"The domestic space, that of the house, the apartment (same territory at the end of animal) is an area of \u200b\u200bfamiliar noises, recognized , which together form a kind of symphony home: beat of different doors, voices, sounds of cooking, plumbing, echoes from the outside: Kafka has described exactly this symphony in a family page Logs (5 November 1911): "I'm sitting in my room in the headquarters of the noise of the whole apartment: I hear doors slamming all the ... "and you know the anxiety of hospitalized children who can not hear the familiar noises of maternal shelter": thus R. Barthes writes of 'Listening (in The obvious el'ottuso , tr. Com., Torino, Einaudi, 1985), showing how, through the everyday life of this language, the "Domestic Symphony" will unite us and lead us into the phenomenal world, ordinary landscape. But we can and we want to, listen to other voices that lead us into a territory, other, other, "wholly other" in an absolute world, unique, vertical, for which it requires the ability to "play a panic in the greek sense, the Dionysian."
is made mandatory, at this point, return to the mythical song of the Sirens and the consequences of listening. It is on these mythological figures who wish to dwell (and thus referring to the large volume of M. Bettini and L. Spina, The myth of the Sirens, Torino, Einaudi, 2007, and the rich voice Wikipedia, l ' free encyclopedia), but the meaning of that song and the consequences of his play as a metaphor of the journey and spiritual realization.
What could be so special about that song? Should be, at first contact, simple, understandable, everyday, as it is, eg., The body of the simple and everyday, but also "disturbing" when we meet in his absolute directness: "There was something wonderful in that song real, common, secret, "writes M. Blanchot (cited by Barthes), "singing simple, everyday, that all of a sudden it gave her to recognize [...] part of the abyss: that, once understood, a chasm opened in every word and called forcefully shooting into '. That song could not be heard with impunity, because it was an in-hand, "the sound of honey ' Homer says. They promised the daughters of Achelous, " No one has ever passed through here with the black ship with our mouth without hearing the sound of honey, but he goes after having enjoyed it and knowing things. Because we know the pain that the Argives and Trojans suffered extensive Troy by the will of the gods know what is happening on the ground fertile " . To know more things, maybe absolute knowledge, a knowledge that has a high price for those who yield to this temptation: a turning away from earthly life, the alienation, the humiliation and death itself: "to him that ignorant s' approaches and listens to the voice of the Sirens, ever again his wife and children's children are close, happy and at home is back, but the Sirens enchant him with a clear hand, lying on the grass. " Comment A. Tarabocchia Canavero (see Wikipedia): "It looks like outside of their intentions to hold the men who have always accepted their invitation: they lie or inconsistency of the myth that wants all-knowing, not aware that the" desire to know more things " has brought all those who have stayed with them to satisfy you to forget the family affections, to the neglect of everything that has to do with their lives, to let die: does not seem to realize that the sea can be seen between flowers, their bones and their rotting limbs ... The beautiful voice is just the shell of the tempting Sirens of Homer, "to know more things." It is the temptation to "original" omniscience. Yielding to this temptation, indulge in absolute terms, this desire leads to break family ties, to lose the social and civil, to die. Homer for this conviction. To this the hero must escape, must not interrupt his nostos [back] .
