The Crying of Lot Daughters

The Cry Of Lot Daughters

2012-02-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

Durer (1498)

Van der Leyden (1520)

Cranach (1528)

Van Der Leyden (1530)

Altdorfer (1537)

Cort (1550 c.)

Massys (1565)

Floris (1590 c.)

Wtaevel (1595)

Wtaevel (1604)

(Adam Hasen?)Muller (1600 c.)

Borcht (1613)

Swadenburg (1614)

Goltzius (1616)

Orazio Gentileschi (1621)

Artemisia Gentileschi (1620s)

Vouet (1633)

Furini (1640 c.)

Cavallino (1645 c.)

Paudi (1649)

Lippi (1650 c.)

Guercino (1651)

Vaccaro (1660s)

Maroli (1670s)

Luca Giordano (1690 c.)

Van Oost (1700 c.)

Werff (1711)

Troy (1721)

John Smith (1730 c.)

Verhagen (1770 c.)

Pietro Ricchi (1750 c.)

Hayez (1833)

Courbet (1844)

Pound, da Guercino (1850 c.)

Grunewald (1920 c.)

Wolfgang Grasse (2000 c.)

The Crying Of Lot Daughters

2011-09-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

Durer, "The Daughters of Lot"

My Italian blog is dedicated to the "Foucault's Pendulum" (1988), a novel by Italian writer Umberto Eco; the English version is dedicated to "The Cry of Lot 49" (1966), the novel of Thomas Pynchon that (heavily) inspired Eco's novel.

"The Crying of Lot" is the concluding scene of the novel, in which Oedipa Maas tries to discover who is trying to buy the Lot 49, the hermetical stamps she has discovered, revealing the secret of the Tristero.

A thing that has never been observed, as far as I know, is that "The Cry of Lot" is the desperation of Lot and his Daughters for the destruction of Sodom, as we find in many biblical sites.

Here is an excerpt from

http://donna-connections.blogspot.com/2009/11/cry-of-lots-daughter.html

Pelotit the daughter of Lot was wedded to one of the magnates of Sodom. She saw a certain very poor man in the street of the city and her soul was grieved on the account. What did she do? Every day when she went out to draw water she put in her pitcher all kinds of provisions from her house and she sustained that poor man.

The men of Sodom said: How does this poor man live? When they ascertained the facts they brought her forth to be burnt by fire. She said: Sovereign of all worlds! Maintain my right and my cause at the hands of the men of Sodom! And her cry ascended before the throne of glory. In that hour the Holy One blessed be He said: "I will go down and see whether they have done altogether according to her cry which is come unto me"–and if the men of Sodom have done according to the cry of that young woman, I will turn her foundation upwards and the surface downward..."

There was no remedy for such a society but total destruction. ... the cry of Sodom is great...and their sin is very grievous.

(Leibowitz, Nehama. 1974. Studies in Bereshit (Genesis) in the Context of Ancient and Modern Jewish Biblical Commentary. Jerusalem: W.Z.O. Dept.for Torah Education., pgs 173-174)

All the novel of Pynchon is deeply founded in religious culture. The figure of Saint Narcissus, the Saint that gives the name to the city in which the story is set, is a real and enigmatic saint of christian tradition.

Narcissus became bishop of Jerusalem in 196 d.C., at the appearing age of a hundred years. He continued to live for many years after his election, and in the day of Easter he changed some water in the oil for the lamps of the church. Then "some voices" were spread above him, and he was exiled from the comunity. In 212 he was still alive, at 116 years; after that, no news had appeared from him.

The idea of Narcissus being (or proclaming to be) the survived Jesus is evident; even the name "Narcissus" inspires the idea of the hybris of Narcissism, proclaming himself the son of God.

Pynchon follows this path in some allusion: for example, in the "Courier's Tragedy", the Duke of Faggio (Foggia) dies because he kisses the feet of Saint Narcissus statue, that were poisoned by his enemy (the kissing of feet is a form of devotion only toward deity, not simple saints).

Oedipa herself is equal to the nymph of Echo Courts, the San Narcissus hotel in which she stays, and Echo is the nymph lover of Narcissus, in a cryptic reference to the hermetical myth of Magdalene as bride of Christ. Echo, as Umberto Eco, by the way.

So also the myth of Lot may be relevant, for the same paradoxal elements: Lot and his daughters excape the destruction of Sodom because are the only pure, but then they must commit incest to avoid the total destruction of the city.

