Economics, talent of thinking

To invest in talent.

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[2].

“Never again a ‘Sonderweg”[3].

It’s the assertion I’ve valued the most in public speeches of Angela Merkel who can comdemn  Hitler, as he cynically swapped a core value of dignity and honour for deutsch citizens, already involved into a hardest post-war reconstruction, to justify a policy of aggression and abuse : the word literally is translated with ‘particular way’, referring to the aristocratic attitude not accepting any agreement or alliance, but so evocative for impoverished people also favourable to authoritarian simplifications.

So that, the handshake with which Angela Merkel welcomed the election of Ursula von der Leyen on July 16, 2019 as president of European Commission[4] does remain a flash subverting the historical problem of ‘pink shares’ : and, on the other hand, speaking about Angela Merkel[5] - now at her second mandate as president of European Council – is acknowledging that ‘pink shares’ made, and make also today, smile those who can manage power.

“…For long time they went on saying : women must have courage, women must change, women must obtain jobs, sometimes you have also to give up jobs in favour of women. All of this is great. It was important and we did obtain a lot. But we can take the risk that woman has to become some ‘super human being’ who, from intellectual features up to the exterior looking, from caring family keeping in mind the needs of each up to an organizational capacity, she has to come as close to perfect as possible… We must encourage more women to dare to go out into the open field, to expose themselves to social criticism, to be able to resist that and to not lose heart…”[6]

As a matter of facts, a constant in the policy of Angela Merkel is her referring to an individual capacity of orienting which characterizes the human being, since their childhood : except to withdraw even only occasionally, as we know, and under the pressure of anguish.

“…I remember a gardener in the courtyard of the house where I grew up – my father was an evangelic pastor – a church hospice for mentally disturbed people, managed by the deaconry. The gardener’s collaborators were psychically disturbed too. Of course even other people could come to him, both as they had nothing better to do and as they had questions to ask him; among them was me.

As a child I had a lot of free time, I didn’t go to kindergarten yet. That gardener, an old quite strong man, gave me great basic confidence and great calm.

He had always time for me, which I greatly appreciated, because my mother always didn’t have time, not to mention my father; this man however, who had a lot of work to do, always made time for me. From him you could learn a lot of things about practical life. For example, I’ve learnt how flowering plants are repotted, and to recognize a good cyclamen. From him I learnt how to talk to mentally disabled people.

It was an incredibly hot environment, trusting, good where I could eat soiled carrots, where I could laze, and where I once even received a sip of black tea. It was beautiful. This man aroused in me the feeling of being connected to the earth, to the soil, to nature…”[7]

Born in Hamburg in 1954, at six months she left with her parents for Templin, at eighty kilometers from Berlin where her father had been transferred and where her younger brother and sister were born. In 1961 the construction of Berlin Wall upset the life of the family, as she herself tells about[8] : for that, maybe, in 1989 the falling of that wall appeared to her as a crossroads, and decided to give up her reserch job at the University Department of Physics, to go into politics.

“…With Michael Schindhelm[9] we’ve been working together, our desks were adjacent to the ‘Academy of Sciences’. But above all, we have been talking and talking and talking, about why in DDR[10] wasn’t possible to explore one’s borders, about why everything was so cramped, small, modest… When exactly did he give me the book I don’t remember… The dedication was decisive… He wrote : “Go outdoors!” It was one of the nicest things anyone could say to me in those years. And when I decided to leave, me like many others have gone outdoors, towards the new… Don’t ask yourself what’s not working, but ask what is working. That was the attitude with which, we East and West German people, faced the turning point of that period.”[11]

Elected to the German Parliament at the age of thirty-six, since 2000 Angela Merkel is president of Christian-Democratic Union (CDU). Appointed Chancellor[12] in 2005 she was then elected again, with a nonstop government which is today in its fourth term. But it is with involvement in European Union politics that Angela Merkel rightly entered among the founding fathers of Europe.[13]

Former president of G8[14] in 2007 and in 2015, her policy has been characterized as a matter of fact by substantial reforms in the economic and social fields, which transferred power from central government to local initiatives and authorities : a revolution which Angela Merkel describes ‘peaceful’, recalling the personal memory of the Wall destruction.

Her own guide lines immediately leveraged an increased reliability, in politics as well as in economics, starting however from human value which, until then, it had not found a hearing from the centers of Power in Germany and in Europe.[15] “…We, and this is the truth, have been living for some time consuming our heritage.”[16] “…Future cannot become the dustbin of the unsolved problems of today.”[17]

Last September 16, Ursula von der Leyen gave her first State of the Union address confirming, as a matter of fact, Angela Merkel policy in all these years of mandate : she outlined as ‘historic’ the decision of a ‘common debt’ which can even anticipate a policy of financial integration, still to be defined. This time, however, the president of the European Commission introduced the theme ‘work’ and  ‘apprenticeship’ in Politics too.

