Francesco de Marco, The cyclist .
"Without End", the English folk tale just posted, some interesting reflections on the nature of the narrative. Made or heard by others has its own meaning and its enchanting beauty regardless of the content and complexity of the plot. A simple story, even minimal, told with the pace and tone right, it can be so effective that it becomes fascinating and hypnotic. They were fully aware of the Druids who could make their stories, tune on the sweet vibrations of stringed instruments, a weapon much feared. Even asleep enemies.
The pleasure of a story that magically knows how to be so persuasive is essentially linked to the power of "iteration" to rhythmic regularity of the repetition. "Without End" is a clear example and reminds me a bit 'a popular song that I sang my mother, "The sheep is in the woods", another variant of "The Fair of the East" as made famous by Angelo Branduardi.
"Endless", the story open so infinitely infinitely iterable, suggests the essential form of narrative: a process fluid, potentially permanent, however, consists of a series of several circles (like knots or twists and turns of a dance!) In which the wire the logos-speech wraps for primordial instinct that compels all want to be the pure reproduction of the existent. But it is just enjoying the pleasure of this winding that being (And therefore also the logos of being is perhaps the most complete expression) is preparing to relax the horizontal (line) of going-over, delay it until it is needed. The narrative tension is in fact delay the dissolution of the circle-node, possible through immersion in the current discourse. The circle of repetition is the thread twisted maze of the dance, taken from the primordial rhythm of what they want from himself and only himself endures forever (as suggested by the obsessive tribal rhythm of percussion instruments?). But this abandonment of the most primitive and instinctive pleasures (repetition, which has plenty of space in rock music), through a kind of regression uterine (think of the nursery rhymes and lullabies), is essential because it absorbs enough energy to generate the momentum that enters and exits the ring in the new (the horizontal progression, the line, which breaks the circle and proceeds to points unique according to the chronological order). This double movement contains within itself the essential principles of the aesthetic, rooted in the body, which by its nature seeks to motion as the rest. In harmony with the voltages and cycles of biological life, repetition (think of the refrains of songs, the set formulas or epithets contained in the epic songs) and the relaxation of the fable comprising in equal measure, dynamism and inertia. The importance
che nell'esperienza estetica riveste il ritmo è stata analizzata a fondo da Susanne K. Langer in Sentimento e forma . Essenziali sono i capitoli dedicati alla danza e potremmo dire che per la Langer la danza, con i suoi passi ritmati e la sua naturale adesione alla liquida architettura della musica, è presente in ogni momento della nostra vita estetica, in-formandola segretamente.
Immagino che nell'arte non occidentale, come nella musica africana od indiana, questo interno movimento, fatto di fluida e ritmica alternanza tra ripetizione circolare e distensione sinuosa, risulti più evidente. Ma non saprei dire come e in che senso. Lo sento ad orecchio semplicemente, e immagino che anche la narrazione proceda nella letteratura orale o scritta in modo meno concettualmente strutturato di quanto accada da noi. Ricordo a questo proposito un romanzo africano, letto alcuni anni fa: La via della fame di Ben Okri. Mi aveva colpito proprio per il ritmo narrativo, che mi rimandava a scansioni, intervalli, battute, del tutto nuove e originali, proprie di un altro modo di costruire il racconto. Che non sembrava infatti procedere da una "costruzione" ma correva via, da sé, alternando lunghe fughe, soffiate dall'intensità lirica della voce narrante, a rallentamenti e pause. Penso che nei prossimi decenni letterature mondiali diverse da quella occidentale ci sapranno dare contribuiti preziosi, e forse porteranno po' di sangue alla nostra, così sterilmente appiattita in a repetition (imitation of the kind of model or sanctified by the establishment editorial) that has nothing enigmatic and vital.
Ben Okri, The Way of hunger, Bompiani, 1992
Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form, Feltrinelli
0 comments:
Post a Comment