Brazilian Wax Every Month

Trying to light. On Franco Buffoni.

Accade che un libro, al di là delle premesse su cui è fondato, susciti nel lettore un particolare entusiasmo. È quello che mi è accaduto leggendo l’ultimo libro di Franco Buffoni, già segnalato tra i consigli di lettura per l’estate. Difficile stabilirne il genere: l’autore lo ha descritto come un romanzo ma la definizione non mi pare del tutto calzante, e personalmente lo trovo più affine alla saggistica memoriale, sebbene presentata in forma inusuale. Si tratta infatti di testo dialogico tra l’autore e il nipote Piero, un giovane di poco meno di trent’anni che si definisce marxista, partecipa ai cortei anti globalizzazione e simpatizza con i frati di Assisi. Il testo is interspersed with poems or parts of poems and several letters to his father, three, one in Giacomo Leopardi, two to his nephew, and a final, merciless Letter of Peter to his uncle - who in a recent presentation by Stefano Raimondi has wisely decided to read as incipit.
"God, war, homosexuality," as the subtitle, are the main themes, but even if there is already so to say, in the book are food for thought that open up perspectives for me even more interesting primarily the problem of counterfeit cultural relativity and the various "cultural traditions" and "civilization literary. " Among the readings Buffoni cites examples in this sense obviously false belief De et Constantini donation LY (1440) by Lorenzo Valla and the Defensor Pacis (1324) of Marsiglio of Padua (in which, about religion, expression is best Next the idea of \u200b\u200bVolterra "pious fraud"), but also the parable of Cecco d'Ascoli in front of the pietas Virgil and Dante dared to propose "raxone but no pity." According to the
Buffoni pietas must become a civic virtue divorced from Christian metaphysics, a 'human heritage ", a value as an atheist state constitutional law: the heir of Mill, Hume Gladstone and the Moscow and Pareto, however, does not describe a path Buffoni banal "secular" but in the wake of Berkeley, Clarke, Leibniz, Jacobi, Muratori, and Genoese, open to Christianity and the "positive religions" just from a crucial question about the reason of the evil in human life. While recognizing the importance of his beloved master and Fortini Raboni specifically takes the distances when the two sides seem to favor the "true saint" Manzoni, instead to re-establish ties with the solitary genius of Leopardi reader of Lucretius and forerunner of the theory of "deep time" by SJ Gould, the Leopards that in the face of terror faute de mieux "devout atheists" still responds with the courage of his Broom, "while Manzoni, remember, after the death of Charles Imbonati had abandoned the ideals of Verri and Beccaria to turn to the most reactionary Catholicism, in perfect harmony with the ideals of the new leadership of Austria" ( p. 161). Manzoni and Rosmini in the nineteenth century to conceive of a universe built for the man and his needs was madness. This was the lone "madness" of Leopardi, a "madness" that atrocious mockery of scientific historically recognized, there is still passed for "pessimism."
The reader of this book, however, is also facing an autobiography and intellectual family, but placed on the floor of the ethical distinction between the state and rule of law (and the consequences of choosing whether to stay by either party). If Montale stated "what we are and not what we want," Franco Buffoni, as Sandro Penna, who he is and what he wants to say it loud and clear: "Yes I am an atheist, homosexual, Enlightenment and anti-prohibitionist. And I support the pure scientific materialist Darwinism "(p. 145). In this philosophical dialogue, in which the counterparty has the function of "fast-forward speech," Buffoni explores those areas of reticence that prevent real progress in literature and in society, or whose value is the dominant and ubiquitous, although not reasonably founded. The intellectual trajectory that emerges from reading this text seems new in the "literary" national or at least fairly rare in twentieth-century Italian, open for the clarity with which he presents his ideas, facilitated by artifice in this style of dialogue:

Among those who do not master your trinkets? [asks the grandson]
I told Zanzotto. I admire his courage in
the scientific data and the effort to absorb it, incorporate in its poetic
.
But do not love him I love more
Cattafi or Caproni ...