The Vacuum Domain

2011-08-24T03:54:00.001-07:00

Lightning Ball at Widecombe in the Moor (1638)

This post of my hermetical blog has been suggested by my friend Urfaut, very interested in fringe science themes. "Vacuum domains" (in Italian, "domini di vuoto") are an imbalance between gravitational and anti-gravitational area in which gravity can be changed in electricity and vice versa. This will generate a wormhole with a Vacuum Domain in which a Ball Lightning will be generated. The Lightning Ball will have a low frequency of 10 Hz, similar to the human brain frequency. So it has been made the hypothesis that mind waves can be used to control this kind on energy.

I'm not a physician (informations come from here, an "official science" site), so i can't say that much about the scientific aspect of the thing. But there are several visual documents of these lightning ball in the past, but often in the net thet are not correctly classified. So in this post I will examinate this documentation. The first, from the cover of the post, is an engraving from 1638, and show a ball of fire destroying an old stone church. Churches were often the highest buildings of the time, and so they attracted these phenomenons: so it is clear why the light balls have been associated to a supernatural manifestation of the devil, or the God wrath.

Georg Richmann Death from a Lightning Ball (1753)

In 1752, Benjamin Franklin and Gianbatista Beccaria of Mondovì (of which I will say more, sooner or later) started the modern scientific study of electricity. One year later, professor Georg Richmann of Saint Petersburg created a device following their studies, and was killed by a light ball generated by the instrumenct during a storm, as we see in the two different engravings here.

Ball of Fire hits a church (1850 c.)

With XIX century, newspapers started to speak of the phenomenon, defining them "Balls of Fire". Newspapers gave popularity to their existence, and the hermetical world started studying it.

Engravings, perhaps all from "The Aerial World" (1875) by George Hartwig

In 1875, scientist George Hartwig (1813-1880) published "The Aerial World", in which he examinated the phenomenon of "Balls of Fire". In 1916, occultist Aleister Crowley studied them with great interest. He said: "I have a powerful instinctive feeling that I am myself an wholly electrical phenomenon, and the wilder the storm, the more completely do I feel myself in my element."

First XX century illustration

Lightning Balls in late XX century illustrations.

After Crowley, all the hermetism of the XX century continued the study of these Balls of Fire, often linking itself to fringe science. Perhaps, it is not a coincidence that one of the first albums of modern rock and roll was "Great Balls of Fire" of Jerry Lee Lewis (1935, still living) that used to set on fire the piano during his concerts. An hermetical message between occult, music and fringe science.

(No Italian translation: this is the only "English Only post of my blog, from an experimental phase in the translation process).

Ufo In Piedmont

2011-07-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

Ufo Landing of Quarzina d'Ormea (?) from

http://www.lafiocavenmola.it/modules/xcgal/displayimage.php?pid=39539&fullsize=1

This is my first english post, that translate this article of this blog, an italian blog in which I study (with a bit of humour) the hermetic tradition of my city, Mondovì, in Piedmont, Northern Italy. This is a recent post on UFO in Mondovì area: hope you enjoy it. In the future, I will made some other english posts on themes of particular interest.

My friend NumberSix showed me an interesting Ufo event here in Mondovì area, set in II world war conflict. A UFO landed near Ormea, a little town of the area. Some "little men" came down from their spaceship and were seen by the inhabitants. The place of their landing is marked in the photo above. Recently an UFO was seen in 1995, from a couple of tourist, as documented on Italian ufology site (http://www.ufo.it/testi/monesigl.htm: only italian).

Piedmont is linked to UFO from the age of the mythical “fall of Phaeton”, that for UFO studies is an ancient spaceship, landed in 1500 BC. Near Mondovì, the Bisalta Mountain (Bisalta means “two times high”: Twin Peaks, we may say…) is an important pole of local esoterism from the prehistoric age, because it is capable of catalyzing flashes. In medieval age, Bisalta became the “Mountain of the Devil” and was linked to “viridis mascae”, “green witches” of the time. With modern age, Bisalta is linked to UFO phenomenon: in XIX century some workers had see “little white man” hiding near the mountain.

In 1877, astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, born in Savigliano, another city near Mondovì, discovered the Martian Channels, considered at the time the proof of alien life. With Schiaparelli discovery started the “Alien Craze” of the time; no one however linked him to his original area. But in 1918 great scientist Marie Curie came in Mondovì to studied the radioactivity of some places of the zone, including Bisalta.

