«Hortus Mortis». Le riflessioni sulla guerra negli scritti filosofici e letterari di Vernon Lee (1914-1920)

Abstract

The first part of the essay draws a brief profile of the French-born British cosmopolitan intellectual Vernon Lee (1856-1935) focusing on her pacifist writings published during the Great War. The central part dwells on Satan the Waster, a complex, experimental piece: an allegorical drama, a reflection on collective psychology, on the very idea of ​​reality, and a personal memory. What were the influences, associations and habits that led to participation in the war with enthusiasm or passivity? How had the dark waves of emotions acted dragging the warring societies into a spiral of fear, suspicion and hatred? Philosophy, social psychology, but also literature and art could have helped to reaffirm the sense of reality the war and its illusions had dissolved or distorted.