Continuatore della tradizione illuminista che fonda lo stato di diritto in contrapposizione allo stato etico, Buffoni si oppone dunque con fermezza al potere simbolico e materiale di quelle istituzioni che pretendono di prevaricare la libertà civili, e lo fa affidandosi al modello intellettuale di Richard Rorty e a quella tradizione anglosassone di empirismo e logica che va da Ockham e Bacone e, per venire a tempi più recenti, trova i suoi modelli di riferimento in G. E. Moore ed in tutta quella tradizione “analitica” che parte dal rasoio di Ockham e arriva alla cosiddetta “forca” della ragione di Hume. Sulla scia dei "fondamenti della conoscenza epirica" di A.J. Ayer, rifiutando l’esistenza di poposizioni ethical grounds: "I am in fact to argue that the only genuine propositions are those of logic and mathematics (whose truth depends on experience) or that of empirical science (which are set out on the basis of observations)" (p. 129).
In the name of this atheistic view, that something has also recommended History of Atheism George Minois, Buffoni read any human weakness attracted by the great myths of the poets, the great men and great ideals. And this is where you find a piece of literary history that does not find a scan as systematic and clear even in the manuals of literature. And no mention of the usual blunder of Ungaretti for fascism: rather, is to reconstruct fascism as "category of the spirit," and refers to both Buffoni about Isherwood sympathetic to the U nion of Fascist , as Auden attracted by the power of Stalin. We are therefore the
Phares but are not what you'd expect from a poet. In fact, few poets, "because you love poetry," many scientists in the name of research to support positions are "uncomfortable". Belong to this group in the history of those who knew not to be seduced by totalitarian ethical or who deserted the "eternal values" of "honor" and "duty." Certain officers and graduate as Vittorio Sereni were ethically obliged at the front, but also meant to become career officers, and only giving up status also material relating to this party "doing one's duty" could escape the dynamic of history.
But as it then? How to think the defection as a value? Raboni analyzing the correspondence Bertolucci-Serena shows this discontinuity between the two: Bertolucci remains private and Stash very soon translate his Ronsard, Sereni instead answered "present" call - and then complain in the coming decades has not could not answer that other call, that of resistance, which would give some of its values \u200b\u200b Cameraderie all another sense. Yes, because Buffoni tells us not out of hand values, so to speak, "Trench", which are not crap. The camaraderie seen as Camaraderie it meant much in the idea of \u200b\u200bman's social. In war you are criminally spent (and off) the great values. Bianciardi sottotenentini reminded that they are always the young students of twenty years to bring farmers and workers in the massacre. This innocence that drives the innocence and good faith, sacrifice, team spirit, solidarity, "the joy, life, human values, all this good was something visible and present in the minds of those who had tried on propria pelle, e si parla di almeno un paio di generazioni nate tra il ’75 e il ’99 dell’Ottocento. Più difficile cogliere la dinamica per cui questo bene, al soldo dell’etica di uno stato belligerante, si trasformasse in male. Questo è l’osceno. Questo l’inaccettabile, per Franco Buffoni. Ma, ancora, come vederlo? Alcuni ci riuscirono anche in quegli anni, qualcuno, come il Tarchetti di Una nobile Follia, che precorreva i tempi parlando della carneficina della Crimea, ma i più, supini, si bevevano le balle della “religiosa ecatombe” promossa da Croce, la “risvegliatrice degli infiacchiti” di Papini, la “sola igene del mondo of the future "and so on. Few, even among the professors, said no when the leader asked them to swear loyalty to the regime (fourteen he has Buffoni, Fabio adding Luzzatto and Piero Sraffa to twelve analyzed by Giorgio Boatti in his fine book entitled Melvilla 'd rather not , Torino, Einaudi, 2001). There were therefore "non-aligned" as the group of Justice and Freedom feondato in Paris in 1929, there were Arturo Carlo Jemolo Bonaiuti and Ernesto, Ernesto Rossi and Mario Pannunzio but acted more like Saturday Nicola Pende and Visco which, although they were reluctant managers to endorse the racial laws with their scientific authority. Cases like those of the Socialist Torquato Nanni (first biographer of Mussolini for the "Voice" of Prezzolini) that stands between the bullets of the partisans and the body of the fascist "critical and maximalist" Arpinati Leandro, are memorable because of their uniqueness.
But as I said in the book is not only the social history of ideas but also the lives in "first person" el'intreccio close the two planes. And this last feature, this attempt to proceed in a speech unit, I think the most original figure of this "novel essay: there is the struggle with a father Catholic reactionary, reader of the" Corriere "to the" scandalous "management Brass that led Pasolini on the first page a father of course unable to accept the homosexuality of his son, who is stiff even when he learns that the Jesuits led the students to see the Gospel according to Matthew. An officer who fought that Alessandro Natta in his 1997 book defines as the other resistance or the resistance of those who took the oath of the "Italian Social Republic" Salo and for this he was interned in prison camps in Germany . Franco Buffoni's father and others like him had sworn allegiance to the king and were intolerant of the word "republic" which is no coincidence that in the Lombard dialect means something very marginal, as recalled by Luciano Erba in his poem "When I went to buy the mustard / My mother said to me while we go / give some facts' of the republic / leftovers which meant that they were / remained on the bank of the pork. " (Who cares here can remember reading another story about Erba). His father, a reactionary Catholic, a fervent monarchist educated by the fascists, is therefore a prisoner of the "allies" in the name of a German "honor" the value will be disregarded in post-fascist and two years ago as an intern in the fields of German detention. Freed from the "enemies" Russians, Americans and English is faced with a crisis grnade. What could be the result? Unfortunately not un (pur difficile) ripensamento e messa in discussione dei propri valori, ma un cortocircuito dalle nefaste conseguenze…
avendo debordato, voglio concludere ricordando cosa mi ha detto l’autore in occasione della presentazione del libro, nella libreria di un Parco Sempione arroventato dal sole di luglio: "Michaux dice che per comprendere l’intelligenza deve sporcarsi, essere ferita". Ricordo che un tempo volentieri mi affiabiavano il nomignolo “Pig Pen”, come il personaggio dei Peanuts ; quanto alle ferite, non posso che stupirmi del meraviglioso funzionamento dei globuli bianchi dell’anima. Quando ci permette di rialzarci.