«Amour dure». Variazioni sul tema dell'amore oltre la morte

Abstract

This study outlines a path through the infinite ways and resources of imagination and culture with which humanity, through literature, has sought over the centuries not only to make thinkable perhaps the cruellest of all private events, the loss of a loved one, but also to put in communication, and in both directions, the world of the living and the world of the dead: communication that oscillates between an immaterial if not transcendent way, and an immanent one, suspected of fetishism. Thus, we find confidence in the future reunion of souls for new celestial marriages and idolization of the dead body or parts of it (mostly the severed head), Orphic rites aimed at reopening the doors closed by the Angel of death and attempts to revive the loved one now with occult practices, now with substitution dynamics, even by means of mechanical devices and doubles. In the opposite direction, the surviving person cultivates the illusion that a sort of Love-phoenix has consumed the ashes of its wings to be reborn only immortal, bringing the dearest being back to the world from which he had been forced to depart. And now he fantasizes about imminent or already accomplished returns in ectoplasmic form, revealed by sighs and invisible caresses, now he glimpses, reflected in some object belonging to the lost person, or carried by natural entities and phenomena, the vestiges of the ancient flame, or again – supreme hypothesis – he sees the adored figure materialize, as if alive.