My art will make you eternal

At various times between 1892 and 1894 Claude Monet stands at the window of the Au Caprice shop on rue du Grand Pont, painting a series of about fifty paintings depicting the same subject, the Cathedral of Rouen, France. The structure is preferred by the artist for the presence of the stained glass windows and the articulated decorative apparatus, but the painter is not so much interested in the architecture of the cathedral as in demonstrating how a single subject, taken from a single point of view, thanks to the extraordinary polymorphy of light and colors, is sufficient to generate ever new visual stimuli. In fact, through this series of works he studies how the appearance of things changes with the passage of time and with the changing conditions of light, phenomena that take precedence over the perception of the image, subjectively reinterpreted. The cathedral is now only a pretext for intense artistic meditation that blends sensations, fleeting thoughts and lasting thoughts. These works have had the strength to strike the imaginations, since they are not defined, precise and detailed figures, but an impression, fleeting and perceptible in a different way by each pair of eyes, thanks to a technique in which the material reality of the object falls apart and resolves itself in the light that he calls instantaneity. "The painter made us understand that he could have done a hundred, a thousand paintings, as many as the seconds of his life, if his life had lasted as long as the stone monument and if he could have fixed on a canvas as many moments as there are beats of his heart ". It is believed that cathedrals could have inspired the thinking of the philosopher Henri Bergson; and they are admired by Renoir, Degas and Cézanne, who himself affirms the function of art to capture the spirit in order to retain and perpetuate it.

Looking at one of the paintings, one is transported for a moment next to the artist: a fleeting moment, which if it hadn't been for his work, would have vanished forever. Man lives an antagonistic relationship with time, he must surrender to the unstoppable current of time, he must live in the present since there is no certainty about the future, and death awaits him at the end of his fragile life. This is stated by Horace, a Latin poet of the first century BC, in the eleventh ode of the first book, according to which aetas constantly flees and man must carpere diem, or try to grasp a part of the present from the totality and make it of him. The way to freeze a moment and suspend it in eternity is through art. Art, in all its forms, is the only means to freeze an instant of the infinite flow of time, the artist has the power to steal a small piece of history from the flow of nature, to make it relive to who is now far from that reality, and to make a precise image, of oneself or of another, immortal. Poetry, since ancient times, is the art that par excellence has the power to give immortality to man and his thoughts, ensuring that they remain alive forever in the memory. Horace finds in poetry a tool to overcome the transience created by time and nature. While everything is forced to wear out, the poet through his eternal work manages to counteract the action of time by building a monument that cannot be destroyed, more lasting than bronze, made of words.

Horace - Exegi monumentum (Odi 3,30)

Exegi monumentum aere perennius regalique situ pyramidum altius, quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens possit diruere aut innumerabilis annorum series et fuga temporum. Non omnis moriar multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam: usque ego postera crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium scandet cum tacita virgine Pontifex. Dicar qua violens obstrepit Aufidus et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium regnavit populorum, ex humili potens, princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos deduxisse modos. Sume superbiam quaesitam meritis et mihi Delphica lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam.

I created a monument more durable than bronze and higher than the royal mass of the pyramids, which not the voracious rain, not the unbridled kite will be able to break down, neither the incalculable series of years and the flight of times. Not all of me will die and a lot will escape Libitina: I will always grow up to date thanks to the fame among posterity, until the pontiff goes up to the Capitol with the silent virgin. It will be said of me, where the Ofanto roars stormy and where Dauno poor in water reigned over rural populations, who became powerful from humble, that I was the first to transfer the Aeolian poetry on Italic rhythms. Take the pride conquered with your merits and kindly surround my hair with the laurel of Delphi, Melpomene.

Minor Asclepian meter, used only in odes 1: 1 and 3: 30 to connect the beginning of the collection, in which he addresses Maecenas illustrating his life choice under the banner of poetry, at the end, in which the experience ends poetic.

Notes

• Monument from "moneo", a term with a broad meaning that allows us to refer to everything that is a medium for memory.

