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Il prestigio delle favole antiche. Proust e la festa barocca
Get PDFThis paper focuses on one of the most famous episodes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, that is the great choral scene set at the Opera at the beginning of The Guermantes Way (1920). In these pages a link is established between the drama Phèdre, played on the stage by the actress Berma, and what takes place over the audience, in the boxes where the blue-blooded world of faubourg Saint-Germain is staged. To define the fascination that both representations wield on him, Proust employs the term “prestige:” a word originally rooted in the field of magic, as witnessed by many Grand-Siècle writers as well as by 17th-century dictionaries. By investigating the word’s etymology, the paper shows the reasons why the ‘prestige’ of the aristocratic condition is put on display through mythology. Indeed, in Marcel’s eyes, the Princess of Guermantes becomes a sea goddess, Diana, and Juno. In this respect, The Guermantes Way reproduces, metaphorically, what happened in 16th and 17th-century ballets and festivities, in which those in power played the role of the pagan gods, and wore mythological disguises to embody the most ‘prestigious’ symbolic capital of the West
La macchina mitologica della venezianità. Retorica barocca e imperialismo fascista
Get PDFThis paper connects two critical paradigms: the model of the mythological machine developed by Furio Jesi and the ideology of the venezianità that has been investigated, with respect to the Fascist period, by Mario Isnenghi. In the early 20th century, the myth of the Serenissima plays a key role both in the works of Gabriele D’Annunzio and in the movies inspired by them. This paper focuses on a relevant example taken from such cinematography (La nave, 1921), but it also extends the analysis to other sources, like the glossy magazines and the historical studies printed in Venice during the Ventennio. By projecting the Venetian past onto the Fascist present, these publications offer a rhetorical cloak to disguise the financial and military ambitions of the rising Venetian bourgeoisie. This paper makes use of the conceptual tools elaborated by Jesi in order to dissect this mythology. The goal is to outline a specific variant of the myth of Venice, whose sources do not belong to the 16th-century vulgate, that is the most famous version of the myth. Such sources date back to the second half of the 17th century instead, when the wars against the Turks nurtured a warlike and individualistic rhetoric, both in public celebrations and in typography. The ideas and the narrative that germinated in the Baroque era, as well as the names of the doges and the captains from that time, can be found both in the works of Gino Damerini, a central figure in Venetian cultural life during the Ventennio, and in the verses written by D’Annunzio to celebrate the Italian war in Libya (Merope, 1912).L’articolo mette in comunicazione due paradigmi critici, l’uno teorico e l’altro storiografico: da una parte il modello della macchina mitologica elaborato da Furio Jesi, dall’altra l’ideologia della venezianità studiata, in relazione al Ventennio fascista, da Mario Isnenghi. Le proiezioni mitologiche della Serenissima vengono alimentate, nel primo Novecento, dalle opere di Gabriele D’Annunzio e, più in generale, dal dannunzianesimo cinematografico, di cui si indaga qui un caso specifico (La nave, 1921); ma la ripresa, a fini propagandistici, del mito di Venezia è un fenomeno trasversale, che interessa tanto le riviste patinate quanto gli studi storici, garantendo un paludamento retorico agli interessi, finanziari e militaristi, della nuova borghesia in ascesa. Adoperando gli strumenti concettuali approntati da Jesi, l’articolo si impegna a sciogliere questa mitologia in senso diacronico. Si delinea così una variante specifica del mito di Venezia, le cui fonti non appartengono alla più celebre vulgata cinquecentesca, ma risalgono invece alla seconda metà del Seicento, quando le guerre contro i Turchi favoriscono, tanto nelle celebrazioni pubbliche quanto in tipografia, l’emergere di una retorica bellicosa e individualista. Le idee e le narrazioni germinate in epoca barocca, come pure i nomi dei dogi e dei capitani che di quella stagione furono i maggiori interpreti, si ritrovano puntualmente sia nell’intensa attività pubblicistica di Gino Damerini, uno dei più importanti intellettuali della Venezia fascista, sia nei versi con cui D’Annunzio celebra la guerra di Libia (Merope, 1912)
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