In 1950s, after the war (and the Ormea UFO?) these studies on Bisalta were prosecuted by Italian geologist Felice Ippolito, who found traces of Uranium in the place. In 1960s, the mountain became a military exercitation area; and in 1975 three great flashes of light were seen by all the population of the valley. The militars said it was only a “naval missile exercitation”; but then the attention toward their experiment grew. So started the studies of some Italian scientific associations (http://www.ars2000.it/ufo2.htm: only Italian) that brought to the discovery of an anthropomorphic prehistoric sculpture of 1,5 meters, with a strange triangular head. From 1982, there are systematic observation of UFO.

So Mondovì area is an “Hot Spot” for Space Invaders. But the esoteric tradition of the city is more deep, and more interesting. Stay tuned for further posts.

K-E-T Perry

2011-06-30T04:01:00.000-07:00

Italian Version Here

When the upcoming of 2012, mass media see an explosion of alien and hermetic themes. This "E.T." (2011) of Kate Perry is no exception, as we can see from the cover of the album here above, and from the video that could be easily found on Youtube.

The text of the song of the video is also filled of extra-terrestrial symbolism. In fact, Kate Perry seems to speak of her lover with a metaphorical comparison with an Alien: but we can also read the text as a sort of "alien profecy". And Kate shows a certain knowledge of ufological beliefs.

You're so hypnotizing
Could you be the devil
Could you be an angel
Your touch magnetizing
Feels like I am floating
Leaves my body glowing
They say be afraid
You're not like the others
Futuristic lover
Different DNA

Here te singer is clearly speaking of an abduction: the "Other" is hypnotizing her, he can be an Angel or a Devil (both are aliens in the ufological traditions), she feels floating, leaves her body, and her "futuristic lover" has a different DNA.

They don't understand you
Your from a whole other world
A different dimension
You open my eyes
And I'm ready to go
Lead me into the light
Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me
Infect me with your love
and Fill me with your poison
Take me, ta-ta-take me
Wanna be a victim
Ready for abduction

In this second part the term abduction is explicit, and even Kate sings her love for the alien that "leads her into the light", his love is a venomous poison.

Boy, you're an alien
Your touch are foreign
It's supernatural
Extraterrestrial
Your so supersonic
Wanna feel your powers
Stun me with your lasers
Your kiss is cosmic
Every move is magic

There is this transcendental
On another level Boy,
you're my lucky star
I wanna walk on your wave length
And be there when you vibrate
For you I'll risk it all.

The last part does not add much more ("walk on your wave lenghth" may be an allusion to brain control). The interesting thing is the continuous double level, "metaphorical alien" and "real alien", which the songs mantains: an "Odi et Amo" like Catullo in the first case, the allusion to evil aliens in the second.

Little Nemo Aliens

2011-05-24T05:01:00.000-07:00

Little Nemo on the Moon (1910 c.)

The last post about the aliens in the Disney comics I found inspired me these wider considerations on alien and sequential art.

“Talking animals” were a important tradition in narrative, dating back to old Egypt. Here they where present in two levels: the serious stories of their zoomorphic gods, and comic stories of symbolic animals. These stories were probably the first examples of "sequential art", becoming the oldest ancestors of modern comics.

In Greek tradition, zoomorphic gods became “demonized”, but “talking animals” survived in comic stories. The whole Homeric cycle is re-written (in the tradition, by Homerus himself) in the Batracomiomacheia, or the Comic War of the Frogs. Here we see a “rewriting” of the war between Greece and Troy as a war between Frogs and Mices: the Troian Horse becomes a mouse-trap. But perhaps it is the Iliad that rewrites the history of an alien war, and the “parody” is the true secret story of an alien war against reptilians “frogs”...

From then, “talking animals” continued to be protagonists of “comic stories” in classical, medieval and modern age. The firstmodern comic to travel in space is Little Nemo, a "dream traveller" whose name is inspired by Verne's Nemo, from Ulysses' name. In 1910 Little Nemo travel in dream to the moon and discovers the great faces of some sleeping giants (very similar to martian faces…). From then, comics adventures on the moon became a theme present in the comics art of the origin, until the development of adventure comics in the late Twenties. "Buck Rogers" (1929) was the first science fiction hero in comics, and probably the first to fight the evil aliens (of Queen Ardala) in an adventure comic.

One year before, the mason Walt Disney created his Mickey Mouse (1928) in animation, who will soon became the leader of the world of humoristic-adventurous comics, until now, dominating even the theme of alien in humoristic comics.

