Gibson

Quel che vede Atteone, accade allora al di là della genesi di ogni parola: scorge Diana nell’acqua e non riesce a dir quel che vede. Il suo vagare, anche se teso a sorprenderla, è simile a un’ascesa verso lo stadio anteriore alla parola. Come ridurre in formula il suo andar per le selve, per trovarsi confrontato d’un tratto con la scena sempre inattesa - benché proprio l’attesa l’avesse indotto ad avanzare? Diremo che l’avvenimento assorbe ciò che nell’ansia di coglierla era ancora esprimibile. Non posso dir quel che vedevo. Non che l’inesprimibile sia incomprensibile e che l’incomprensibile sia invisibile. L’Atteone della favola vede perché non può dire ciò che vede: potesse, smetterebbe di vedere. Ma egli medita in fondo alla grotta. All’Atteone che irrompe nel sacro recinto in cui Diana fa il bagno, l’Atteone che medita fa dire: Non dovrei trovarmi qui e perciò mi ci trovo. In realtà l’esperienza si ridurrebbe a questa assurda proposizione: dovevo esserci perché non dovevo.

“Such is the daemon’s state of mind. He is a voyeur, and he is bored. He finds amusement in taking part in scenes that are shameful and humiliating to the gods as well as to humans. After having indulged in infamies of this sort, he waits to be appeased, disillusioned. But appeasement is contrary to his nature. Suspended between the serenity of the gods, with whom he shares only immortality through his body, and the passions he suffers together with humanity, he knows only a state of perpetual restlessness. His body is as malleable as it is unperishing and fluid: and as he wearies of lending it to the gods for thankless theophanies which in no way change his condition, his preference goes to goddesses. In the single hope of bringing them to prostitute themselves to mortals. Such is how he imagines his role as mediator.”

“She consents to be seen, if it is for the sake of slaughtering and killing some more; but in killing, she surrenders herself. Let one sully her with his gaze, and she will kill; but she will glorify the one who, in dying, will have seen her.”

The true atheism is not as simple as philosophy imagines it to be. It occurs in two stages: the banal refusal to believe in a God is self-contradictory and satisfies those who think little, but the refusal to believe in a good God is the true rebellion. There is always a God lying in ambush, preparing his return in whatever negation is made of his existence, even a materialist one, but it is important that it be a malicious God, a thesis that only an ‘ultra’-religious heresy can face. The atheism of indifference is weak and lays down its arms along with its speech to philosophy; the second is a strong heresy, the 'non’-theological radicalization of a malicious God, his extension to every divinity that would appear as One or Multiple, as Sole and Great or even as natural and pagan.