in-the-law-court-of-gods).

“…Hie thee hither

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;

And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the  golden round

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crown'd withal.[1]»

Not so many feminine serial killers we have indeed, but Lady Macbeth can wear with elegance the role, as the character offers both the application and the slipping shade which William Shakespeare thought when he didn’t really define the Lady, in his shortest tragedy, opening then to the actress, time by time, the chance to personalize her as our main enemy.

The woman risen to Lady of nobleman Macbeth urges his man so that he could come back again to accept her tongue turning to masculine, so pouring into his ears the cruel and necessary know-how from which he is now impeded. A victim then Lord Macbeth himself ?

The losing nobleman, caught by the lust of  a ‘parvenu’ for a kingdom which will be defeated, is  victim indeed of his own keeping really ‘unmarried’[2], that is his shy interest in woman mind and remaining out-doors, virgin and unuseful.

As far as Lady Macbeth is concerned, she is suffering on her unfair side of the world, as she is female and not male : but we are curious about this present actress, well directed now by Davide Livermore for ‘Teatro alla Scala’ of Milan, because she ‘has’ to be pleased by evil…

And that game can be a hazard too, as we unfortunately know when we can’t acknowledge the evil in our own children.

                                                                                        Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio – December 28, 2021

[1] ‘Macbeth’ (1605-1608), by W.Shakespeare - Atto I scena V

[2] ‘The dream of the ‘married man’’, in ‘THINK!’ by Giacomo B. Contri – June 25, 2007.

Original painting by Gianni Russomando[1].

"To any high imagination here any power did lack;

but my wish by then turned on and did will,

like a wheel which similarly is moved,

love who turns sun and other stars."

Paradise, Canto XXXIII 142-145.

It is not in the present article that the ‘Paradise’ by Dante Aligheri gets its place[2] : but the choice of the poet to fulfill a work where the absence of work in the experience of women and men is going on, did persuade me to cite that mechanical ‘wheel’ representing in Dante the humankind, docile or rebel to the master of cart. 

As a matter of fact I do appreciate the man Dante – in his exile since 1302 when he wrote ‘Purgatory’, which would be published in 1305 after the last political disappointment[3] - because in uncertainty and violence of the time he lived in, he risked not only a difficult text in a ‘new’ by then language[4] which would be ours and mine – our present Italian language indeed – but also he did venture in projecting a reliable place for expiation which could give, once admitted into, a further chance to avoid the ultimate sentence to which on the other hand the Christian Middle Age allowed just a little way out or nothing at all : and the Purgatory by Dante does include a largest range of sinners condemned for sloth, laziness[5] and to that melencholic uncertainty which make them brothers as they are called to a stronger will – “and did will” above – but so similar to that one where they fulfilled their earthly existence. 

We can therefore surely lighten Dante by a too much heavy weight for only one man : however asking the poet who was a lucid supporter of Thomistic[6] how it would be possible that – reasonably and humanly – when any thinking imagination does miss[7] - “my wish and “did will” – can instead – and by which way then ? – be touched, brought and finally ‘turned’[8] if just hardly “as a wheel”, which – as a mechanical item can’t look for and then can’t either ‘wish’ ‘Paradise’.

                                     Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio December 1, 2021

[1] 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.”

[2] In this 2021 the 700th anniversary from Dante Alighieri death, I commented his :  ‘Hell’ (‘What children don’t tell’/ www.tutorsalus.net - ‘Thinking as a partner’ May 25, 2021) and ‘Paradise’ (‘…all the people stop at the whistle of their chief’/ www.tutorsalus.net – ‘Events’ June 28, 2021).

[3] Between 1308 and 1312 Dante is writing ‘Purgatory’ from his exile which moves him to Paris, Milan, Genoa and then again to Milan in 1311 in order to pay his own respects to the emperor Arrigo VII, crowned ‘King of Romans’ also if he didn’t succeed in unifying Italy. It is remarkable that almost all the characters in ‘Purgatory’ are from Tuscany, so linked with the previous period of Dante exile.

[4] ‘De vulgari eloquentia’, was written between 1303 and 1305 at the beginning of Dante exile and it is already a formal matter he put, also politically to his contemporaries, about a only one language in Italy.

[5] Nino Visconti for example, as a main character in ‘Purgatory’ I commented in ‘Johanna Vicecomites Galure comitissa’ www.tutorsalus.net / ‘Thinking as a partner’ September 14, 2017.

[6] “…essentia beatitudinis in actu intellectus consistit : sed ad voluntatem pertinet delectatio beatitudinem consequens”( ‘Summa Theol. I II 3, 4)

[7] “To the high imagination here any power did lack…”

[8] “…but my wish by then turned on”

Original painting by Gianni Russomando[1]. Rifer.: 0_5535065_125008.jpg

When you can get again the way you neglected in your childhood, that recalls your judgement on competence in caring : it was just a lack what at that time you called life.

Children, when they keep silent no more live with us.

                                Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio October 26, 2021

[1] 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.”