Addressing to young people, and not only to them, she referred to ‘Next Generation EU’ and to the ‘2021-2027 EU multi-annual financial framework’, which will have to make efforts to provide Europe with help needed for ‘environmental’ and ‘digital’ issues[18], crucial indeed in the next months.

What if these were real news for those who aspire to govern as an honorable and productive profession, instead of deluding themselves that there is a ‘special way’ ?

                                          Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – September, 30 2020

[1] “THINK !”, by Giacomo B. Contri January 31, 2020 

[2]Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’. In 2022 he published  his first anthology, ‘35mq: 2012-2022 Dieci anni di inettitudine’.

[3] “Never again a ‘German Sonderweg’”, has been cited from her speech at the Bundestag on February 13, 2003 during the debate on Iraq war : Angela Merkel confirmed Germany joining to NATO and the consequent agreements, even at the cost of providing their own military contingent when required. Here she says ‘Sonderweg’ as  an ‘indifference to the agreements’ but she did know the negative accent that listeners will have perceived.// “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, at care of Robin Mishra. Edizione italiana a cura di Manuel Kromer, ‘Claudiana editore Srl’ 2012, p.186.

[4] Ursula von der Leyen, physician and member of ‘European People’s Party’ was elected president of ‘European Commission’ by the European Parliament on July 16, 2019 and she has been in office since Decembre 1, 2019 (she was preceded by president Juncker). She will act according to the ‘Lisbon Treaty’ (2007-2009), or ‘Reform Treaty’ of the previous ‘European Commission’ – project however abandoned in 2007 – which regulated the ‘transfer of sovereignty’ between Countries and Union, and vice versa. To the ‘Lisbon Treaty’ they could come thanks also to the work of those who have committed themselves to a rewriting of the Constitution : the ACED ‘Action Committee for European Democracy’, or ‘Amato Group’ from the name of the coordinator and former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, was supported by the European Commission with an unofficial mandate, and the concluding text (2007) kept the previous Constitution with the criteria that emerged during the consultations with Governments of each Country, thus remaining a reference for the negotiations on the future Treaty. 

[5] Angela Merkel is graduated in Physics and was University Researcher, before devoting to politics. Married, she is daughter of a theologian and Lutheran pastor : in 2011 she was elected Chancellor – a public office corresponding to our Italian Prime Minister – after a gradual political career in local administrations. 

[6] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above, pp.86-87. The assertion comes from Angela Merkel’ speech in Berlin, on January 26, 2009 for the 90°anniversary of granting the right to vote to women.

[7] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above, pp.199-200, from Angela Merkel’ speech in Hamburg on June 17, 1995 at  Kirchentag – biennal meeting of the Evangelical Church, promoted by lay persons and held in a number of cities in Germany.

[8] “I spent my first 35 years of life in the former DDR. I experienced on my skin that values like freedom and democracy are not at all obvious. And I also experienced how much movement can arise from the yearning for freedom…” p.165 in “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above from the speech of May 1, 2008 at Aachen.

[9] Michael Schindhelm, Angela Merkel’ colleague at the University ’Academy of Sciences’, and quantum chemist.

[10] ‘DDR’, an abbreviation for ‘Deutsche Demokratische Republik’ : after the demolition of Berlin Wall in 1989, the Republic was governed by the Christian-Democratic Union CDU in which Angela Merkel enroled herself, and then elected up to the office of Chancellor.

[11] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above cit., pp.134-135, from Angela Merkel’ speech at Kiel on October 3, 2006 for the anniversary  of German reunification.

[12] Federal Chancellor is the Chief Government in Germany.

[13] “…That’s not a secret : the negotiations for ‘Lisbon Treaty’ did not always go smoothly… It would be not natural in a community of 27 Countries. However, the fact that when it comes to closing – as it happened last year – we always find unity, is a vital force of Europe. Sometimes we should ask ourselves : where does this force come from, as in any difficult moment we can agree ?”, in “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, p.163 cited above from the speech held at Aachen on May 1, 2008 after the first semester of Angela Merkel’ presidency at the European Council, characterized by conspicuous work for the ‘Lisbon Treaty’, or ‘Reform Treaty’, because it would have replaced the previous UE Constitution.

