Europe nations

Europe Nations: FAMILIES  POLGAR A., LITTLE STORIES WITHOUT MORALS, ADELPHI, 1994

Europe can only be a community of nations. To become one, however, he must rediscover meaning and function of the Nation, a much older and stronger community, in the collective psyche, than the modern State: the second linked to conquest and management of power, the first linked to the identity and representation of peoples.

FAMILIES

POLGAR A., LITTLE STORIES WITHOUT MORALS, ADELPHI, 1994, p. 29-31

 
Now that the baby has come into the world, everyone except the baby is filled with joy. Relatives and acquaintances turn around smiling at the wrinkled homunculus, red as an ember, which should rather awaken a feeling of pity because in the very moment he entered life he also entered death, and every second that pushes him away from the instant of its beginning it approaches it to the instant of its end. Still immortal nine months earlier as an idea
eternal, like a divine principle, he is already now at the mercy of death; of the chapter of the time of which he will have to be satisfied, has already consumed a full day.

... «Me genésthai! Says the wise man, the best thing is not to be generated. But to whom touch this luck? Hardly one, out of millions and millions.

The child screams. Distress and malaise are the first to knock on the still locked door of conscience, and with theirs strokes disturb him in his sleep. Shouting, the child raises a lament, an accusation for being in the world. The adults, addicted, hardened forced of life, welcome the newcomer with the typical humor that hides the embarrassment.

Hypocritically they ask: «Well, what is it? As if they didn't know very well what it is. By chanting caressing lullabies, the father urges the child to smile. With greedy eyes he goes spying on this smile like a sign that the poor being has resigned himself to the destiny of being in the world. “Come on, give me a little laugh! "

he whispers, and this means: Show that you forgive me for throwing you into the community of the living! The love paternal is partly a sense of guilt towards the child who was born. But in fathers, as is natural, this feeling is encapsulated to be almost imperceptible, repressed as it is by the pride of the creator, although the brief of the father in generating the creature, if one compares it to the maternal performance, it is not so impressive.

Does a soul already dwell in the heap of harmoniously arranged cells? The good fairies have already come to bear gifts and talents, and the evil witches who carry the first complexes? The small machine works at full speed; the heart beats, blood rushes, glands secrete, lungs release carbon monoxide, and tiny, tiny fingers the tips of a doll's fork clench on the touched father's finger. The child grabs what he can to reach. Here, it's a man!

Every time a newborn opens his eyes for the first time, the rebirth of the universe takes place through him. And he which opens to the world the doors through which the world must enter in order to exist. The assault is fierce, tender gates must be continually closed. But there is no rush, everything in its time.

The eye of the child: here a world leans out to look inside. The adult's eye: a world leans out here a look outside. For this reason it is cloudy like the glass of a glass on which many traces of still adher what was drunk. The child screams. But when he receives a drink, from a tender, very tender sigh of relief, his features relax, and every little sip of milk sucks a sip of peace on his face. Thus, from the beginning, the human beings are corrupted by nourishment, bent on repressing their truest thoughts, not to disturb, to be good.

Ah, how good the child is! Evil is also good as long as it is miniature. And good would be hell in size
pocket, and even the devil, if he looked the size of a thumb and with a mouse tail.

The mother rests, pale and exhausted. It feels strange, so pleasantly empty and so painfully abandoned, so full of gifts and so brutally used. And his soul, which gives thanks to God, intimately trusts in his gratitude. He may well claim this: the Creator lives in his creatures, and every bit of new life that
born is added to the life of Him.

Slight, the door opens. The mother would not be delighted if the three kings of the East entered on tiptoe.

But it's only Uncle Poldi.


 

SAFETY GROWTH FAMILIES

In the beginning it is always geography.

Word that takes me home, word that takes me away.

Just think about it, history is born.

It is the first winter of my life that I remember. Night falls early.

In the kitchen, by the fire, my grandmother and  Crackling of wood and slow sleepiness inside. Outside is the end of the world storm, water, hail, thunder and lightning. The wind blows through the sore roofs, moves in the cracks in the windows
glass and frames, shakes doors, howls, whistles and sucks between the stairs and the attic.

