The Toil of Light
W hile poking around in an attic, I found a document with some hendecasyllabic lines written by an anonymous author and lots of pages of the Divine Comedy, widely scattered all around.
I decided to turn this find into an installation of contemporary art, which I have entitled “Se Dante e il vento ed io” (If Dante, the wind, and I). Playing with the words in Italian, I enjoy an ambiguous transposition from ’”ed io” (meaning “and I”) to “e dio” ( meaning “and God”): a clear reference to an imponderable power….
I’m happy to share this discovery with the Jewish Museum of Casale Monferrato.
An exhibition – LA FATICA DELLA LUCE (THE TOIL OF LIGHT) - came out of it, named after the Chanukkàh lamp-holder carrying the same name and specially designed for the museum. It fuses together the prevailing feeling that Chanukkàh (the miracle of light - according to Jewish tradition - lasting eight days after the threatened destruction of the temple) generates in me, as well as the feeling produced by the horrible mess suffered by an ancient and astounding literary work, whose content and form are so rigorous that it has traditionally become an unrivalled paradigm of literary work and ethical compilation.
To reorganize Dante’s messed up work into a new “order”, I wrote again the lines on thin strips of transparent, light-blue/greysh radiographic films, and bundled them together into thirty-three sheaves. The designed installation follows the structure of three new constellations, not yet discovered at Dante’s time: Orue, Lodràlo, and Gràvia
Also the work entitled “The Dark Wood” is part of the exhibition: it is some sort of bush made of dark blue radiographic films, with human bodies printed on them, and installed right at the entrance, on both sides of the door, forcing visitors to brush past it while walking in.
I believe a reflection is necessary about our times, threatened by fear and its ghosts, on how easily can one get lost in the “dark wood” and “lose the light ” of reason.
A video narrates the event told in the poem by this unknown woman who has given me these finds and the whole story.
Già era notte fonda quando Dante,
temendo quello vento forte scuro,
raggiunse me nel sogno qual viandante
pregandomi dell’ovra por sicuro.
Periglia l’arginar, ch’è sua tragedia,
e l’ordine trovar già fu sì duro,
che regge lo sonar di sua Commedia,
naufraga ‘n mare immenso d’i volgari,
tra tomi titolati contra tedia,
ove piccioli stan per grandi mali.
e l’omo per confuso più non vede
che nove Muse fann’i commensali,
e tutto que’ che legge eguali crede,
tanto li strali fondan dentro ‘l core
che l’omini d’uom cacciator son prede.
Ed io che son del sonno nel torpore
scatto come chi prende gran paura,
vedendo ‘l volto suo di gran dolore,
corro dove si giace in l’erba scura
ma ‘l vento mi precede con talento
tosto perch’io veda esta sciagura.
Ahi quanto dur’è dir dolor ch’i’ sento,
che tutto ‘ntorno vo’ cogliendo versi
e qua e là correndo serbar tento
ma pioggia bagna già tutti dispersi
che son perduti omai di lor sequenza
sperando che non sien per parte persi.
Accorta di servarne la semenza
n’accolgo tanti fasci presto, presto,
pur l’occhio non ne trovi conseguenza.
A voi convien trovar la somma e ‘l resto
The Contingent Time of the “book”
Elio Carmi
At the beginning of times, God wanted to speak with Adam. When the first man tried to speak, he uttered an invocation: "El”, which in Hebrew means "God". Although not mentioned in the Bible, it must have gone this way, because "It is manifestly absurd, and an offence against reason, to think that anything should have been named by a human being before God ".
This is how Dante, in his De vulgari eloquentia, stages the primordial dialogue that gave origin to language. With a mix of invention and philosophic determination, Dante imagined a voice breaking the still pristine silence of creation. The syllable "El" affixed the seal of Hebrew on Adam’s mouth, thus allowing Dante to conclude as follows:
"So the Hebrew language was that which the lips of the first speaker moulded".
Dante in his Paradise, Canto XXVI, has dealt with this theory again giving another version: the first word uttered by Adam would no longer be "El", but a sibylline "I". The meaning of this enigmatic letter is obscure, and there is no evidence that the Poet was thinking of a syntagma in Hebrew. One thing is sure, however: Dante’s relationship with Hebrew and Judaism has troubled generations of philologists.