• Relative to the subjunctive with consecutive value: "I have created such a monument that I cannot tear down .."

• Use of the plural temporum expands the concept, wants to collect in itself the indefinite temporal sequences; hence the choice of the adjective innumerabilis. He insists on coordinating conjunctions all that his work will be able to win.

• Libitina is the Roman goddess of funerals, metonymy to indicate death.

• Not only will not all of him die but what will remain will always be relevant for posterity. Use a chiasmus to establish a relationship between him and those to come.

• Syntactic Greekism. Reference to the Ofanto river that flowed not far from Venosa, the birthplace of Horace, and to the figure of the legendary king of the Puglia region. The two related want to highlight the birthplace of Horace.

• Predicative of strong importance for the primacy in lyric poetry.

• Melpomene is the Muse of tragedy.

• At the syntactic level it is very simple, Horace avoids excessive complexity in the construction of periods, the words he chooses are in common use. Where he realizes the effects he manages to obtain is thanks to the studied placement of the words.

With this ode, contained in the third book with the final value of sealing the poetic experience, Horace celebrates the power of art capable of making man immortal. In the first two lines, the poet affirms his pride in the work he has done, aware of its perpetuity, and then sets it against the destructive action of atmospheric agents or the passage of time, which only the verses can survive. And not only will not all of him die, but what will remain will always be current for those who read him later, and whoever will feel him close to them, always present, since no one wants an eternal old age but an eternity that remains new. He later appears to put a limit on his poetic immortality, stating that it will last as long as Rome, represented through his main institutions. For a Roman, saying this is like saying "Until the sun shines on human disasters", because the idea that Rome can end does not exist. His pride as a poet shines through when he refers to his origins: like many Augustan poets, who are also immersed in the life of the capital, he maintains a particular affection for Puglia, his native land, and was the son of a freedman. But the power obtained to which he alludes is not given by wealth or political power, but by poetic activity. He was the first poet in Rome to create lyric poetry in Latin, taking up the model of archaic Greek lyric poetry, in particular the Aeolian poetry of the Lesvos poets Alceo and Sappho, who had achieved excellence. The reason for the primacy is strongly felt by the Augustan poets; Horace was not unaware that before him other poets such as Catullus and the poetae novi had written lyric poems, but their production seemed to Horace to lack a precise poetic program, instead created by him. At the end of the ode he uses traditional images of poetry, the muse and the laurel of Delphi, which refers to the god Apollo, as a symbol of the poet's immortality corresponding to that of poetry. The muse is not taken up with the vision of an archaic poet, limited to being a means for the divinity, since poetry is totally the creation of the poet; nevertheless Orazio, who until then has exalted his work, transfers his pride to her, in order to soften the tones and not be too proud, in the light of the modus that characterizes him. Horace is a follower of the Epicurean philosophy, for which everything dies, even the soul, and the only form of survival he can conceive is his literary activity, whose goal becomes to escape the inexorable flow of time and its destructive power. . Horace hides behind an apparent lexical simplicity both unique feelings that could find no other expression except in poetry, and the complex desire for immortality inherent in man, who tries to assert himself in the spirit of the time and in the memory of his own constructed words, in poetic field, with a deep research and elaboration such as to make them close to those who read them even after many years, allowing future generations to identify with them.

Poets like Ovid are equally aware of this eternal power of art, who in the autobiographical elegy with which he closes the Tristia, underlines his poetic inclination: "Therefore if the omens of poets have something true, I too should die immediately, I will not be yours, oh earth ”, solemnly declaring the immortality he hopes to obtain thanks to poetry. In the same way Propertius in his declaration of poetics shows himself aware that even after his death his name will remain on the lips of men through his verses, as refined as the poem of the aforementioned Callimachus, who further dedicates epigram VII to his friend Teeteto, a poet whose works are not as successful as those of the dramatic poets, but will be praised even longer by the few who will understand their value, even after his death. If here the authors themselves are the protagonists of the work, through their eternal memory and fame among posterity, the scenario changes when it is conceived by the artist as the greatest gift that can be given to a loved one: thus Catullus dedicates his poems to Lesbia, and Properzio to Cinzia. Horace in ode 4.8 writes to his friend Censorino that he does not possess wealth, but that he will give him one of the most beautiful things that he can give him: eternity, through his verses of him.