[14] ‘G8’ – preceded by ‘G6’ e ‘G7’ and now again ‘G7’ due to the exit of Russia (as EU required in 2014, together with economical sanctions, due to the illegitimate annexation of Crimea and then made definitive by Russia themselves in 2017) – is a political Forum in which Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, United Kingdom, United States of America participate : they meet also annually as an economical forum. Since 1999 ‘G20’ began to meet and, in addition to the heads of governments, also the finance ministers and central bank governors participate, with the aim of favoring an economic and international agreement : part of it are, besides ‘G8’, all the more industrialized Countries, as ‘G20’ represent more than 80% of world GDP-Gross Domestic Product.

[15] The reform of companies taxes, independently from the corporate form of companies themselves, the expansion of childcare facilities and the introduction of an income subsidy during the absence due to the birth of a child - as offered either to the father or to the mother - are political news introduced in Germany in the first government of Angela Merkel. 

[16] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above, pp.134-135, from the first Angela Merkel’ big speech, she held on October 1°, 2003 at the ‘Deutsches Historisches Museum’ in Berlin. Between 2008 and 2009, facing the financial crisis which put in difficulty also some of the biggest deutsches companies, the Chancellor Merkel approved a substantial refinancing made by the State to the companies in crisis.

[17] “Angela Merkel, parole di potere. Il pensiero della cancelliera”, cited above, p.105, from Angela Merkel’ speech held on June 13, 2006 at Köningwinter.

[18] Source : I.S.P.I. ‘Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale’, Milan.

Fresh news.

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[1].

“…’Do you know, doctor, that today is the last time I’m here ?’

She admits that nothing angers her more than hearing someone who believes that the scene on the lake is just a figment of her own imagination.

Dora had been listening to me without contradicting, as she used to do. She seemed moved; in the most amiable tone she took leave of me with her warmest wishes for a happy new year and… she never came back.

Her father, who came and visit me some more time, was assuring she would return as she clearly wished to continue the treatment. But her father was never quite sincere. As long as he had hoped my chatter could persuade Dora that between he and Mrs. K.  there wasn’t anything else than a good friendship, he had been in favour of the treatment; but when he had seen that among my intentions this purpose did not figure, his interest in the cure was diminished a lot. I did know that Dora would not come back…

Could have I kept the girl if I had supported a part ? If I exaggerated the value I attached to her return ? I don’t know.

…Despite all the theoretical interest, all the professional wish to assist a patient, I tell myself that any psychic influence must have limits and I respect as such also the patient’s will and perspicacity.

…The psychoanalytic cure doesn’t set up a traslation, it only reveals that, as well as all the hidden  psychic processes… In psychoanalysis – due to the different factors on which is based – all the impulses, also the hostile ones, are awakened and utilized by making them conscious, and thereby the traslation itself is continuously undone…

Only fifteen months after the end of the cure and the drafting of my report I could be informed about the state of health of Dora and therefore about the result of the cure. April first… she came to me in order to complete her story and to ask again for my help; but it was enough for me to look at her face to understand that her request was not to take serious…

Years passed since that visit. Dora got married, and precisely – if all the clues don’t deceive me – with the young man about whom she was speaking in those associations at the beginning of the analysis of the second dream… so this second dream was then announcing that she would break away from her father, returning to life.”[2]

                                          Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio - July 11, 2020

[1] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ newspaper as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’.

[2] “Il Caso di Dora. Frammento di un’analisi d’isteria”, by Sigmund Freud (1901) ‘Edizione integrale di riferimento’ – Bollati Boringhieri 2014, Cited : pp.179-196.

Not only on darnel we humans live.

A welcoming garden is a favourable habitat where also a young resourceful oak tree can find to grow.

Ironically commenting the undoubted discoveries of ‘artificial intelligence’ which are based on the possibility to describe thinking thanks to a rational manipulation achievable by computer, the physicist Roger Penrose[1] could conclude : “…Often we say that it is our ‘conscious’ mind to behave in a ‘rational’ way we can understand, while it would be the unconscious mysterious indeed.”

The Freudian unconscious infact, still remains a prerogative for those who get the ‘rational’ as a process following, i.e. ‘secondary’, that ‘primary’ process, absolutely personal, and then not repeatable nor transferable, only ‘identifiable’ by the subject : thanks to these healthy flashes of our thinking the analytical work can find the links – otherwise darkened by our conscience – in which consists the essential competence in care, i.e. the solutions neglected by a subject. In short, this is the ‘knowledge’ and the ‘science’ tout court, without which no minimum or maximum discovery is made possible : however it is hampered in every way, even by the subject himself, or herself, who is always tempted to delegate someone of the ‘community’ in which he recognize himself, or herself.

