Affaritaliani.it – Puglia has also decided to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death, dedicating this space every weekend to the publication of works by Apulian Dante artists or authors, whose articles are inspired by the influence of the Somma Poeta on the Apulian reality in particular or the Italian one in general.
Coupled debut with Mina, then spotlight on Netflix with the hit fiction with Sabrina, and forays into Lars von Trier’s “Jack’s House”; then the encounter with Harry Potter in the saga of Joaanne K. Rowling; the adventure among the fulminating tweets of Dante’s triplets and the exploration of the influence of the Supreme Poet in contemporary prose.
And after Dante’s foray into the world of mystery and his arrival in Sicily in the intrigues of Nino Motta, the journey unfolded between the pages of the books of Eraldo Affinati and Giulio Ferroni, with the subsequent literary controversy ignited by Arno Widmann. Then to touch the function of “Compass” of The Divine Comedy for a novel by Marco Balzano, the exam on Nick Tosches and “Dante’s hand”; continuing the editorial success of Dan Brown in the pages of “Inferno”; up to sneaking into those who committed violence to themselves (suicides). To then go into the suggestive labyrinth of mathematics, of the didactic-scientific front and on the reflective side with the book by Marco Santagata; or in the research with the “Luce de la gran Costanza”: the Norman bride of Carla Maria Russo.
Up to involving the musical creativity of Vinicio Capossela, to meet the historical figure of Manente degli Uberti – ‘Farinata’ or to confront the double bet of Laura Pariani, with Chiara Ingrao’s Bildungsroman or with the anomalous implication of Dante’s “selfies” . And still to continue with “Charun the demon and Dante’s mythological imagery”, at the MANU – National Archaeological Museum of Umbria – in Perugia, and with the figure, the site and the greatness of Dante’s Inferno according to Galileo Galilei. And again with the charisma of the Saint of Mira (Anatolia), for all San Nicola di Bari, and the event / lesson in Acquaviva delle Fonti (Ba) with Dante and the Divine Comedy in an “Ecological” perspective; as well as the announcement of the university seminar (open to all), entitled “Dante … di corsa”. But also with the one and trine appointment with Antonio V, Gelormini and Franco Leone of the three Dante evenings in Troia (Fg) “Words of Stone and Verses of Light” and the many references to the water element, within the Divine Comedy.
The review by Trifone Gargano (Pugliese, Teacher of Italian Language and Computer Science for Literature, as well as Dante and literary popularizer), after the tribute to Gianni Rodari, continues with the examination of the film by Gabriele Salvatores “All my crazy love”. (ag)
by Trifone Gargano
Set in Trieste, where Vincent, a boy suffering from a form of autism and a personality disorder, he lives closed in a world of his own, in the company of his mother, Elena. In the life of the two, at a certain point Mario, Elena’s partner arrives, who treats Vincent lovingly, as if he were her son, adopting him. In the family, therefore, a balance is achieved, even if precarious, but still a balance.
To break this tiring condition comes Willi, Vincent’s natural father, a penniless traveling singer who had abandoned Elena when she learned of her pregnancy. Vincent, however, is fascinated by Willi (and his wandering life), seeing in the van, which his father uses to move around during the stages of his tours, the means to escape from his sad and anonymous existence. In fact, he will hide himself in Willi’s van, which is about to leave for the Balkans.
The occasion, although daring, serves the two to get to know each other (since in the previous 16 years of Vincent, one had not known of the existence of the other). This escape, however, will also serve Mario and Elena, who immediately get in the car to track down Vincent (and Willi), to get to know each other better.
All the film critics have signaled, for this film, the happy return of Salvatores to his most congenial genre, namely the so-called road movie. After all, critics and box office have decreed the success of the film. Likewise, critically, the role of the novel as a “canvas” has been emphasized If I hug you, don’t be afraid (Marcos y Marcos 2012) by Fulvio Ervas played against the screenplay of Salvatores’s film. In fact, the novel tells the true story of a father’s relationship with his son Andrea, who suffers from autism.
