Charles Baudelaire

Ma spesso il malinconico sente che la sua risposta al mondo è in ritardo.

Dans le personnage d'Ajax, Sophocle fait intervenir successivement, au cours d'un seul jour mortel, les deux états contrastés de l'égarement absolu et de l'extrême lucidité, de la contrainte subie et de la libre décision de mourir. Ces états appartiennent à des moments parfaitement distincts, dont l'opposition si nettement marqués va sans doute de pair avec la poursuite de l'effet tragique.

De la révolte à l'égarement, de l'égarement à la reconnaissance du déshonneur, de cette connaissance humiliante à la mort volontaire, Sophocle scande avec une surprenante précision la succession, l'enchainement et la différence des attitudes passionnelles : le lecteur moderne a le sentiment de voir s'étaler, dans le cours temporel de la représentation, les couleurs pures dans lesquelles se décompose la lumière aveuglante du suicide.

(C'est là tout le contraire de la connaissance confuse qu'on a si souvent relevée chez les héros raciniens. Dans leur effort le plus sévère, leur regard n'est jamais libéré du trouble ; et dans leurs emportements furieux, il leur reste toujours quelque perspicacité douloureuse. Ils n'accèdent jamais ni à la pleine clairvoyance, ni au total aveuglement.)

— Jean Starobinski, « L'épée d'Ajax » (in : Trois Fureurs, 1974)

http://conectaabogados.com/la-tinta-de-la-melancolia-van-gogh-por-jean-starobinski/

“La tinta de la melancolía”: Van Gogh por Jean Starobinski

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (apro).- La tinta de la melancolía se intitula el ensayo de 552 páginas que el médico, crítico literario y escritor suizo Jean Starobinski (Ginebra, 1920) publicó hace un lustro (L’Encre de la mélancolie), apareciendo este año en edición del Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) al cuidado de Fausto José Trejo, en Sección […]

La entrada “La tinta de la melancolía”: Van Gogh por Jean Starobinski aparece primero en Proceso.

A text I read in one of my courses this week really resonated with the questions I was asking myself lately. Why is Larry so fascinating ? Why are we so obsessed ?

" The hidden fascinates. (...) In dissimulation and absence there is a strange force that compels the spirit to turn toward the inaccessible and, for the sake of conquest, to sacrifice all it possesses. Fairy tales, works of realism as far as the mechanism of desire is concerned, know only hidden treasures, concealed in some dark depth. If these treasures must belong to someone, they will go to the one who has renounced everything, even the hope of becoming their master. The essence of mystery is to compel us to regard as worthless and tiresome anything that does not make it more easily accessible. Yes, the shadow has the power to make us release all our prey simply because it is shadow and provokes in us a nameless anticipation. Fascination persuades us, so that we may belong to it, to give up everything, even concern for our own lives. It takes all we have simply by promising everything we want. At first, we were able to dream of laying hold of what lay hidden, but the roles were quickly reversed : all at once, we found ourselves passive en paralysed, having renounced our will and allowed ourselves to be inhabited by the imperious call of absence.

Moralists, of course, have deemed this sacrifice outrageous. What ! Lose all that one has for an illusion ! Allow oneself to be robbed of the present and to live forever after in destructive ecstasy ? Scorn visible beauty for love of what does not exist ? (...)

The hidden is the other side of a presence. The power of absence if we attempt to describe it, leads us to the power possessed in varying degrees by certain real objects. These objects point beyond themselves toward a magical space. They are indices of something they are not. (...)

To be fascinated is the height of distraction. It is to be prodigiously inattentive to the world as it is. "