Probably was this arbitrary passage from an individual rationality, able to connect actions and facts which seem not linked to third parties, to a rationality pre-judged as ‘collective’ – i.e. submitted to  cultural imperatives unduly neglected – which distanced the apprentice Karl Gustav Jung[2] from the scientific work made by Freud, up to appreciate those ‘new’ claims asserted by Jung to the academic communities which landed to the first ‘Game Theories’[3] and to the manipulation of the individual values, essential if a ‘game’ can work.

It is the manipulation itself of the individual values, absolutely ‘soft’ in otder the subject can accept but also necessary to the predictive Theories – then not so ‘scientific’ indeed – the imperative to which only barely the subject can escape, unless you collect the ‘individual science’ which Freud named ‘unconscious’ and that is translated infact with a ‘not yet aware’.

Einstein explained, when solving the photoelectric effect which earned him the Nobel Prize in 1921, that he could be thinking thanks to any “more or less clear images which can on request be combined and reproduced”[4]. Then, what parameters preceed that mythical ubiquitous ‘random behaviour’ in the algorithms ?

Daniel Kahneman[5], one of the greatest theorists of the ‘behaviourism’ asserts that only the ‘highly accessible impressions produced by the system ‘1’ rule our judgements and preferences…” : and infact has been proved that also the ‘logically isomorphic’[6] problems highlight paths absolutely individual in solving.

We owe to Alfred Marshall[7] and to his non-Marxian criticism of the crisis occurred at the Ford phase, the identification of an unexplored path : the human skills and a ‘local share capital’ which literally made look up again those people who were still bent – politicians, economists and researchers - over a destiny menaced by Marx and due to the separation between workers and production tools.

It was, and it is, an essential correction of the prevailing Culture : as increasingly large and concentrated companies shall be necessarily side by side with agglomerating geo-localized small and medium size companies, able to modulate conveniently their own production structure in order to support their own development and of others, not only for survival.

I would like to cite the economist Giacomo Becattini[8] and his agile essay “Dal distretto industriale allo sviluppo locale” reporting an important subtitle, ‘The course and defense of an idea’: “ …In the district you produce capital”[9], understood as “possession of the knowledges and social relationships with a production relief in any specifc historic context”, and you produce ‘widespread capital’, i.e. “an environment in which the know-how is widespread and the personal knowledge allows relationships of differentiated trust.”

In short, a production district “continuously opens up, here and there, to new possibilities of access to the entrepreneurial activity…”, and specifically that “business risk…” for which the investment – path of thinking which is first of all representative, and then individual – can give value to a very likely success, because it fastens to realities already experienced by the subject.

The economist Mariana Mazzucato[10] does recognize to the State an essential governance, more today than in the past, in assuming a bigger risk that is also a long-term investment, the one to favour an entrepreneurial innovation environment, not only a technological one : through, for example, the promising ‘banks for development’.

Let us hope therefore that – only as far as any State is concerned, the Governments representing it and the Bureaucracies which are responsible for the delicate task to make credible Laws and Decrees – they can take into due account the experienced reality of an ‘unequal risk’.

                                                                                         Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio May 16, 2020

[1] Sir Roger Penrose (1931), is mathematician and cosmologist, Cambridge University graduate and  emeritus professor at Oxford University : he received, together with Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), with whom also they were staying in debate on different hypothesis, the Wolf Prize in 1988 for Physics. Here I cite his book “La mente nuova dell’Imperatore”, Rizzoli Editore  1992, p.520.

[2] Karl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychoanalist Freud’s student, inventor of that ‘analytical psychology’ that moved away him by Freud himself after publishing “Libido” in 1912.

J The theoretical reference remains “Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour”, by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern – 1947 ‘Princeton University Press’.

[4] “Il valore della scienza”, Henri Poincarè / translat. into Italian 1992, Ed. Dedalo Bari : from “The Value of Science”, by Henri Poincarè 1913 ‘Science Press’.

[5] “Mappe di razionalità limitata : indagine sui giudizi e le scelte intuitivi”, by Daniel Kahneman in “Critica della ragione economica. Tre saggi : Kahneman, Mc Fadden, Smith” a cura di Motterlini – Piattelli – Palmarini, Ed. “il Saggiatore” 2012, p.126.

[6] “Calcoli morali”, Lazlo Mèro - Ed. Dedalo Bari 2012, p.286 : “two problems are said logically isomorphic when their formal logical structures are exactly alike”. Lazlo Mèro is Hungarian mathematician and psychologist, his essay “Calcoli morali” received in 1999 the prize as best science book in Germany.