Alien Disney

2011-04-24T04:02:00.000-07:00

Italian Translation Here.

I’ve found recently many old “Mickey Mouse” Italian comic books. I’ve bought only the ones in which I found alien stories, my most recent interest, and so I discovered that, around 1988, a good number of stories were about not only aliens, but “atlantidean” aliens, secretly controlling the history of our world. The first I found is in Topolino (Italian for Mickey Mouse) n. 1633, in 1987, where the mouse discovers an Atlantidean city under the “square” of the Bermudas.

The second one, in 1988 (Topolino 1702), is about evil aliens founder of the Pyramids civilization. They come back to destroy earth, but Mickey deceives them and saves the earth. The story is on the comic book that marks the passage from Italian house Mondadori to Walt Disney Corporation, so it’s really important.

The story, anonymous in the comic book, is from Pier Francesco Prosperi, an expert writer of "hermetical" themes (confront here, in italian only).

Another (this time with author firm) story, in Topolino 1804 (1990), is a comics gamebook with many possible finals; in Disney, a Bruno Concina’s invention, later abandoned (in comics, comics gamebook have been invented in the first ‘80s by Diceman, an English comics journal). In the right path, we discover that the Aztec Pyramid has been built by the aliens to control our historical evolution.

In fact, Disney comics world sees two great types of sentient animals: Ducks and Mice. The Mice (except for historical characters, differenced from humans only by the different nose) are very near to mankind in aspect, and also a prehistoric rodent is our ancestor. The Ducks are, perhaps, the heirs of Atlantis Tradition, mixed with us in ancient times.

Hero

2011-03-24T03:58:00.000-07:00

Claire Bennet in "Heroes" (2006)

(Spoiler alert, as usual).

I've finished the fifth season of "Heroes" and so I can now repost, in english, my old analysis of this serial with some little more consideration (italian version is here).

The story finishes with the fifth chapter of the Heroes "comic book", with Claire revealing the truth to the world. I didn't liked the last chapters of the show, but the end was ok: a closure of a cycle with an open ending, confirming certain hermetical symbolisms that can be found in the story.

The character of Claire Petrelli (adopted by secret agent Bennet) reveals himself to be the central one, from the start ("Save the cheerleader, save the world") to the end. In a sort of way, saving Claire, the heroes "save the world" as she reveals their secret at the ending, creating "a brave new world": the world of traditional superheroes, where the superpowers are widely known.

We may also think of "Claire Petrelli" as a senhal: we may traslate it "the Stone of Light", another name of the philosopher's stone, which had the power of giving immortality. And Claire is, in fact, immortal. The patriarch of Petrelli's clan is named Arthur, as the king of the Graal's search: and he has the power of getting other people's powers, the meta-power for excellence, like his true two sons: the good Peter Petrelli (Petra Petrarum: The Stone of the Stones...) and the evil Gabriel (name of an archangel with an ambiguous role in hermetism). Arthur organized his italian clan as a super-powers mafia, destroyed at last by his good son (perhaps it's not a coincidence that the two good Petrellis are both really italo-americans: Claire is Hayden Panettiere, "baker" Peter is Milo Ventimiglia, a city not far by my hometown Mondovì).

In fact, also Claire has the specular power of giving powers to common people, and in the second part of the series she at least make the powers public (and, probably, available to all). A Panettiere, a "baker" to prepare a Bread of Life for all.

New Starts and Game Overs

2011-02-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Hermetical Blog Spot. With this february 2010, I start the international version of my blog, the ermetical.blogspot.com (without "h"), an italian blog about esoteric tradition. Here I will translate some in English the most important post of the month, for the past months (until may 2010, starting of the blog) and the next ones. Good reading, and if you are interest, visit my original blog. Even if in Italian, it has many interesting hermetic images for you to explore.

For this February, I've reposted this article on the Mediterranean Revolts. I found interesting that, just now that we have started the project Wundergammer, on a modern videogame critic, the new revolts that open 2010s are centered on the "Game Over" theme agaist the old tyrants of XX century.

Europe Art

2011-01-25T02:27:00.000-08:00

Coypel, Europe (1727)

I started 2011 with an Orpheus-like post on the myth of Europe.

Italian Version Here

Classical Art (500 BC - 200 AD)

Renaissance Art (1470 - 1520)

Venetian painting: Titian (1562) and Veronese (1578)

Rubens (1630), Giordano (1677), Boucher (1747)

Moreau (1870), Gaugin (1900 c.), Europe Money (2002)

Zero Years

2010-12-24T05:36:00.000-08:00

2010 is ending, and so are Years Zero.

