Sbagliando s'impera

C’è una parola che mi piace molto: “trasporto”. Mi piace quando si usa in senso metaforico, riferita alla musica o all’amore. Provo a spiegarmi: noi viviamo in perenne compagnia della consapevolezza del nostro sé. Una cosa bellissima, che tendiamo a considerare ciò che ci rende specificamente umani, perché immaginiamo che gli altri animali non abbiano un sé o ce l’abbiano molto rudimentale (è uno dei punti che Hofstadter discute in I Am a Strange Loop). Però è una presenza costante, da cui ogni tanto cerchiamo di sfuggire: il grande successo delle sostanze psicotrope, che alterano la coscienza, in tutte le epoche e in tutte le culture, ne è una testimonianza. Ecco, certi brani musicali e certe sensazioni dell’amore hanno lo stesso effetto: ci trasportano lontani dal nostro sé, in una dimensione dello spazio e del tempo sottratta alla dittatura del sé.

L’Adagietto della 5° sinfonia di Gustav Mahler è per me uno dei brani musicali che più intensamente e più spesso mi “trasportano” via.

Non deve essere una cosa che succede soltanto a me, se Luchino Visconti l’ha utilizzato come colonna sonora di un celebre “rapimento” d’amore, quello di Gustav von Aschenbach per l’etereo Tadzio.

Naturalmente, Visconti e Mann parlano della bellezza, elusiva e fuggevole. E la scena finale a me ricorda irresistibilmente l’epifania che Stephen Dedalus ha sulla spiaggia di Bull Island:

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to
sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a
strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate
as a crane’s and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had
fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and
soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white
fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her
slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed
behind her. Her bosom was as a bird’s, soft and slight, slight and soft
as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was
girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her
face.

She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his
presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet
sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she
suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent
them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither
and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the
silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep;
hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on
her cheek.

–Heavenly God! cried Stephen’s soul, in an outburst of profane joy.

He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His
cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On
and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly
to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.

Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the
holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had
leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate
life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal
youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open
before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error
and glory. On and on and on and on!