This short excerpt was written by Giulio Busi, an outstanding commentator of the Jewish world and a distinguished university professor.
There is another interesting text I would like to correlate to the work of Margherita Levo Rosenberg. It is a line many remember and often pronounce without knowing any of its many attempted interpretations.
PAPE SATAN, PAPE SATAN ALEPPE
No interpretation given so far to Dante’s renowned line is satisfactory, because none of them is true. Those who suspected that the line had no meaning at all, implied that Alighieri, sometime in his life, might have liked to say nothing. The majority, conversely, thought that the language used in this verse was Hebrew, the holy language. Alas, they failed to support this fitting hypothesis with an interpretation that could be accepted by the common sense of scholars. However, I believe I have a good argument to prove that the language is indeed Hebrew and to rightly interpret it. When entering Saint Peter in Rome - the sovereign temple of Christianity - , which represents the Gates of Paradise on Earth, no matter if you are a believer or not, you will be welcome by prophetic as well as threatening words, written in huge characters along the internal circumference of the dome:
PORTAE INFERI NON PRAEVALEBUNT ADVERSUS EAM.
They quote the Gospel according to Matthew (XVI, V. 18): they are the promise of Christ, the basic tenet of indefectibility of the Church. Now I wonder: on the threshold of Hell, what words, other than the contrary of the above expression, could have Dante put in the bloated mouth of Pluto, who was flaunting his power before the approaching Christian, in order to faithfully interpret what was on his mind? Indeed, Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe are, word by word, the Hebrew for:
Bab e-sciatan, Bab e-sciatan alep; porta Inferi, Porta Inferi praevaluit: the Gate of Hell, the Gate of Hell prevailed.
Pape is the Caldaic word for Bab (R35;בבR36; ) namely door
Satan is the Hebrew word for Sciatan ( R35;שטןR36; ) namely devil.
Aleppe is the Hebrew word for Aleb ( R35;ץלבR36; ) namely to prevail, to oppress.
E-sciatan is the genitive form of the Hebrew word Sciatan, meaning devil.
This was written by Ernesto Manara back in November 26, 1888, in Il Propugnatore, the periodic bimonthly magazine edited by Giosuè Carducci.
Dante and Judaism are connected; many have tried to identify these likely connections through interpretations, words, and translations.
Even Rabbi Flaminio Servi, a citizen of Casale by adoption, though born in Pitigliano in 1841, did so. He was also the esteemed editor of ‘Vessillo Israelitico’, the journal of Italian Judaism, printed in Casale, in via Cavour. For those who are interested to carry out further studies and investigations, they can still find this journal in the archives of the municipal library Giovanni Canna. Rabbi Servi also wrote a booklet entitled “Dante and the Jews”. A comment about it by Professor Vincenzo Moretti is reported below.
The conclusion is that “Dante loved the Jews, nor had he any reason to hate them”. Such a theory was also supported by the political view of an age when the Jews were just beginning to join the Italian leading class and felt genuine love for a country they were finally perceiving as their own. According to Flaminio Servi, Dante, a free thinker - and hostile to the papacy -, who placed in Paradise also figures who had lived before Christ, “is a patriot, becoming the symbol of a country – Italy - that is opening up to other religions and to tolerance”. It is a pity that the history of the 20th century has preferred to read other books.
In this exhibition today, the interpreter is not a scholar, nor a man of letters, and not even a male by gender: she is, instead, a woman, an artist, a physician, and a psychiatrist.
Which means that books have no time, except for the time when they were written. The Torah, the Tanach, the Ten Words have no time. Actually, what we want to relate to the ‘Book’, with our common sense and our good intentions, also has no time, except for its contingent time, the one we live in.
Any interpretation, when becomes public, hence subject to every sort of criticism, can only be a positive one. Venturing out means establishing a relationship with the Other and the Others. For this reason, Margherita Levo Rosenberg’s proposal is interesting. Because, with her venturing out, she leaves the dimension of words and criticism - no matter by whom - fully open.
What the artist says about herself is that …she produces her own link to the notion of "culture" intended as a structured product of one’s identity (applicable to both a single individual, as well as to an entire people), which functions as a connection and glue between generations (tradition), and can be erected as a barrier against the ever present threat of human brutality. However, culture is like a chameleon and liable to destructuring: it may also lend itself to perverse use, causing the loss of the “Light of Reason”. Hence, the tradition of Chanukkàh – the flame lit again after the threatened destruction of the Temple – is an example of Cultural Structure by which, irrespective of their faith, one people, even when in dire strait conditions, can be aggregated around their own identity. Dante aggregates one people around his work, one people who, even many centuries later, finds their linguistic and cultural identity in it.
