Where and when
Orario
18:30
Museo Novecento
Who
Cristina dell’Acqua
Author
Sergio Risaliti
Free entry
Can bonds set us free? Yes, if they are made of magical knots, Homer would say. For a few moments, in a few verses of the Odyssey, Homer presents us with a real knot and it is when Arete, mother of Nausicaa and queen of the Phaeacians, gives Ulysses, before his last journey to Ithaca, a casket full of treasures and prays to him. to tie it firmly with a knot. What Ulysses performs is a knot that the sorceress Circe taught him many years earlier. It is therefore safe to bet that it is a magic knot.
Circe’s knot is not just any knot, it is feminine, because it will untie thanks to the women met, it is desmós, from the verb deo which means to tie, poikilos, complex, as life is, colorful, multicolored, as the sorceress knows how to make it. The knot is the essence of deep bonds. It is a weld, invisible. It keeps us close to each other, but it is not prison. True ties can only be a gift of freedom, care, attention, listening to the other.
This book therefore speaks of Ulysses and his links. On his long journey back from Troy, Ulysses is a victorious man, but alone. No longer a hero but a castaway. Sense and direction no longer knows where they are. It will be some special meetings to help him find a force that is not written in any war. Nausicaa, Circe, Calipso, Penelope, Anticlea, Athena are the figures who guide him on a path that is not just a homecoming, but traces the map of his sentimental education. The return of Ulysses is built on the knots of love, friendship and hospitality but also of pain and nostalgia, indispensable foundations for the reconstruction of the memory of who he once was and who he will become. Like Ulysses, we are all our relationships.
Cristina dell’Acqua
graduated in Classics at the University of Milan. He teaches Greek and Latin at the San Carlo College in Milan where he is now Head of Cultural Projects. Always passionate about didactic experimentation, she attended specialization courses in Arts Integration in Annapolis, Maryland, USA and the annual educational and editorial refresher conferences organized in the USA (San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles) by ASCD, a dedicated global community excellence in teaching. Author of A Spa for the Soul. How to take care of life with Greek and Latin classics (2019, Mondadori, now Oscar series). He holds the weekly column Dizionario del Tempo Presente on La7’s online and social networks. He has published some articles in Domani and Corriere della Sera.
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