"And you would have the most beautiful gifts from me, if my wealth consisted in those arts, which were the pride of Parrasio or Scopa, able to represent a man or a god in the marble, those with living colors. But I don't have this power, nor do you have the heart or taste for those delights. You delight in songs: and in songs I can give you a gift, and assign a price to my offering. It is not the inscriptions engraved on the tombstones in public remembrance, which can render after death the breath of life and vigor to the talented leaders [...]. To a man worthy of praise, the Muse prevents him from dying, the Muse makes him blessed in heaven." Perhaps written on the occasion of Saturnalia, festivals in which gifts were exchanged, Horace refuses precarious goods, choosing to offer Censorino eternity and therefore freedom from the fear of death, enclosing his spirit in poetic verses that are worth more than material works. The same intent is the love song of Theognis of Megara, who gives the wings of eternity to his beloved Cirno.

Theognis - Love song (Corpus Theognideum, vv.237-254)

Σοὶ μὲν ἐγὼ πτέρ' ἔδωκα, σὺν οἷσ' ἐπ' ἀπείρονα πόντον πωτήσηι, κατὰ γῆν πᾶσαν ἀειρόμενος ῥηϊδίως· θοίνηις δὲ καὶ εἰλαπίνηισι παρέσσηι ἐν πάσαις πολλῶν κείμενος ἐν στόμασιν, καί σε σὺν αὐλίσκοισι λιγυφθόγγοις νέοι ἄνδρες εὐκόσμως ἐρατοὶ καλά τε καὶ λιγέα ἄισονται. καὶ ὅταν δνοφερῆς ὑπὸ κεύθεσι γαίης βῆις πολυκωκύτους εἰς Ἀίδαο δόμους, οὐδέποτ' οὐδὲ θανὼν ἀπολεῖς κλέος, ἀλλὰ μελήσεις ἄφθιτον ἀνθρώποισ' αἰὲν ἔχων ὄνομα, Κύρνε, καθ' Ἑλλάδα γῆν στρωφώμενος, ἠδ' ἀνὰ νήσους ἰχθυόεντα περῶν πόντον ἐπ' ἀτρύγετον, οὐχ ἵππων νώτοισιν ἐφήμενος· ἀλλά σε πέμψει ἀγλαὰ Μουσάων δῶρα ἰοστεφάνων. πᾶσι δ', ὅσοισι μέμηλε, καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἀοιδή ἔσσηι ὁμῶς, ὄφρ' ἂν γῆ τε καὶ ἠέλιος. αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν ὀλίγης παρὰ σεῦ οὐ τυγχάνω αἰδοῦς, ἀλλ' ὥσπερ μικρὸν παῖδα λόγοις μ' ἀπατᾶις.

I gave you wings to fly over the infinite sea and to lift you easily over all the earth; you will be present at feasts and banquets, with your name on the lips of many, alive. Loving boys will sing to you, in high-pitched serene voices, to the sound of flutes. And when in the depths of the dark land, you will reach the groaning palace of Hades, not even dead will you lose your fame, but you will remain in the hearts of men since you will have an inextinguishable name, oh Cirno, circling around the Hellenic land and among the islands crossing inseminated seas full of fish, and not sitting on the back of horses: but guided by the splendid gifts of the muses crowned with violets. And for all those who love singing you will be alive, as long as the earth and the sun last. Yet I am worth nothing to you: you deceive me with words, as if I were a child.

Elegiac couplet

Notes

• The poem opens with the metaphor of wings, a symbol of the poetry that the poet gives to his beloved. It is the first attestation of the metaphor of flight in reference to poetry.

• In the final couplet there is a ἀπροσδόκητον, a rhetorical figure that introduces an unexpected element that upsets what has been said previously. In archaic morality according to the principle of reciprocity, anyone who did not reciprocate the other with the same behavior manifested, was stained with ἀδικία.