For the title of the film, All my crazy love, the debt to Pasolini was also underlined, for an episode he shot for the multi-handed film Italian capriccio (shot in 1967 and distributed in 1968: Pasolini had shot the episode What are the clouds?, with Totò, Ninetto Davoli, Ciccio Ingrassia, Franco Franchi, Laura Betti, Domenico Modugno and Carlo Pisacane).
But also towards the singer Domenico Modugno, for the song What are the clouds (1968), text, among other things, written by Pier Paolo Pasolini, in which the verse “all my crazy love “.
What no one has noticed and pointed out is that the expression “crazy love “ refer to Dante Alighieri, and, precisely, in verse 2 of canto VIII of Paradise. This quotationistic rebound is valid, backwards, for everyone: Salvatores, Pasolini and Modugno. After all, as we know, literature and all the arts (including cinema, for the screenplay) is a game of mirrors and references. Quotes, at times, explicit, at other times, instead, implicit. It is up to the reader / viewer to be able to grasp them all. It should also be said, as a further element of knowledge, that, between 1965 and the early seventies, Pasolini was engaged, in his own omnivorous way, in a whirlwind and fruitful reading of Dante’s poem, which led him to write, in the form of a fragment not finished, the Divina Mimesis (later published posthumously, in 1975, by Einaudi).
Dante’s expression “crazy love “ is in canto VIII of Paradise, that is, in one of the two cantos that Dante dedicates to the sky of Venus, to the heaven of loving spirits, surprising the readers of his time (and today’s readers), for some of his choices, how to say, “crazy”, given that he places among the blessed three personages who in life had made themselves known not for their holy conduct, but, instead, for their unbridled and joyful abandonment to sensual love. In order of appearance, these three representatives of the “crazy love “, of which, however, as Dante notes in the text of the song, they do not repent, they are, respectively, Cunizza da Romano, Folco da Marseille and Raab.
The first two, Cunizza and Folco, are medieval characters, chronologically close to Dante and its early readers. The third personage who shines in this Venusian sky is Raab, a prostitute of whom the Bible narrates, who helped the leader Joshua to conquer the otherwise impregnable city of Jericho. Of Raab Dante writes that in the sky of Venus “in the highest degree it is sealed “ (that is, it receives the imprint of this sky in the greatest degree).
As for the other two blessed of the “crazy love “, Cunizza pronounces solemn and perfect verses of self-absolution, among the most memorable of the Divine Comedy:
Cunizza I was called, and here I refulgo
because the light of this star won me;
but gladly I indulge myself
the cause of my fate […] (Pd., IX, 32-5)
[…fui chiamata Cunizza, e risplendo qui perché l’influenza di Venere (esta stella) [che spinge ad amare] conditioned me (won me); but I forgive myself, serenely (gladly), the cause of my condition]
Folco da Marseilles (also known as Folchetto), one of the most important troubadour poets, who died in 1231, author of well-known love poems, dedicated to free love (only in old age he converted to Catholicism, and became a monk, up to holding the office of bishop of Toulouse, and up to promoting the crusade against the Albigians), clarifies to Dante, who, in this sky of Venus, none of the blessed suffers for what he has committed in life (the “crazy love“, In fact), indeed, he enjoys it (laughs), because even their unbridled inclination to sensual love, in life, had been willed and determined by the influence of heaven:
However, here we do not repent, but we laugh,
I do not blame, which does not return to my mind,
but of the value he ordered and provided (Pd., IX, 103-05)
With similar words, even Cunizza had expressed, shortly before, the same judgment of self-absolution:
because the light of this star won me (Pd., IX, 33)
The responsibility of my unbridled youth life, says Cunizza, as regards the inclination to sensual love, it is of the sky of Venus, which “won meCertainly not mine.
Of Raab, prostitute and harlot, Dante writes luminous words, already in the presentation:
You want to know who is in this light
that here below me so sparkles
like a ray of sunshine in pure water.
Now know that I will enter quietly
Rahab […] (Pd., IX, 112-16)
As can be seen, in only three verses there are words linked to the semantic sphere of light: “lumera – spark – ray – sun “.
Here, then, is the entire constellation of cross-references and cross-references intertextual (and multimedia), between this film by Gabriele Salvatores and the text of cantos VIII and IX of Paradise Dante.
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