Intervention Att. Antonio Salvatore during the presentation of the Italian edition of the volume of Douglas Firth "The case of Augusto D'Este”, tenutosi in Ferrara presso la Sala Arengo in data 30 aprile 2010
L'occasione dell'intervento – più acconcio sarebbe l'epiteto “riflessione” - sorge dalla presentazione dalla raffinata edizione italiana (anno 2009) del raro volume The Case of Augustus d'Este, pubblicato nel 1948 dal medico inglese Douglas Firth, che sottrasse alla profanazione del tempo, dei topi e dei ladri lettere diari e manoscritti composti, tra il 1793 e il 1847,da Lady Augusta d'Ameland e dal figlio di costei, Sir Augusto d'Este, discendente, come suggerisce il cognome, dell'omonima Casa.
Vi è contenuta la minuziosa, a volte impietosa, descrizione della malattia dalla quale venne struck Sir Augustus d'Este (b. 1794 - m. 1848), multiple sclerosis.
We are in the presence of this literary genre, the 'autopatografia ", narration record personal experience of the disease by the same person who is afflicted, in which most of the time - think of Italo Svevo, or modern , Tiziano Terzani - autopatografo is the man of culture, very often a writer. What is certain is that, as noted by Prof. Enrico Granieri in the introduction to the volume that is presented today, this literary genre "is of considerable importance from a strictly historical point of view and doctor for a summary of progress in a given period diagnostic and therapeutic medical history data through observation of care provided. " But
considerable importance is also more strictly literary in-chief if it is true, to quote Susan Sontag, the American writer who died in 2004 from leukemia, the disease is "the night side of life."
Thomas Mann, in "The Magic Mountain", develops the theme of the disease, questioning the relationship between the disease and the life of the individual patient and the healthy.
Kafka was obsessed by the theme of illness as the external expression of their unease, to the point of somatization symptoms of bad misunderstanding with family members, for life want to be loved and accepted dalla propria famiglia, sensazione che emerge prepotentemente nel romanzo “La metamorfosi”.
In Pirandello predomina il tema della follia del disagio psicologico, delle fissazioni monomaniacali, in tutte le possibili forme e deviazioni: egli rappresenta il malessere psicologico dell'uomo di fronte al perbenismo borghese dell'epoca, ciò che lo rende attuale.
In Proust il malato è forzatamente isolato dal resto della comunità, la malattia è un fattore discriminante che allontana il malato dal centro della scena, dal contesto sociale.
Per Sartre la malattia è disgusto, nausea, in grado di distruggere "ab imis" le fondamenta della società. Nausea della vita, perdita di ogni motivazione, l'uomo irrationality is canceled in the face of the common expressions of social life. Family, work, career, memory, pain and death itself transfigured into elements of a caravanserai confused irrational, illogical, incomprehensible and unacceptable. Albert Camus
courageously resumed the ancient theme of the plague and the situation in the modern context: the disease becomes a symptom of the war that is destroying the world, the fever becomes an opportunity to analyze the isolation, death, pain, separation from families, the need to choose between commitment and survival, the removal and exile. In Svevo
illness is imagined with great clarity, is stronger than life to the point to take its place. For
Gadda (in "The cognition of pain"), the disease is the feeling of frustration, a sense of widespread and crippling depression.
Tobino is placed in the perspective of the physician, the romantic figure of the doctor-missionary locked up with "crazy" (as affectionately, without resorting to metaphors, he liked to call them) in a mental hospital, in a long transition leading to a world without asylums.
In the "Memorial" by Paul Volponi, the discomfort stems from the conflict between nature and civilization of machines.
Metaphor and disease.
In this paper we want to answer the question whether we can dispense with the metaphors in everyday life and literature.