We are going in the new Years Ten; in the XX century, 1910s were the terrible years of the setting of the first world war; for us, are the years that are bringing us in the future (like the Great War, however, in some way did).

Obviously 2000 was a great landmark: "Space 1999", "2001 A Space Odissey" and so on. But 201X has a cyberpunk meaning: the new millennium has come, and has gone.

Il 1982 Artur Clarke wrota his second Odissey in 2010, movie of Peter Hyams in 1984 (the Orwell year); Clarke dedicated the novel to dissident novelist Zacharov, so the novel and the movie were forbidden in URSS in 1984, one of the last samples of Cold War.

2011 is the year of setting for "2012", the movie on the Maya Apocalipse of 2009; an obsession that will be with us until 2013, year of a famous bad movie on a future prison. In 2014 is setted "Neon Genesis Evangelion", and in 2015 the second "Back to the future". In 2017 we find "The Running Man" of Stephen King, movie with Schawzenegger; in 2018 "Rollerball" (1975), prototype of the deadly future sports. In 2019, finally, we will see "Blade Runner" (1982) from Dick and Ridley Scott, the start of cyberpunk.

So probably we will have to wait until 2020 to really enter deeply in the future cyberpunk, until the third decade of this blog, if it will be in activity in these days.

Don't Look Back

2010-11-24T05:28:00.000-08:00

This post is the star of my cooperation with Italian magazine of videogame critics "Wundergammer".
(Italian version here).

Don’t.

Look.

Back.

This is the title of the first important videogame by Terry Cavanagh, one of the most interesting producer of indie games, who has started in 2009 his new videogame production house “Distractionware”.

At a first level, the title explains the story of the videogame itself, inspired to the platform games of the Eighties. The game is inspired to the classical myth of Orpheus and Euridice, where the girl is bitten by a snake while she escapes from Aristeus, and she ends into the Ades. His lover Orpheus tries to save her whit his superior musical ability. Orpheus hypnotizes Cerberus and persuades the hell gods to let him bring back Euridice to the surface: but, as says, “he must not look back”. At last, however, Orpheus breaks this rule; and so Euridice is lost forever.

“Don’t look back” is an advice given to the protagonist that is a sort of playable, modern Orpheus. The protagonist of the game is shown while he looks the grave of his beloved one under an heavy rain. Then the player starts to move it toward the hell’s cave, to free his love from her eternal prison.

The situation is topic of both classical, high literature, from Orpheus to Ivanhoe, and of a typical modern videogame, starting by Mario Bros.

But the novels of the XIX century and the traditional videogames of the XX century are centered on the happy ending; the classical myth and this game, on the contrary, is based on a bitter, tragic end.

In “Don’t look back” the hero, after a difficult platform in hell, come back to earth only to see the freed phantom of the dead wife to vanish into the air. His supernatural travel was only an illusion: all that remains is, as in the start of the game, a lonely man in front of a grave.

The myth, hovever, is re-written in an ironical way. For example, the protagonist uses a typical “videogam gun” to shoot the classical monsters that oppose him.

But the most important difference is the fact that the girl, in the end, vanishes independently from the videogamer choices. To come back from hell is impossible.

So “Don’t Look Back” is also a message to the player, to say that it is necessary NOT to follow the myth sometimes, but to re-write them.

This is especially true for the retrogaming niche, where many independent producers homage the “golden age of pixel art” with their production, often excellent, but with a sort of complex of inferiority towards their classical models of Pacman Age.

But “looking back” is impossible: starting with the new distribution conditions: now these game rely on the gaming online, on sites like Kongregate or Newsgrounds that unify in a great portal a myriad of free online videogames.

And so, finally, “Don’t Look Back” is an invite to the producers, to change the new online gaming aesthetic from “Old is better” to “Less is more”.

“Grown old with me” says Cavanagh, as once Robert Browning, to us. “The best has yet to be”.

(Italian version also here, in my main blog)

Happy Birthday Alicia

2010-10-04T05:26:00.000-07:00

34 Years.
1 with blog.
1 more than the age of Christ.
1 less than the age of Dante in the Comedy: "il mezzo del camin di nostra vita" (half life).
34 is a number of Fibonacci series, 0-1-1-2-3-5-13-21-34 (each number is the sum of the previous two).

The 4 october, however, is the day of Sputik launch, 4 october 1957, the start of Space Age (and of Computer Age: in response, Americans developed Arpanet, the military internet, in 1958). A perfect date for a scientifiction blogger like me.

