Passioni fra sugheri e loti. Metafore vegetali nei Canti di Mezzanotte (Ziyege 子夜歌, IV‒V secolo)

Midnight Songs or Ziyege 子夜歌 is a cycle of forty-two anonymous pentasyllabic quatrains written by, or for, female singers, whose composition can be dated back to the 4th and 5th centuries. The poems were then gathered together and transmitted to us a few centuries later by the erudite Song dynasty scholar Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩 (1050‒1126) in his encyclopaedic Anthology of yuefu poetry (Yuefu shiji 樂府詩集). This article analyses the metaphors inspired by the natural world in the Midnight Songs, focusing on plants and trees. The relevance of such metaphors is validated by the distinctive characteristics of Chinese language, in which monosyllabism, tonality, homophony, and polysemy, together with the language’s iconic nature, tend to create profound and complex correspondences between sounds, meanings and images. In Chinese, metaphors are something that reveal already existing correspondences rather than inventions of the poet’s inspiration, as is often the case in Western culture. Another objective of this article is to examine a peculiar and so far little studied feature of the Midnight Songs, namely its extensive use of puns (shuangguanyu 雙關語), which is mainly based on homophony and polysemy. While creating parallel and alternative texts, the interaction between puns and metaphors also sets a very complex metaphorical environment which amplifies and even alters the expression and significance of the emotions inherent in the songs.Canti di Mezzanotte (Ziyege 子夜歌) è un ciclo di quarantadue componimenti destinati al canto in forma di quartine pentasillabiche la cui composizione è collocabile fra il IV e il V secolo d.C. e raccolto solo secoli più tardi, in epoca Song, dal letterato ed erudito Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩 (1050‒1126) nel suo Yuefu shiji 樂府詩集 (Antologia di poesie yuefu). Il contributo prenderà in esame le metafore ispirate alla natura e rilevate nei Canti di mezzanotte, in particolare quelle relative a piante ed alberi. L’importanza di tali metafore è confermata dalle caratteristiche distintive della lingua cinese quali il monosillabismo, la tonalità, la polisemia, l’omofonia, l’elemento pittorico e il legame profondo di ogni carattere con la concretezza della esperienza umana che la rendono particolarmente adatta all’uso metaforico.  Oltre alle metafore intese in senso più tradizionale, è presente nella raccolta un elevato numero di calembours o giochi di parole (shuangguanyu 雙關語) costruiti sulla omofonia dei caratteri. Altro scopo del contributo sarà dunque analizzare i giochi di parole, mostrando come l’interazione tra questi e le metafore crei un ambiente metaforico molto complesso che amplifica, stratifica e persino altera l'espressione e il significato delle emozioni insite nelle canzoni

Steps forward to SST applications of slit-less multi-object spectroscopy with the SuperFOSC camera at the Loiano astronomical observatory

Within the framework of any Space Surveillance and Tracking activities, the capability of optical sensors to perform spectroscopic observations would add a unique value to acquiring supplementary information on any extemporary object crossing the telescope field of view. In addition to the astrometric information, probing the body’s albedo via low-resolution spectroscopy would constrain the geometry and physical nature of the target and discriminate among spent rocket parts, coarse debris and intact spacecraft. The EU-SST project SuperFOSC, currently in progress at INAF-OAS, is a one square degree wide-field camera that will equip the “G.D. Cassini’” telescope, located close to Bologna (Italy). Besides the imaging capabilities, we also envisage an option to secure one-shot slit-less spectroscopy of all the (censed and uncensed) objects crossing the telescope field of view along with the observations of the bonafide planned targets. This will be done by placing a diffractive grism on a pupil image inside the camera. This paper investigates the system performance in terms of spectral resolution as a function of the intruding object(s) path for a grism with a fixed or variable position angle. In addition, as an innovative concept, we also discuss a three-faces grism (Trism) solution to catch any source three spectra at a time, each 120 deg apart in position angle on the sky, to maximise spectral resolution disregarding object trajectory. An added value of our Trism solution would be avoiding moving optical parts inside the instrument with a significantly improved image quality