Therefore, this exhibition entitled LA FATICA DELLA LUCE (THE TOIL OF LIGHT) demands some effort on our part too, calling on us not to remain passive bystanders, but to play with the light, words, senses, and feelings.
There is also something else to it, but it’s up to observers to find out.
I‘m sure your efforts won’t be lost!
Margherita Levo Rosenberg, The Toil of Light....
Elisabetta Rota
Margherita Levo Rosenberg, a highly sensitive and complex artist behind her apparent playful levity, is joining in the celebrations of Chanukkàh with the Jewish Community of Casale with her much personal lamp-holder and with an installation, both of them linked together under a strongly symbolic title: “The Toil of Light”. This title is not only an intimate and deep synthesis of the meaning this festivity has for the author, but it is also charged with polysemantic and multicultural implications. Indeed, quoting the artist herself: “Chanukkàh, in the Jewish tradition, commemorates the miracle of light lasting eight days after the threatened destruction of the temple, which is also a threatened annihilation of one people, of an identity, and of the light of a civilization”. Actually, for all cultures of the Northern Hemisphere, since very ancient times, December has always been characterized by festivities of light: Chanukkàh, Christmas, Yule, the solstice, Santa Lucia. No matter how they are called in the various cultures, in all these celebrations, the kindling of light first of all fortifies and strengthens a weaker sun, but it also symbolizes the surprise, happiness, and gratitude of man for the gradual, weary return of the light, which, prior to any revealed religion, is above all life, germination, essence, unconscious and primordial intuition. Cultures would later conceptualize their instinct, loading it with very important and founding historic and religious implications, just like Chanukkàh in the Jewish tradition. Its powerful and indivisible core, however, is still clearly readable and capable of stirring emotions even in secular and agnostic people.
Further, “The Toil of Light” ideally joins the votive lamp-holder with the installation “If Dante, the wind, and I”. It is as if a sudden illumination had led Margherita to discover the material of which the work is composed. As a matter of fact, what else is the dash of genius and creativity informing the whole operation, other than illumination? A complex and articulated trajectory unravels from the very literary ploy of the fictitious find in an attic of scattered strips of X-ray films with lines from the Divine Comedy, accompanied by a poem by unknown author. It touches upon sensitive issues: the deep, even esoteric value of the word, the eternal dialectics between order and chaos, personal growth, and the rites of passage, which populate also our lives of modern men, although in a more unconscious and uncontrollable way than in traditional societies. First of all the rites of passage: Dante’s Comedy is an initiatory work par excellence, and also because, in order to get near the installation, one has to walk across a rustling and dark threshold, just like the dark wood mentioned by Dante. Dialectics between order and chaos: because the light blue/greysh strips of X-ray films carrying muddled poetic fragments are rearranged back into some sort of order, following the succession of some constellations, not yet discovered at the time of Dante, namely Orue, Lodràlo, and Gràvia. It is some sort of renewed mental passage, where the ancient is reorganized and born again with a different balance, and where the word, blown by a divine wind, comes up with new meanings and realizes, once again, its creative nature. Here, the artist plays with the title words: since ”ed io” (meaning “and I”) can be read as “e dio” (meaning “and God”). It all refers to the profound and complex issue of the relationship between word and Being: from the book of creation, from the Cabalists’ black on white and white on black, to the speculations of medieval nominalists about the identity of names and things, from Plato to Heidegger, from the sacred languages of the various religions to the language of the birds of the Alchemists, from shamanism to Cyberpunk, the word has always enjoyed a close relationship with the ontologic domain. But this is not the time to investigate what generations of philosophers have failed to define fully. Here we are facing art, and art, quite simply, “speaks” for itself to our eyes, our soul, with immediacy, while masking all underlying logic and conceptual speculations.
Finally, a silent video accompanies the installation evoking the event told by the poem, while the fragments scattered by the wind and rescued from the rain, speak a new language once again ...Take your time to listen and
A voi convien trovar la somma e ‘l resto
(Up to thou to find the sum and the rest)
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