Another interesting thing is the perfect coincidence of my birthday with Alicia Silverstone, born the 4th october 1976. Appeared in 1994 with "The Crush" she became famous with "Clueless" (1995), "branded the spokeswoman for an emerging young generation" (Wikipedia English). In 1996 she accept a role in the unfortunate "Batman and Robin" as Batgirl; in 1997 the movie is "Worst Superhero Movie". In 1998, she becomes an animalist activist, and her actress career continues in a lesser tone. In 2010, she is workin on "Vamps", a vampyre movie from the trend of the moment. Alicia, happy birthday to us!

The Mechanical Monsters

2010-09-24T05:22:00.000-07:00

The funicular of Mondovì was born in 1886, with a water engine.

In 1921, the passage to a steam engine.

In 1941, the passage to an electrical engine.

In 1960, the last moderl, deactivated in 1976 under Martinetti administration (my great-father).
Curiously similar to the Lost vehicle of Dharma Project.

The modern funicular, design by Giorgio Giugiaro (2006).
Photo by Lorenzo Barberis 2010

Photography In Comics

2010-08-24T05:20:00.000-07:00

Lorenzo Barberis, "Phox Golem", 2010

This photo of the "Magic Phox Golem" in Mondovì reminded me of the most important intersection between comics and photography, the forgotten super-hero "The Fox", a masked hero-photographer that in this 2010 has seen some new adventures.

Photos and Cartoons.

Lorenzo Barberis

We always talk of the deep relationship between comics and movies, because these two medias are contemporary - both are born, in their modern form, in 1895, respectively with Lumiere brothers and Outault's Yellow Kid. Will Eisner and Scott McCloud unified them under the definition of "Sequential Art", giving importante at the common form of narration with a sequence of images.

But if this is the thing in common between the two medias, the figuration style is at the opposite. The cinema is, at his origin, a photographical representation of the reality; the comics humourous style is a cartoonistic deformation of real. In this sense, the opposition is with photography, more than with cinema.

It is interesting that the first photos experiments of Niepce are from 1826, and the first modern comics are the works of Rodolphe Topffer, in 1827.

In 1839 Daguerre divulgate the new media of photography at the Academy of Science in France; in 1843, the word "cartoon" is born, to identify humorous sketches in newspapers.

So even the contemporaneity of movies and comics in 1896 is perhaps an evolution of this parallel evolution of photography and cartoons.

Yellow Kid is the first comics, and the first comics to use the photographic machine. All his humour is centered in the (often wrong) use from the child of some technology, from the gramophone to the car. Even photography has its space; a meta-literary one, in some way.

This trend is followed by other old comics like Katzenjammer Kids (1897) and Happy Hooligan (1899).

Italian futurism (1909) influenced hypercinetic italian comics hero, Tofano's Mister Bonaventura (1917), inspired to Happy Hooligan. In the same year of birth, Bonaventura starts his work with photography, a recurrent theme in his adventures. Here the meta-literarity is intentional, for the author is a known painter, and often shows Bonaventura in report to many other art, in which he produces, casually, a "futuristic" and abstract masterpiece.

The theme will remain important in other italian comics of this age, like Bisi's "Sor Pampurio" (1929), and "Pier Cloruro de' Lambicchi " (1930). In this work, the Arci-vernice (a super-paint) consents to give real life to inanimate paintings, like the photographic illusion.

In 1928 makes his appareance the most famous comics of all: Mickey Mouse. His adventure starts with the animated series (a new, successful fusion of comics and movies), but in 1930 he becomes a true comic on paper. He is a figure of a sort of private eye - journalist, with a frequent use of photography, like in the contemporary French comics (from Belgium), Tintin (1929).

The profession of journalist becomes typical also of the superheroes; the first super-hero, "Superman" (1938), is a journalist, and in 1940 appears "The Pox", the photo-journalist super-hero. In 1942 Pox is suspended, and returns in 1966-67 with the texts of Jerry Siegel, Superman co-creator. In 1984-1985, another return, as a ninja-like hero.

If the photo-reporter was the ideal profession of American comics hero, from Mickey Mouse to Superman, from Superman to Spiderman and beyond, Italian comics did a deeper reflection of the photographic medium. In 1936 started the publication of photo-romances, comics created with photographic sequences. In the second afterwar, italian writer Elio Vittorini in his "Politecnico" (1946-47) showed a great interest both in comics and photo-comics, realizing also some photo-comics with photographer Guido Crocenzi.