Grandma is setting the table. Its presence stems and dissolves any possible fear. And my strength, mine
safety. It supports the whole house and the world around it.

"Baby! go upstairs and get two apples that grandmother is tired and not so well. "

It is a frightening request! It's about going out into the corridor, climbing the stairs to the first floor, opening the creaking door dark and heavy of the room, cross it that, in the corner, the apples from the garden are kept on the floorboards for the winter.

You can't say no to your grandmother. How do you say yes? Beyond the kitchen door is the darkness, the cold drafts, the noises, the stairs that cannot be seen from the bottom at the top. Fear.

"Aren't you afraid?" This is our home and you are already a little man. " I must do it. There is no doubt. "Let her door open so you can see us. " The staircase is steep, the steps very high, it will be tough. I take the first steps on my knees
pulling myself up with difficulty.

"How are you?" the voice of the grandmother heartens me. "Grandmother." "Yes, child." "Okay, Grandma."

The voice fights fear. I stand up and attached to the handrail I go up.

Each step, first one foot then both, a call. "Grandmother." "Yes, child." "I'm here." "Good boy." "All right."

"Good boy."

Ten steps, it's done, I push the door and the big room is all shadows.

Only the voice can help me. Louder: "Grandma". "Yes, child." "I'm here. In the room."

"Good boy. Take two apples and bring them down. Be careful not to fall. "

Eyes and ears open, I reach the apples and turn around. The dim light that rises with the warmth of the fire, now in the forehead, does the return is easier, but my legs are shaking and I have to sit on the first step to recover.

Two apples in the hands: «Grandma, here». The excitement on him and the pride of having accomplished the feat.

«Good boy, you grow up quickly and Grandma is happy, she can trust you. At the table, now, that dinner tonight you earned it as a little man. "

This is the first memory I attach to the discovery of the world. A concentric discovery by enlargement. ...

In Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, Reduce, Mondadori, 2006, 41-43

FAMILIES EDUCATION

“Regarding the education of children, I think they should be taught not the small virtues, but the great ones.

Not savings, but generosity and indifference to money; not prudence, but courage and contempt of
danger; not cunning, but frankness and love of truth; not diplomacy, but love of neighbor self-denial; not the desire for success, but the desire to be and to know.

Instead, we usually do the opposite: we hasten to teach respect for the little virtues, basing on them
our whole educational system. In this way we choose the most comfortable way…. We neglect to teach the great ones virtues, and yet we love them, and we would like our children to have them: but we have confidence that they spring spontaneously in their minds, one day to come, considering them to be instinctive, while the others, the small ones, they seem the fruit of a reflection and a calculation and therefore we think they absolutely must be teach.

In reality the difference is only apparent: Even the small virtues come from the depths of our instinct, from a defense instinct: but in them reason speaks, sentences, argues, brilliant advocate of personal safety. The great virtues spring from an instinct in which reason does not speak, an instinct to which it would be difficult for me to give a name. And the
better than us is in that mute instinct: and not in our defense instinct, which argues, sentences, argues with the voice of reason.

Education is nothing but a certain relationship that we establish between us and our children, a certain climate in which children flourish feelings, instincts, thoughts. Now I believe that a climate entirely inspired by respect for small virtues, mature insensitive to cynicism, or the fear of living. The little virtues, in themselves, have nothing to do with cynicism, or with the fear of living: but all together, and without the big ones, they generate an atmosphere that leads to them consequences. Not that the little virtues, in themselves, are despicable: but their value is of a complementary order not substantial; they cannot be alone without the others, and they are, alone without the others, by human nature a poor food. The way of exercising the small virtues, in a moderate measure and when it is completely indispensable, man can find it around him and drink it in the air: because the small virtues are of a very common and widespread order among
 the men. But the great virtues, those are not breathed in the air: and must be the first substance of ours relationship with our children, the first foundation of education.

Furthermore, the large can also contain the small: but the small, by law of nature, cannot contain in any way the great."