• The Theognidean silloge is characterized for the most part by a sententious style. Theognis, although he had to speak the Doric dialect, writes in the Ionic dialect, typical of elegiac poets. He takes up formulas of the Homeric model by modifying them, with a paratactic structure.

These verses are part of a collection in two books dedicated to Cirno, the young ἐρώμενος of Theognis, to follow the teachings of aristocratic virtue. The boy's name is used by the poet as a seal, the author's signature through which he declares that the verses are composed by him, to prevent them from being stolen or attributed to compositions by other authors, aware of his fame as a aedo. His poems are in fact contained in symposium collections, given the use of exchanging elegies at convivial parties, occasions for pleasure and reflection. But Cirno is not only a means of the poet to claim his verses; with this elegy Theognis wants to give the young man a fame of the same duration as that of Horace, that is, "as long as the earth and the sun will last", to be remembered even after death, by virtue of the didactic libido of the poet's ego. Here is the aspect of the education of young people linked to the homoerotic relationship between the ραστής and the ἐρώμενος, which had to be initiated into the dimension of love. In Corpus Theognideum Cirno, like a Dorian Gray, is praised for his beauty, which he is invited to avail himself of before it fades, and is urged to return the love of which he is made the object. However, in the final couplet the beloved, who does not initially understand the gift he received, is accused of not reciprocating his love for him and deluding him. This is intertwined with the suffering of the lover, who understands that the young man does not completely belong to him and rather teases him and shows himself to be deceptive.

Ugo Foscolo assigns a consoling function to poetry, as man overwhelmed by passions finds consolation in art, a source of harmony and beauty, and an eternal and civilizing function, celebrating human values ​​and inducing posterity to appropriate them. The neoclassical poet of Zakynthos then praises the beauty eternalized by the song of the poets, in particular in the ode "To the healed friend", an occasional composition dedicated to a woman he loved, Antonietta Fagnani Arese, in 1802. Foscolo wants to render indelible the beauty of his woman, which the disease has ruined but which art can impress over time. The function of this ode is to make female beauty eternal, a symbol of humanity's highest values. Concluded only when the bond between the two has dissolved, the ode ends with a celebration of poetry and the poet himself, introducing a comparison with Sappho's Aeolian lyric. In the context of the thiaso to which his poems are reported, love is felt as a passion that generates suffering, arouses jealousy, expectation, regret, nostalgia and pain for separation. Love is characteristic of youth and absent in old age to which everyone will sooner or later arrive. Only poetry is capable of overcoming time; the motif of the eternal poem has one of its most ancient attestations precisely in fragment 55 of the poetess of Lesbos: "You will lie dead and there will no longer be any memory of you in the future: in fact you have no part of the roses of Pieria, but also in the house of Hades tu obscure you will wander among the shadows of the dead, flew away from here ”. Here the immortal aspect of the poem becomes a damnatio memoriae, a threat of fate of oblivion to a rich but uncultivated woman deprived of the gifts of the Muses, for which she will die without leaving a trace of herself in her memory.

Art is a monumentum that embodies memory and feeling, puts us in contact with the spirit of the time and frees us from the chains of the present. Symbol of a boundless horizon of thoughts, it represents the most concrete meeting place that unites different generations, creating an important link between past, present and future, thanks to the sharing of emotions, aspirations, stories condensed in the work we preserve. A bearer of values ​​and traditions, art unites not only people distant in time but also in space, thanks to the universal language that characterizes it: the first reason why it was created is the passion, typical of mankind. In an ever faster reality, in which time is running out without us realizing it, art is what remains motionless and which in looking at it allows us to cling and slow down together with it. It is certainly not a necessity to survive, but it is what we stay alive for. Art can save the world; but only if the world maintains those feelings will they make them vital, as Keats in the "Ode on a Grecian urn" revives the figures painted on the vase of ancient times which, becoming the spokesman of the echo of the past, thanks to his imagination they return to enjoy of the pleasure given by the music and by the perennially blooming branches, stop in that instant that will last forever.

Narce Eval 2021