[7] “Industria e carattere. Saggi sul pensiero di Alfred Marshall”, by Giacomo Becattini - “Le Monnier Università” 2010. Alfred Marshall (Londra 1842 – Cambridge 1924), has been one of the most influential economist of the last century : his “Principi di Economia” (1881) and “Industria e Commercio” (1919) are still a reference in Political Economics.  

[8] Giacomo Becattini (1927-2017) has been emeritus professor of Political Economy at Florence University, member of the ‘Accademie dei Lincei’, honorary member of ‘Trinity Hall’ (one of the oldest College of Cambridge), ‘honorary’ graduate at Urbino University and president of the ‘Società Italiana degli Economisti’ : found of Alfred Marshall and of the post-war development in Italy , he published essays also on the industrial district of Prato, and its honorary citizen too.

[9] “Dal distretto industriale allo sviluppo locale. Svolgimento e difesa di una idea”, by Giacomo Becattini – Ediz. Bollati Boringhieri 2000, p.53

[10] “Lo Stato innovatore. Sfatare il mito del pubblico contro il privato”, by Mariana Mazzucato 2013 – Editori Laterza Bari.

In the picture, details from the  glkhatun (XIII century a.C.) in the Monastery of Holy Apostles (Surb Arakelots Vank) at Kirants (Tavush, north of Armenia).

Milan - November 9, 2019. A speech by Marco Ruffilli^[1].

Surrounded, as we often are, by what have been ‘already said’, we don’t easily recognize what instead is the ‘unpublished’, that is the real novelties.

It is not only a Middle Ages singularity, and beyond, as Marco Ruffilli introduced last November 9 in Milan^[2], in his rich speech : because he himself, while working on texts and documents produced by the cultured and multifaceted researcher Giulio Ieni^[3], whom he regrets not having met in person, Marco Ruffilli singled out a significant theme, neglected so far and referring to the Armenian glkhatun (or Georgian darbazi), the “typical roofing solution of a square compartment […] through a structure of stone slabs or, more often, wooden planks and beams which, overlapping and staggered, with a progressive overhang, as arranged in parallel or rotated at an angle of 45°, reduce the shutter light through successive horizons, gradually narrowing it upwards”^[4].

It is a solution thought up by Balcan and Transcaucasian workers, renowned for their competence in building, but “very rare in the Byzantine world” and which therefore “pays a peripheral and popular fame”, Ruffilli explained.

“We want dwell here [...] on a few [...] Balcanic examples, poorly known – Giulio Ieni insists – and which even have the same roofings : the church of Agios Theodosios [XII cent.] at Panariti in Argolide, Greece, the one of Shën Gjrgji [XVI-XVII cent.] at Dema in Albany, and the typical kitchen  (magernica) [ante XIX cent.] of the Monastery of Rila, in west Bulgary”^[5].

Ieni continues : “It is an ingenious solution which well responds to that incidental functional need with a geometrical rigour and an exemplary and formal elegance.

However also here [the kitchens, note by Author], it’s not clear what could be the original prototype from which a general so advanced configuration should derive, even if isolated in local architectural production. Certainly not from the ancient Thracian tradition, which we indeed must consider objectively lost with the Slavic and proto-Bulgarian invasions in the Balcanic peninsula; not from the Byzantine or Ottoman tradition, where similar rooms were covered by a spheric canopy or a cone-shaped vault provided with an airhole in key; maybe from the Moldo-Wallachian building practice which sometimes used similar achievements, even if much more modest, as for the kitchen of Văcăreşti Monastery at Bucarest, XVII-XVIII century […]”^[6].

Where such a technical procedure comes from, quite exceptional in the Byzantine context where instead the use of spherical wreaths was generalized for any possible connection between base’s square and circle of shutter, is not easy to say exactly at the moment.”^[7]

On the other hand, the architectural object doesn’t occupy the place of a contingent solution but also of a prototype for future inventions^[8]: as human work, when taking the reality in ‘real’, that is making usable the reality, becomes an object which can be observed weighed up, got over. It is “the theme – Ruffilli explains – of the ‘depicted’ architecture, which Ieni deals with when he considers both the presence of a model for the church inside the votive scene [...], then in a meta-artistic dimension (art which depicts further art), and a practical function of the model from the maker’s perspective.”

In a recent article, Ruffilli examined the critical-philosophical origins of the ‘metaphor of crystal’, which Cesare Brandi used to illustrate the Armenian architecture^[9].