In the Sixties, while the second generation of superheroes was guided by Spider-Man, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein started the Pop Art with their photo-mechanicals reproductions of comics and other products (in Italy, Bruno Munari did some of these experiments in 1964). The Italian comic journal "Linus" (1965) hosted the adventures of Guido Crepax's "Valentine", the first explicitly meta-literary and conscious comic. Valentine is, obviously, a classical comics photo reporter, and this allows a continue meta-reflection about the boundaries of draws and photography.

The first to adopt the xerox tecnique in comics was Stefano Tamburini in 1975, master of Italian Cannibal comics avantgarde. His hero "Ranxerox" (1980), drawn by michelangiolesque artist Tanino Liberatore, is another hommage to xerox photo-copy, as this future Frankenstein is assembled from a xerox machine. "Snake Agent" (1980), on the contrary, is the masterpiece of Tamburini photo-copy art. The other great master of Cannibal comics, Andrea Pazienza, often inserted the photography in his comics; and with "Il segno di una resa invincibile" described a similar, photographical avantgarde.

The reflection on relationship between comics and photography is central also in Alan Moore and his masterpiece "Watchmen" (the men who watch, as in the title, is immediatly a reference to photography). And all the story is a reflection of the segrmentation of time in single istants: the power of the most powerful hero, Dr. Manhattan, but also the characteristic of comics and photography.

The Japanese tradition always used in its commercial comics xerox backgrounds for the action of their iconics heroes. With the Eighties, Japan artists started using informatic tecniques for photographical inserts in comics. Even in western comics similar experimentation started their diffusion, with Pepe Moreno's Digital Justice (1990). The history of photo-comics, perhaps, starts from now.

The Dream Of the Future

2010-07-24T05:19:00.000-07:00

A series of my photographies dedicated to the Altipiano ("the Plateau"), the city district of Mondovì where I live. A photographic research inspired to the short tale "Gernsback Continuum", the founding tale of cyberpunk, all about photography and the dream of the future from the italian Futurism on. The Altipiano, "the Mondovì of the future" in the development plans of 1910s, is one of these hypotetical "cities of the future", obviously never born.

Here it is the GIL Palace (1937). The Juvenile Organization of Fascism was the first public building in the district, following some rich houses of the 1920s-1930s.

1952. Cinema Italia. In the immediate post-war, the (now destroyed) Cinema Italia was the new center of the district. The only original thing remains the fusion of Sun and Moon here in the photo. It was a work of a great abstract artist of the second generation, Ego Bianchi, early died in the first 1950s. The cinema and the district developed around it is, in some way, the most important influence of his work. The painting art of the city remained, in fact, deeply figurative.

1956, Corso Italia was developed starting around the Cinema Italia, the main street of the Plane, a sign of the starting economical boom of Italy. A confuse modernist architecture, mixed with some strange hermetical things like these little abstract decorative dragons, like futurible shaceships.

1966, The Skyskraper. The highest building in Mondovì, in front of the train Station, a sign of the complete economical boom. After this last triumph, the dream of the future started its decline.

1972, Grandangolo. In some way, hovever, here in the Plateau the "dream of the future" survived.

1982, The Swimming Pool. In the Eighties, the district sees his conclusion.

1985. The Church is the sign of the definitve completion.

Orpheus Art

2010-06-01T05:15:00.000-07:00

Italian version here.

This is a post from a series of conferences about Orpheus in Art and Poetry that I did here in Mondovì in 2010. It is my first "public event" that I blogged, and from these consideration I got my first article for the following project Wundergammer.

The Myth of Orpheus is a very important one in classical mythology. Orpheus symbolizes the Orphic tradition, a particolar cult of the sun god Apollo, opposed to the dionisiac rites.

With Christiandom, Orpheus has a important identification with Christ in reason of his travel in the Underworld to save the lovel Euridice, symbol of the christian soul.

The christianization of the myth favoured its medioeval persistence.

"Classic" Orpheus returns with renaissance art, starting from Mantegna (1465).
Renaissance was very interested to the figure of this magus, both in art and in literature, as with the Orpheus of Poliziano (1479), the first mytological piece of modern theater.

In the XVII century, the Orphic theme becames an excuse for the pure figuration of the arcadic paysage, like in this work of Poussin (1648).

In the classicism of XVIII century, Orpheus reappared as the "pure" classical myth, like in this sculpture of Canova (1775).