In defining the disease (the night side of life "), as we have seen the Sontag uses a metaphor, and not surprisingly, because, probably, the metaphor is more interesting to treat the theme of illness, much more than the mere use of the disease, of affection as the background of the story (as in "The Betrothed", where the plague that affects the entire community is used as a backdrop for choral scenes so dramatic as to be passed to the story) or, as in the case of Augustus d'Este, as a mere scientific and medical evidence.
Although born as a figure of speech metaphor (from the greek: "transfer"), was from sempre utilizzata nel linguaggio comune. La ragione di ciò – osserva Cicerone nel “De oratore” - è da ricercare nel fatto che il traslato, “nato dalla necessità, sotto la spinta del bisogno e della povertà linguistica, si è diffuso largamente per via del piacere e del godimento che sono insiti in esso”, come è avvenuto “per il vestito che fu inventato dapprima per difendere dal freddo e che poi cominciò ad adoperare anche come ornamento e decoro del corpo”.
Nel caso della malattia, pare che siamo rimasti fermi alla funzione “difensiva”, di “protezione”, per allontanare da noi (o nell'illusione di allontanare) l'angoscia proveniente dal pensiero death.
How many times have we heard the expression "has lost his battle against cancer," "the invasion of the company by AIDS or cancer," "the weapons available to fight AIDS in science or cancer "," modern medical science that declares war on cancer or AIDS?
Illness and death of a human being, after all, are exposed in terms of a commitment and a military defeat.
To remain in literature, we recall that in "Death in Venice" by Mann, cholera metaphorically expresses the moral corruption of the protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach. While he gradually abandons the decadent pleasure evidence that a spy in the Polish boy, cholera takes hold of his body. A sweet corruption destroys it morally, as well as cholera - which devastated Europe - contaminates and destroys his body. In the streets of Venice, Aschenbach succumbs to the temptation to eat some strawberries, sweet and too mature, which transmit cholera, and in the end, he contemplates on the beach Tadzio, Aschenbach dies, the secret rapture of decay, weakness and shame.
Outwardly his public dignity remains intact, but inwardly he sold.
Ultimately, the metaphor, in life or in literature, puts us off the road or helps us to understand the phenomenon of the disease? We
dire che l'atto di scrivere – già di per sé, per molti autori, espressione di malattia – quando si tratta di narrare la malattia (o la morte), attraverso l'utilizzo della metafora, si colora e si carica di un valore simbolico, diviene metafora di altri significati, che rimandano gli uni agli altri.
Malattia intesa come morbo psicologico, follia, malessere collettivo, disagio morale, incapacità di adattamento, solitudine, noia, malinconia, in senso fisico. Tutti concetti che assumono, in letteratura, valori simbolici.
E si sa che il simbolo possiede una duplice natura, giacché, nel momento stesso che rivela, nasconde.
E ci piace ricordare un'altra funzione della metafora, quella di express a concept more effectively, "stronger" as he liked to recall Borges.
E 'that a certain disease, like death (which often proclaims) is a (perhaps the) "topos" for literary excellence.
In all the mythologies of ancient peoples, the disease is interpreted as a sign of divine punishment imposed on people as individuals and the community as punishment for sins committed, gaining from the plague, to tuberculosis, AIDS.
No one today (even if you've read somewhere) seriously subscribe to the existence of a link between disease and moral corruption: this link is a metaphor, not an idea.
But the metaphors as symbols, are "Powerful" have their roots in depth, much more than the rational concepts.
may affect the way we see the world.
It is significant that the same Sontag (Illness as Metaphor ", 1978, ten years after" AIDS as Metaphor ", 1989), in outlining its vision dark, chthonic, metaphor and in its determination to demystify the disease which had been hit and which would have died (leukemia), refusing to give it meaning, arguing that the disease must be viewed with clarity for what it is, not as a symbol of something else ("pneumonia is that pneumonia") recurs as we saw in una metafora (“la malattia è il lato notturno della vita”): concetto ctonio quanto terribile.
Forse delle metafore, come dei simboli, non possiamo proprio fare a meno.
Avv. Antonio Salvatore
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