Already in 1968 Brandi confirmed a historical connection between Middle Ages European architecture and Armenian architecture – reduced by other researchers in those years – on the basis “of a relationship which also historically existed at the time of the Crusades, when Armenia was the only one Christian state which aided the Crusaders”^[10].

“The metaphor [...] of ‘crystal’ [...] makes right of the particular disposition of volumes of the Armenian churches […] and certainly hast the evocative merit to recall right away the accuracy of structure and the perfections of forms”^[11]. Brandi here found an abstraction to which, moreover, in Art theory, Wilhelm Worringer already gave “the primary task to reconcile men and nature, making itself a criterion of order, of arrangement in a space, so that it leaves no room for concern”^[12].

At the same time, in order to expose the density of items posed by the khatchkar  -  the traditional stone with a sculptured cross, widespread in the areas usually inhabited by Armenians and sometimes installed in the diaspora too^[13] – Giulio Ieni says that “we need to appeal the parameters of archaic thinking which forever mark large areas of humanity”^[14].

Here is where, in my opinion, the man of science rightly draws on oneiric newborns experience, the one founding the mental constructs of later ages, and the thoughts structured by language : according paths that unconscious neglected and escaped from one’s consciousness, but not so impenetrable as they are present and usable in the goal they offer.

                                                        Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 8, 2020

[1] Marco Ruffilli has a degree in ‘Classical Literature’ at the ‘Università degli Studi’ of Milan and in ‘Mediterranean and Middle East Languages and Cultures’ at ‘Ca' Foscari University’ of Venice. He is also holding a PhD at the ‘Geneve University’and devised a Seminary on Armenian Art that takes place every academic year at the ‘Ca' Foscari University’.

[2] During the yearly (XXIII) ‘Seminario Armenistico Italiano’ of ‘Padus-Araxes’ Cultural Association.         

[3] Giulio Ieni (1943-2003), archaeologist, Art and Architecture historian, dedicated his studies mainly to Byzantine, Balcanic, Armenian and Georgian world, as well as to some monumental complexes in Monferrato (Piemonte, Italy).

[4] G. Ieni, Alcune soluzioni costruttive fra Armenia e Regione Balcanica, "Bazmavep. Revue d'études arméniennes" 3-4 (1981), pp. 412-423, then in Giulio Ieni (1943-2003). Il senso dell'architettura e la maestria della parola, a c. by C. Devoti, A. Perin, C. Solarino, C.E. Spantigati, Edizioni dell'Orso, Alessandria 2015 (Fuori Collana, 149), pp. 65-73: p. 65.

[5] Ibid., p. 70.

[6] Ibid., p. 72.

[7] Ibid., p. 71.

[8] G. Ieni, La rappresentazione dell’oggetto architettonico nell’arte medievale, con riferimento particolare ai modelli di architettura caucasici, in Atti del I Simposio di Arte Armena (Bergamo, 1975 June 28-30), at care of G. Ieni & B.L. Zekiyan, Tipografia Armena di San Lazzaro, Venice 1978, pp. 247-264.

[9] M. Ruffilli, Una fortunata metafora di Cesare Brandi: le «chiese di cristallo» degli Armeni, “Venezia Arti” 27 (2018), pp. 131-139.

[10] C. Brandi, Una mostra di architettura medioevale a Roma. Le chiese di cristallo. Gli edifici armeni costruiti intorno al decimo secolo presentano assonanze con l’edilizia sacra romanica e gotica – Un catalogo che stimola le polemiche,  "Corriere della Sera", 5 luglio 1968, p. 3. It is Brandi’ review about the photographic exhibition of Armenian buildings (Rome, 1968 June 10-30), set up to document the results of ‘La Sapienza’ university mission in Armenia.

[11] Ruffilli, Una fortunata metafora di Cesare Brandi..., cit., p. 132.

[12] Ibid., p. 134.

[13] In the same manner also in Milan, at Sant'Ambrogio square. These stones are a real symbol of Armenian identity, to such an extent that those ones from Giulfa graveyard, in Nakhicevan Azerbaijani exclave, were subjected, by order of Azerbaijan government, to a systematic destruction between 1998 and 2005.

[14] G. Ieni, "L’arte dei Khatchkar", introd. to Id., Khatchkar: croci di pietra armene/Armenian Cross-Stones/Croix en pierre arméniennes, catalog of the exhibition, Venice 1981, now in Giulio Ieni (1943-2003)..., cited, pp. 75-83: p. 81.

Renè Magritte (1899 Lessines / Belgio, 1966 Bruxelles) was one oft the leading characters of Surrealism, a movement founded by Andrè Breton who also was an avid collector of Magritte’s works. Original painting by Stefano Frassetto (6).

