The work belongs to the sub-genre of Impossible Interviews and is dedicated to the character of the Icelander taken from the Operette morali of Giacomo Leopardi

Starting from a multi-year ethnographic research on the memories of the miners of Sulcis-Iglesiente (Sardinia), the article presents some fragments of life histories concerning the 'discovery' of the mine. Analyzing the narratives about the admittance to the mines and the encounter with unknown underground worlds, we will see how different geographical origins of the miners significantly influences their relationship with the mining work. The article show how the different cultural capital of the miners is involved in their interpretation of encounters with unknown environments. Different conception of work produce different conception of mining world, influencing the way in which the miners feel the risk and the domestication of mining space.

Il contributo presenta alcune caratteristiche peculiari dell’arte di Yayoi Kusama, una delle artiste giapponesi più conosciute nel mondo, che da diversi anni vive in un manicomio. Pur essendo una delle artiste più amate dal pubblico, la sua attività riscontra continue critiche concernenti sopratutto il giudizio estetico delle sue opere. L'attività di Yayoi Kusama viene “riletta” nell’ottica della biografia dell'artista che ha fatto delle proprie ossessioni un brand immediatamente riconoscibile in tutto il mondo.

This paper is aimed at investigating some relevant themes on which science and literature fruitfully meet. One of the most interesting specificities concerning both fields is that they narrate and invent possible worlds by developing the interplay between imagination, creativity and complexity in an original and deep way. In this sense, one important notion is that of levels of reality (already addressed by Calvino). We study different aspects and meanings of the concepts of space, tesselation, vacuum, nature, complexity, and infinite in science and in literature. We investigate some affinities and differences between the mathematical, natural and narrative worlds, especially in Leopardi, Calvino and Borges. We focus on some scientific, philosophical and poetic aspects of the concept of nature in relation to the theory of complexity. Finally, we address the issue of the important role played by imagination in literature and science.

This investigation about visitors and non-visitors of the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography G. A. Sanna aims at investigating the real relationship between this Museum and its territory. The sample was made up of the adult residents of the city of Sassari, who were presented with two questionnaires, one for each group. The results, subsequently compared with other studies on the territory, have shown some of the aspects in the management of the institution that need improving and the potentialities developed in the last few years. The non-visitors study, carried out for the first time in the territory, has been proposed as a reference guide for the Museum’s policy, defining the bases of a more involving approach and a renovated communication strategy.

Nell’ambito della narrativa fantastica, una letteratura votata alla trasgressione, che si propone la messa in discussione delle certezze riguardanti ciò che si considera la dimensione reale, la sovversione a vari livelli dell’elemento temporale, riferimento essenziale nella vita individuale e collettiva, risulta tra i temi più importanti. All’interno dell’ampia gamma di possibilità relative al trattamento del tema del tempo nel fantastico letterario, ricorre con particolare frequenza il caso del viaggio nel tempo, dell’inspiegabile approdo dei personaggi a un’epoca distante da quella d’appartenenza. Per quanto nei testi ascrivibili alla narrativa fantastica le modalità di arrivo a un tempo altro siano sorprendenti – si pensi ai motivi del sonno dalla lunga durata o del patto con il diavolo – se si tratta di viaggi nel futuro il fantastico non di rado mostra punti di contatto con quella tradizione delle utopie e distopie ambientate in mondi ben al di là dal venire inaugurata da romanzi quali Looking Backward 2000-1887 (Guardando indietro: 2000-1887, 1888) di E. Bellamy e The Time Machine (La macchina del tempo, 1895) e di H.G. Wells. Come nei testi appartenenti ai generi della fantascienza, dell’utopia e della distopia, nel fantastico la rappresentazione di scenari futuri si presta alla descrizione di modelli sociali differenti da quelli noti, al contempo ideali e perturbanti. Attraverso l’analisi di due racconti, Enoch Soames di M. Beerbohm e Utopia de un hombre que está cansado di J.L. Borges si intende mostrare come nella prefigurazione di società lontane nel tempo il fantastico si affianchi alla narrativa utopica e distopica nel favorire una riflessione su alcuni possibili sviluppi futuri di determinate tendenze proprie dell’età contemporanea.

Book review of Marcello Barbanera, Storia dell’archeologia classica in Italia, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2015.

By the end of the XIX Century, literary habits inevitably had to adapt to new communicative reference points, whereby the poetic word turned into an essential tool for conveying a symbolic plurality intimately anchored to the deepest regions of the human soul. On the one hand, this shift entailed the creation of a theoretical system based on the assimilation of different artistic mediums; on the other, it implied the search for deeper meanings, which would chane poetry into a kind of deviated theology, made of mental trips, sensorial overexcitements and arcane contemplations. Precisely in this context, the brand new forms of religious mysticism, which shared with modernistic sensibility the abandonment of the dogma and the interest in inner shapes, which influenced creative activities in Europe . In response to such a phenomena, a few fin de siecle poets, such as Verlaine, Ruben Dario and Manuel Machado committed to the new decadent and symbolist taste, aware of the inadequacy of the ‘functional’ word, in a world already diminished by the never-ending trade of juju objects: their act of rebellion towards a canonized tradition eventually imposed the renovation of some aesthetic principles tied to the consumption, contemplation and crossing of artistic products. Those features are now considered chaotic containers of signs, physical simulacrums of an instable and hardly graspable transcendent reality. This paper offers some interpretations of Alma (1902), the first Manuel Machado’s poetic collection that succeeds in melting together iconic forms and esoteric ecstasy by an original and highly evocative expressive manner.

This essay focuses on the dynamics between text and off-text in Blake’s last prophetic books Milton and Jerusalem. Drawing from Genette’s notion of paratext, it discusses how word and image interact in the process of meaning production. As an “integrated work of art”, Blake’s plates call for an active reader, who is able to combine image (illuminations) and word (poetry/prose) within the prophetic and redemptive framework of apocalyptic literature.

As a journey that crosses the boundaries of time and material, color and originality, archaeology and art history, the exhibition Serial Classic, co-curated by S. Settis and A. Anguissola, has dealt with new and corageous vitality the notion of ‘classic’, through the comparison between originals, copies and reproductions of the greatest examples of Greek sculpture, suggesting the modern world how much their inner messages are alive, powerful and contemporary.