To stay in the metaphor, if we can find the song of the Sirens in the promises of totalitarian "revelations" or the seductions of religious ideologies, we must not forget that the Sirens have a weapon that can be even more fearful of the song: their silence. This reflection leads us to a story by Kafka ( The Silence of the Sirens, in Tales, tr. Com., Milan, Mondadori, 1990), which has a Ulysses who fills their ears with wax and makes chaining mast, but we can say, mocked by the Sirens, who do not sing from his view. Ulysses "had full confidence in the handful of wax and the nodes of the chains and, with innocent joy because of his mezzucci, sailed to meet the sirens. Has not happened, no, but you would think that someone has been saved from their hand, but certainly not by their silence. No mortal can resist the feeling of defeating him with their overwhelming strength and pride it brings. In fact, the arrival of Ulysses powerful singers do not sing, either believing that much could be overcome only with the opponent's silence is not forgetting to sing at the sight of happiness that was blowing the face of Ulysses, who did not think of anything but wax and chains . He, however, we will say so, did not hear their silence thought they were singing and he imagined that he alone was preserved from hearing. A glimpse of the saw to turn the neck, breathe deeply, he noticed their eyes full of tears, lips parted, and I think that all this was part of the melodies that you hear, you will lose around him. But all that touched only his eyes fixed on the distance, the sirens disappeared, so to speak, in front of his resolve, and just when they were closer, he knew nothing about them. "
The Sirens of silence suggests another way in which the "revelations" often occur, "expressing" the abyss of Wholeness in suicide silence the word in a "mystical" if the words are always inadequate, both rimenere is silent and look "inside" that could not be found "outside"!
Sounds home of the symphony, as the truth of the phenomenal world that pull us into the banality of everyday life, on the one hand, the "revelations" of the whole that pull us away from the world by claiming to place them into a reality "other", or Pleroma Emptiness other.
But unhappy, as we are enamored of the Middle Way, we wonder: Is there another way to make a "listen failed", Barthes would say, affirm the truth of the 'otherwise' dell'irraggiungibile instead of the "Other"? One answer, if we pick it up, we will meet again, the mythical story. We need to go to the company of the Argonauts, before the voyages of Ulysses, and the story that makes them, in the Argonautica , the poet Apollonius of Rhodes. It should be noted that the members of the expedition of the Argonauts was also part of Orpheus, the Thracian poet, son of one of the Muses. When the passage of their vessels, the Sirens were going to do the usual game of seduction, he recruited a race that began with their comrades to safety, so much more significant than would later Ulysses with his "mezzucci. "Even for them, without hesitation, sent the enchanting voice and already were about to throw off the moorings, where the son of Eagro, the Thracian Orpheus, had not stretched with his hands the strings of the lyre of Biston and sang a lively song, with a rapid pace, so that their ears the sound of thunder: it got the better of the harp voice of virgins. Zefiro el'onda resonant pushed forward from the stern brought the ship and their song became an indistinct sound. " The race, as they look M. Bettini and L. Spina, contains several symbolic elements: it is "singing contest, melody, rhythm, vocal, as well as challenge mortal race been artists, perhaps, the race between a man Sources in the divine and hybrid creatures, [...] in the festering evil, as a response to their happiness taken away by a vengeful goddess. " But there's more: in Orpheus Orphic Argonautica, speaking in first person, tells us: "I sang, raising his voice with high tone, a hymn of wonders, as once came into conflict for the horses feet as fast as the turbines, high-thundering Zeus and shakers of the ocean floor, and then the hair-dark-god angry with his father Zeus struck the ground with his trident Lycaonia gold and violently broke up into pieces in order to make the endless Acue marine islands, and so called Sardinia, Cyprus, Euboea and still windy. So, while I was singing with the harp, the Sirens, from the top of the cliff, they were astonished, then put an end to their song. [...] Moaned so desperate, why came the fateful day of death "(in M. Bettini and L. Spina, op. Cit. ). If the contents of the Sirens' song we know nothing, the song of Orpheus is fascinating in its own content, tells of battles between gods and natural phenomena, is not an empty hand, prefers the word, the stories and events. The end of the sirens we can at this point, read it as the end of the ability of the revelations of seduction and ideologies of the whole, the unveiling of the elements present in them and lie attempts of dishonest, totalitarian, to present the party as a whole. The Absolute is offering Orpheus, however, the total non-totalitarian form of the Absolute, speech and song, is heaven and earth, the beauty of truth and the truth of beauty, perfection achieved in the fullness of or hand gesture is not just that the teaching of the Middle Way dall'Orfeo proposed Indian who was called Buddha, the Enlightened honor from the world? It is not the Bible , the Lotus Sutra , the Bhagavad-Gita of the great works of poetry?