“Here is Popaul, my brother who is also a stupid as he doesn’t care of anyone, and Raymond who is even worst than him; this is my father and that woman - the housekeeper - is his lover, and this is a bastard son…“[2]

Magritte is nineteen when, with a friend comes for lunch to his father, addressing him with insolence : but was he the same Renè, but fourteen, when he wandered about the graveyard every afternoon, soon after his mother Regina’s suicide ? At November he would have enroled in the high school of Charleroi, but we have just a few news of those years about which Magritte didn’t like to speak about, as well as about his own works which he didn’t justify in public.

In 1916 he meets Georgette whom he’ll marry in 1921, after his military service and who will be his beloved partner for all the life : their home became the headquarters of Surrealist movement in Belgium and of those Saturdays dancing evenings in the masked parties now remain a few homely videos where Magritte is smiling, finally satisfied.[3]

In 1923, when already exposing his pictures, he is deeply impressioned by the “Love song“, painted in 1914 by Giorgio De Chirico whom Magritte saw at the MOMA in New York and that, only in 1938, he will comment in his “Ecrìts“ : “This exultant poem substituted the stereotyped effect of traditional painting. It’s a full break with the mental attitudes of artists who are prisoners of talent, of virtuosity and of all these little aesthetic specialties. It’s a new vision where the viewer finds his own loneliness and hears the silence oft he world.“

Of this innovation which doesn’t make him dependent on a specific ‘style‘ notwithstanding he is considered one the most representatives of Surrealism[4], the first picture by Magritte is “The window“ (1925) followed by : “The double secret“ (1927), “Impossible attempt“ (1928), “The unexpected answer“ (1933), just to say a few which pointed his own work.

However the complicated rules of Surrealists, which turned around a religious following the founder Brèton and which already caused schisms and divisions to the group, deterred Magritte and his wife who in 1929 came back in Belgium, for economical reasons too, from Paris where for some years they had lived.

In 1934 Brèton himself, maybe worried by the breaking with someone who was already successful, proposed to Magritte to prepare the cover for “Qu’est-ce que le Surrèalisme ?“ with a lecture made by Brèton. Magritte gave Brèton “Le viol“ (1934) with these words : “I hope that you like the project for this cover; I also believe it can be excellent from an advertising point of view.“

Ironic and distant as only the dreamlike can, even in the most ferocious complaint, in ‘Le viol‘ Magritte abruptly stops, falling into the part he hated of  a sadist. Through this grieved picture he gets, little by little, to rebuild an unsuspected responsibility of Règina and of her own suicide, of which since a so far 1912 Magritte absurdly held himself accused, around him the heavy and stubborn silence of those who didn’t wanted to come back, to speak, to untie that terrible act.

Magritte faces in this picture, which he will just once repeat and more clearly in 1945, a new topic for him, the defense of one‘s body : and, painfully, he will have to admit that Règina, just to maintain the naive candor of a ‘beautiful soul‘, chose to give up to defend herself and even, falling silent, to turn against herself the responsibilities of others.

The ‘non‘ innocence of Règina, and of every naive woman - but rigid at the same time - distances Magritte forever from the woman who had been his mother too.

To that topic, the defense of one‘s female body, Art devoted a lot of work : the Renaissance painter Giorgione relied, with a truly surreal ability, the defense of a woman to her male partner, in ‘The storm‘ (1502-1503) versus ‘The impossible attempt‘ (1928) by Magritte.

It’s the woman, according Magritte, who first of all gives up her own defense to offer instead, even if only virtually, a naive naked human who will be fatal to the right in flaunting her ‘beautiful‘ in-difference – i.e. ‘no-difference‘ - towards the other.

Magritte‘ criticism – individual, strong and socially acceptable to neurosis - becomes functional, from an absolutely new perspective – to giving up a relationship and a partnership with the other, when partnership only relies on a phallic functionality, abstract and imperative, and on a strenuous resistance to assume offenses.

A naive seduction, which in the following work of 1945 is emphasized by the softness of a femal body so superimposed on her unavailability of gazing, comes through – in Magritte‘s reconstruction -  the inexpressiveness of the object-which-imputes-nothing, just immediately consumable. It is also a topic - the ‘seducing unavailability‘ – which has in Art, even nowadays its audience of enthusiasts : think of the disturbing Muses of Pre-Raphaelites[5].

His ability, so frequent in Magritte to transform the grotesque of the ‘Whys‘ to which he couldn’t answer into a lightness of suspended that still makes possible to find solutions, is however completely, and comprehensibly, missing in ‘Le viol‘.