Natalia Ginzburg, The little virtues

 

MOTHER FAMILIES

Some mothers need unhappy children, otherwise their goodness as mothers cannot manifest itself. "

 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

philosophy

“The philosophical greatness of Aeschylus is also ignored.

 

And the thing is even more serious. Along with a few others, he opens the way to the West. "

 (E. Severino, Nothingness and poetry)

 

There is an arch that has Aeschylus and Leopards at its ends. The parable that runs from one to the other is what we call West. Indeed, with Aeschylus the essential illusion arises: that knowledge of truth - that part of truth certain and immutable within the reach of human reason - it is the only remedy that our species has to save itself from ache. The essential pain is that of death. Truth is the remedy for pain for one's own incompleteness mortality because truth as epistéme "is the remedy for pain, because it shows incontrovertibly that the substance
of all beings, it is eternal, "always saved" from nothing (Aristotle, Metaph. 983 b 13 "(E. Severino, The nothing and poetry).


Only with Leopardi does this path find its epilogue; because “Leopardi, first of all, thinks that the truth is precisely the annihilation of life and things and therefore cannot be the remedy for pain. Truth is pain ”(Ibid.).

 

Yet:

“In Leopardi's thought, faith in the 'evidence' of becoming acquires an intensity that it had never had: with extreme power testifies to what pure visibility is for it, full light where it appears that annihilation does not it destroys (and the creation does not produce) simply the accidental and individual aspects, but the substance itself the entire consistency of being. It testifies to the "very true and most certain nothing of things" (Zib. 103) "(Ibid.).

 “That extreme anguish is produced by the annihilation of beings and their coming from nowhere is one of the traits essential and decisive of the origins of philosophical thought. It receives its most grandiose expression from Aeschylus; guide
the entire history of the West; Leopardi's thought is the purest testimony of this, at the beginning of the process in which the contemporary culture rejects the remedy that Western tradition had prepared for the anguish of nothingness: reason as a remedy. It is "human reason ... unable to make us not happy but less unhappy"; indeed, it is the “source ... of absolute and necessary madness "- even if, of course," very true madness "(Zib. 103-4)." (Ibid.).

philosophy

The others form the man; I tell it and I represent one in particular very badly done, and which, if I had from
model again, I would do indeed different from what it is. Now, it's done. Now, the lines of my portrait don't
they disperse, although they change and diversify. The world is but a continuous movement. Everything moves there relentlessly: the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt, and of the public movement and its own. The same constancy is nothing more than a more languid movement. I cannot insure my item. He goes dark and staggering, of a natural intoxication. I catch it at this point, as it presents itself, in the instant in which I leave interest. I don't paint being. I paint the passage [.]. It is a control of different and changing and changing events of unresolved and, when it happens, contrary imaginations; that I am another myself, or that I take subjects from others circumstances and considerations. So much so that I sometimes contradict myself, but the truth, as




Demadio said, is not the truth I contradict at all. If my soul could be still, I would not test myself, I would resolve myself; is always in training and on trial. What I propose is a simple life without shine, it is a whole. It can all be tied just as well moral philosophy to a popular and private life than to a life of richer stuff; each man carries the form within himself whole of the human condition.

Michel de Montaigne

Essays (vol.III)

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Textual analysis

 Title:

 The title seems to get lost in the vast and anonymous ensemble of the essay genre. In fact, the content of this passage shows to what extent it is meaningful and appropriate: the book is titled "essay" precisely and literally because the author's aim is to test himself through writing, and at the same time to be tested by the reader. Indeed, the object of the book is the story of himself as a man ("I tell [the man] and he represent one in particular. ") A clear reference to the link between the title and the testing is found at the end of first paragraph: "If my soul could be still, I would not test myself, I would resolve myself"; here Montaigne indicates
explicitly the reason for his book, and that of the choice of title.