The romantic age made of Orpheus the symbol of the romantic love, as in this painting of the Stub (1811), centering in the drama of the lost Euridice.

The Symbolism of late XIX century had in Orpheus one of his symbols of the fusion between crazyness and art. The true symbol became the head of the poet, killed by the Menads, like in this painting of Moreau (1864).

In the first years of XX century, the last symbolist Odilon Redon evolved the orphic art of the Symbolists toward the abstraction.

In 1910, the expressive abstraction of Sonia Delaunay took the name of Orphic Cubism, defined by the poet Apollinaire, author of some "Orphic Poems". In literature, "I canti orfici" (1914) di Dino Campana continued this tradition, that inspired the surrealist Jean Cocteau to his orphic tragedy of 1925, a recurrent theme in his work.

Dino Buzzati in 1969 made his "Poema a fumetti" (comics poem) on the story of Orfy and Eura, modern clones of the myth, perhaps influenced from the coeve studies of Mircea Eliade that linked modern comics superheroes to the ancient heroes of Greek myth.

The last incarnation of the Orphic Myth, for now, is "Don't look back" (2010), videogame from Terry Cavanagh, reinterpreting an ancient and ever modern archetype of the game, the hero trying (often in vain) to save his princess, like in the first "figurative" videogame, the Mario of Donkey Kong of 1981.

Of the game, I've written widely here.

The Pit And The Pendulum

2010-05-24T03:56:00.000-07:00

Clarke, "The Pit And The Pendulum" (1919)

This article translates in English the first three posts of my Italian blog, in which I explained the meaning of the title. His meaning does not work perfectly in English, so I've adopted another one for this blog, explained in the post of september 2011.

At the time I wasn't thinking to a possible translation of the blog, so his meaning works in Italian only. "Il Pozzo E Il Pendolo" is the Italian translation of one of the most famous novels of Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849), father of modern fantastic literature. The Pendulum recalls "Foucault's Pendolum" (1988) of Italian (and Piedmontese) writer Umberto Eco, my favourite novel, and one of the most influential esoterical works in the world. The Pit is Italian "Pozzo" is also the last name of great jesuit painter Andrea Pozzo, one of the greatest artists of baroque age, that realized his first masterpiece in my home city, Mondovì: the frescoes of the church of Saint Francis Xavier in 1675. The church is one of the first in which he experimented his influencial anamorphic style, and the altar machine is, misteriously, only an illusionistic theatral scenery, probably the only church in the world. So the meaning of the title is like "Mondovì (Il Pozzo) and Esoterism (Il Pendolo)" but with irony, as a fictional novel ("Il Pozzo e Il Pendolo").

In fact "The Pit And The Pendulum" (1842) is a rare novel in which Poe does not examinate a supernatural horror, but the horrors of Inquisition. The story is set in Toledo, year 1808, one year before the Poe's birth. In this year is also set a famous painting of Goya representing, on the contrary, the horrors of French invaders: it is possible a criptical reference to it. The protagonist is bound in a Pit where the blade of a Pendulum slowly falls on him to cut him in two.

The tale is a masterpiece of psychological horror, but I always found interesting the fact (rarely noted) that the Pendulum is in the hand of a picted Cronos, the ancient evil good of time. A pictorial illusion (Pozzo!) that accentuate the paranoid experience of the protagonist (and the Foucault's Pendulum ends with the protagonist bound to the Pendulum to be tortured and then killed). Moreover, the original Foucault's Pendolum used in the Eco novel is created in 1850, one year after the death of Poe; and (Roberto) Pozzo is the name of the protagonist of the third Eco novel, "L'isola del giorno prima" (1994), that follows "Foucault's Pendulum" (1988): both works talk about a global conspiration centered in the gesuit order and about the secret of the Umbilicus Mundi (in the Pendulum) and of the Punto Fijo (in "L'isola del giorno prima").

Now, the gesuit order had one of its most important centers in Mondovì: the college of the order was founded in 1560s by Roberto Bellarmino, later inquisitor of Galileo Galilei and of the Rosa+Crucis hermetical order, then at the beginning of its career. After the frescos of their most important painter, Andrea Pozzo, jesuit order realized in the inner walls of the college a cycle of scientific sundials for some secret astronomical study (all the city is particolarly full of sundials). So "Il Pozzo" and "Il Pendolo" seem to be deeply linked.

Surprisingly for Poe, his tale has an happy ending: but after all, noone could excape the slow descent of the Blade of Time..