Per un lessico della propaganda barocca: il Kitsch

This paper focuses on baroque propaganda, and it justifies the anachronism of such category by bringing its heuristic potential to light. Through the analysis of some well-known models (Michel Foucault’s raison d’état, Pierre Bourdieu’s symbolic capital, Jürgen Habermas’s open sphere), the paper points out the main features of consensus building in 17th-century Europe: intermediality, productivity, asystematicity. Aiming at compiling a lexicon of baroque propaganda, the paper also focuses on the concept of Kitsch. The inquiry primarily concerns the painted cycle of Peter Paul Rubens at the Luxembourg palace and the poem Adone by Giovan Battista Marino. The goal is to define the role played by ancient mythology in the representation of Ancien Régime political power.Il saggio discute la categoria di propaganda barocca, motivandone l’anacronismo e mettendone in luce il potenziale euristico. Attraverso l’esame di alcuni celebri paradigmi critici (la ragion di Stato di Michel Foucault, il capitale simbolico di Pierre Bourdieu, la sfera pubblica di Jürgen Habermas), si individuano i caratteri peculiari della costruzione del consenso nell’Europa del XVII secolo: l’intermedialità, la produttività, l’asistematicità. Con lo scopo di allestire un lessico critico che inquadri il fenomeno, l’articolo discute inoltre il concetto di Kitsch. L’analisi, che si concentra sul ciclo pittorico di Peter Paul Rubens al Luxembourg e sull’Adone di Giovan Battista Marino, mira a definire il ruolo che la mitologia pagana assume nella rappresentazione del potere di Antico regime

Baffo secondo Apollinaire Una variante dell’erotomania apollinairiana

Così, nella breve nota introduttiva alla sua traduzione (1937) delle Vies des dames galantes, Alberto Savinio giustificava la sua operazione di recupero nei confronti di un autore poco ortodosso come Pierre de Bourdeille, signore di Brantôme (1540-1614). Si badi bene: non mera curiosità bibliografica, prelibatezza per pochi e scelti palati, ma «libro classico» di valore assoluto, condannato alla clandestinità soltanto da un certo «pregiudizio puritano». Stando a giudicare da quanto questo sag..

Giovan Battista Casti, "Il poema tartaro". Edizione critica e commento.

My thesis is a critical edition of the Poema tartaro by the libertine abbot Giovan Battista Casti (1724-1803). This work is a long octave poem, which satirizes, in accordance with the rules of the mock-heroic genre, Catherine II’s Russian court, where the author lived for years (1776-1779) as a member of the Hapsburg diplomacy. Although Casti was the Austrian court’s official poet, his work never received the authorization to be printed: the emperor Joseph II, after his 1781 alliance with Russia, forbade in fact the publication of a poem whose theme was explicitly against his new ally. Still, Casti’s text circulated widely in form of both manuscript copies and unauthorised (as well as defective) printed ones. A thorough analysis of these materials led to main findings: the version of the poem that Casti realized for the emperor in 1786, including 84 new stanzas, missing in the nineteenth-century pirate printed editions of the poem. Along with the critical edition of the text, my thesis provides a broad commentary on the poem. The commentary is essential in order to illustrate the different perspectives from which the text can be approached. Sure enough, one of the components peculiar to the Poema Tartaro is the continuous overlap of elements that draw on different historical moments: even if the main scenery of the plot is the thirteenth-century Mongolian Empire, ruled by Genghis Khan, there are in fact several references to the nineteenth-century Russia of Catherine II. This strategy aims to present Russia allegorically as a country of perennial savagery. Depicting Petersburg as if it were the lost city of Karakorum and the czarina Catherine as a despotic and “oriental” sovereign, Casti contrasts the French Illuminists’ vision (in particular Voltaire’s) of nineteenth-century Russia as a model for the European Enlightenment. The thesis is completed by an index of the different historical transvestisms used by Casti to assign to every character in Catherine’s court a counterpart in the Mongolian scenery. Furthermore, the index is conceived as a tool to analyse the correlated controversies that inform the whole poem

Il primo orfismo. Il poeta secondo Apollinaire all’altezza del “Bestiaire”

Nella Biblioteca storica, laddove Diodoro parla di Ermes Trismegisto, si legge che egli «inventò anche una lira e la fece a tre corde con dei nervi, a imitazione delle stagioni dell’anno: egli stabilì, infatti, i tre suoni di base – acuto, grave e intermedio – acuto, derivandolo dall’estate, grave dall’inverno, intermedio dalla primavera». Questa fu la probabile ragione che spinse Apollinaire, quando egli si trovò a strutturare la prima raccolta organica dei propri versi, a riservare un posto..

V. SALMASO, Il commento boccaliniano a Tacito

Recensione edita in \uabSinestesie\ub