Object:

If it is true that the object of the story is a man "in particular", this does not mean that he is "worthy" to be "told" for reasons intrinsic to him: this man is neither particularly important nor in any way exemplary

("I represent one very badly done" - par. 1; "What I propose is a simple life without shine" - par. 2). In
other words, as in the case of Rousseau's Confessions (1765-70), it is not a question of talking about oneself because he wants to claim the dignity of the individual subject. The narrating ego speaks of itself only because it belongs to mankind, as one of the many possible representatives of Man, because "the whole moral philosophy to a popular and private life than to a life of richer stuff "(par. 2).

 Form:

As we have already said, the object of the book is the story of oneself. But this observation needs some
clarifications. Montaigne's Essais (Essays) are neither a diary nor an autobiography: in fact, unlike the diary, we have no chronological succession or division into sections with different dates; and unlike
autobiography, we are not presented with the life of a man who is important in his individuality (historical, social, etc.), telling it according to an orderly scheme aimed at demonstrating something. Essais are the result of one open writing, the sole purpose of which is to "tell" a man.

 

Rhythm:

 Since it follows no order, neither chronological nor causal, the narrative, Montaigne warns us, develops following the narrator's thoughts, through a fluid and swinging movement, governed solely by the law of
free association of ideas. It therefore seems to be let go free, in a disordered way and
inconsistent; in reality, it is the result of a careful stylistic criterion, of a real experimental method: as it did note a famous critic, Auerbach *, the narrative rhythm in Montaigne is explained and justified (by the same author- narrator) through a precise syllogism:
1. I tell a particular man (myself) 2. Everything in the world it is in constant motion and change 3. Therefore: I, who am part of the world, am in constant motion, and the my narrative, which is intended to adapt to its object, is equally changeable.

Main themes:

 

    *   The becoming: most of the first paragraph is entirely devoted to this theme. Through the
observation that everything in the world is in motion, for external or own reasons ("of the public movement and of the just "), Montaigne goes so far as to explain how his object (that is, himself) escapes him (" he goes dark and staggering "). The only way for him to" secure "it (to catch him, to catch him) is to catch him" as you presents ", that is, in motion. Therefore he can affirm that he does not paint being (what is stable), but the passage.

 the same reason he, unlike the others, cannot form man, but only tell him, since to form him
its essence should first be fixed. Again, this is also the reason why he, as a being changeable, it cannot resolve itself, but only test itself.

    * Simplicity: Montaigne insists on reiterating that he does not "tell" himself because he has particular qualities that make him interesting as an individual. It presents itself as "a simple life without shine", not so much because this is true in practice (Montaigne was, in fact, a nobleman and one of the most prominent people in France at the time he lived), as much as this is the intention: if he had wanted to tell about himself as an illustrious man, he would have.
I could have done it very well, but what matters to him is to tell about himself as a man. He requires of himself only one quality:

*humanity, because that is enough for its moral philosophy.

    * The truth: the only condition required by his work is sincerity in talking about himself. This condition is followed in a very rigorous manner by Montaigne, so much so that it can be said that even in his inconsistency he is in reality perfectly consistent with his own nature ("I sometimes contradict myself, but the truth, as Demadio said, not the I contradict at all ").

Concluding remarks:

    * The difference between a book like Rousseau's Confessions and Montaigne's Essays reflects the difference that it exists between two centuries as distant as the 18th and 16th centuries. When Rousseau, as a true pre-romantic, decides to
to write a book about himself, the main intent is to claim the dignity of one's person as
possible object of a book (remember that Rousseau was a bourgeois, and that he was addressing an audience mainly aristocrat). In Montaigne there is no personal and individual claim: if he writes about himself, he is his own being a man that interests him, and in this he perfectly reflects the 16th century, the century of Humanism.

    * As we have seen, the main elements of this passage are:

1) the will to present oneself in a manner  simple and at the same time rigorous; 2) the need to speak about one's object while adhering to the truth; 3) desire to grasp this object in its complexity and totality; 4) the need to adapt the narrative style to the object of the narrative. 

All these elements perfectly reflect the Renaissance thought, which stands out among the other, for the attempt to build a stable system at the center of which is a harmonious and complete vision of Man.

 

* Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (Realism in Western Literature), Vol. II, chap. 2.