In this picture the vacuum has a specific place from which it does mark the viewer.

                                                  Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – January 9, 2020

[1] Renè Magritte (1898, Lessines (Belgio) – 1967, Bruxelles)

[2] “Renè Magritte. Catalogue raisonnè”, at care of D. Sylvester and S. Whitefield, 5voll.; “Magritte”, at care of D. Sylvester – Torino 1992; “R. Magritte. Ecrìts complets”, at care of A. Blavier – Parigi 1979.

[3] Videos offered during the exhibition at Lugano by MASI, September 16, 2018 – January 6, 2019 “La ligne de vie“, title of a rare lecture given by Magritte at the ‘Musèe Royal des Beaux-Arts d’Anverse’ (Belgio) tribute to the surrealists but so speaking of his own work.

[4] ‘Surrealism’ was born in France in ’20s as an avant-garde movement and inspired not only painting but also literature and cinema : however in Magritte there isn’t that ‘psychic automatism’ with which the surrealists pointed the unconsciousness.  

[5] Pre-Raphalites was a Confraternity of artists established in 1848 in Great Britain and there confined, with the aim to recreate the academic purity of the masterpieces made before Raffaello Sanzio.

(6) Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’.

<A ‘drop cap’ is the beginning consonant, or vocal of the first word in a written text and in the ancient medieval manuscripts the ‘drop cap’ was larger than the other letter, and opulently decorated>

I was reading a specialistic journal article (1) and happened thinking, with some pleasure, that ‘behaviourism’, leading the traditional but obsolete ‘Game theories’ is at last beginning to care of Political Economics decisions in one, of a group of Countries, as they are able to guide the public opinion and then the individual investment, saving and consumption decisions too.

Frailty in ‘behaviourism’, which - by means of the ‘Game theories’ - is un-ascribing any single man or woman and the whole society as far as economical decisions, from individual to aggregate, are concerned, is now evident in the present difficulty to forecast the behaviour of individuals who are more and more trained and competent.

The article I’m just reading points then a criticity in Central Banks of a Country, or group of Countries in orienting those behaviours which, even if collective, move from individual choices indeed on the base of available information : it seems convenient to emphasize here that, notwithstanding also the Central Bank of a Country, or Nation, is an Institute and then a body in favour of which different competences do work and cooperate in a specific required scope, it is the President of the Central Bank to be charged with a single political orientation – ‘monetary’ here – toward the whole national, and also supranational community. 

The authors, whom results in terms of mathematical formulations have been here named, consider a currency crisis in a Country, as mainly induced by the expectations of citizens - savers, consumers, investitors of a Country – able to read what the Central Bank, and its President, decides. 

A Nation then, where suddenly the stock of currency does shorten due to not enough profitable ‘domestic’ titles, can incur in more harmful consequencies when decide, by means of their Central Bank to open to a devaluation of their own currency.

The same outcome can obtain the decision to devaluate, when made by a Central Bank unable to afford economic and political costs connected to higher interest rates able, on another hand, to attract savers and investors.

In both these cases, what is crucial is the structure of national market not so simple indeed as able to ascribe specific and different values to the rate of interest, so that it is not easy to forecast the consequencies of a ‘technical’ devaluation. 

An individual competence about the fundamentals (2) of a Country can then vanify simplicistic and consequently abstract, because they don’t supply with reasons – both of concomitance and competition  of national and supranational conditions able to anticipate a currency crisis.   

Under conditions of competition, a minimum signal like a variation of national rate of interest can already contribute to increase conveniently the competence itself and maybe also a social and political sharing.

As a matter of facts, any individual thinking logically moves by reliability, thanks to which anyone can ascribe peacefully his own, or her own, satisfaction or, on the opposite, un-satisfaction. Nothing to do with any ingenuous and hazardous ‘behaviourism’ which dictates : ‘reaction action’.

Buti t is the freudian logic : a whole other world. 

Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio March 13, 2019

1'Self-fulfilling currency crises : the role of interest rates', di Christian Hellwig/Università Los Angeles-CA, Arijit Mukherji/Università del Minnesota, Aleh Tsyvinski/Università di Harvard, Cambridge-MA e 'National Bureau of Economic Research'. The article is the profit of the scientific debate in progress about the forecast of economic events in globalization, which for the first time saw participation of economists from Deutschland (Budapest, 'Society for Economic Dynamics', Annual meeting).

2 Fundamentals of a Nation are, for example : trade balance, aggregate public budget, investment growth rate.