Traveling in the spacetime with Virgil

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BTCCPJTQ

Traveling in space-time with Virgil

A drama in a prologue, three acts and forty four scenes

by ignazio salvatore basile

Characters

Virgil: a Latin dead poet

Dante: an Italian poet still alive

Men from Hell

Tommaso Cosimo Caccini, Lodovico delle Colombe, Niccolò Lorino, Claudio Acquaviva,  Benedetto Mandina , Jacopo Aldobrandini

e don Pedro de Vera: Judges Inquisitors of the Holy Inquisition in the Galileo’s Trial

Witnesses and Guards at Galileo’s trial

Alberto Tragagliolo: a timeless Florentine

Five Devils of Loudun

Sneezy, Freezy; Slippy, Drippy, Nippy,Showery, Flowery, Wheezy,

Bowery; Hoppy, Croppy, Poppy: Dwarves of French revolution;

James Morton and Lord Digheels: two damned from hell

Ferdinand Walsin Esterhàzi, Eduard Drumont, Major du Platy de Clam

and General Mercier and Alphonse Bertillon damned in the Devil’s Island

Harold Frederick Shipman, Irving Roy Cohn, Censors and Gunmen: Sinners from the Great Circle

Reverend Jones Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr, Jim MCelvane, Judy IJames

and Joyce Touchette: People of the Temple

David Berg Karen Zerby and Kathleen Maddox: other guests in the Hell

Ealk : Great Beast, guardian of the Ante Hell

Waitress

Eleanor of Sardinia and Brancaleone Doria: good people from Purgatory

T.C.B., J.L., J.H., J.M., J.B., B.M.,S.B., B.J., M.D., E.P.,J.R.

and L.H. : guitar players and other musicians from Purgatory

Angels from Paradise

Beatrice: a beautiful celestial lady.

Prologue

Somewhere in the space the Latin poet Virgil and the Italian poet Dante meet again, after almost seven hundred years, for starting a new journey on the universe of human vices and virtues.

Virgil will lead Dante Alighieri, as a guide, across the space-time, through as many different levels of the human vices, as many centuries have passed by from their first journey.

They will travel together through the hell of desperation up to the hope of repentance of purgatory. At the third level Dante eventually meets Beatrice who will lead him to the true love shore of Paradise.

Scene 1

Dante and Virgil

An aseptic room. On the left a door communicates outside. On the right a spiral staircase leads upside where the spaceship awaits for Virgil and Dante to go. In a total darkness the creak of an opening door. Dante will desperately call for his master Virgil.

Dante (a frightened voice in the darkness): May I come in? Is anyone there…? Schoolmaster!!! Are you there? Please answer me… for God’s sake…

(After a short but heavy silence’s time, a scrubbing sound of a lighting match will be heard in the darkness. Then a candle will light an old man sit down at a table covered by piles of books, papers and maps.

Virgil (after reawakening, he lights the candle ): I must have fallen asleep…Who is in there???

Dante (still trembling): Is it you, master?

Virgil: (going to meet Dante, hardly recognizes his friend, lighting his face) Dante…? My son!!! Why are you so shattered and distraught??? What happened to you???

Dante (getting closer to his master, almost crying in a mixture of joy and relief ) Oh, Virgil, masterly teacher of my trembling soul… if you only knew what I have gone through…

Virgil (placing his candle on the table, embracing him with protective affection): It’s all right now, my son…

Dante (falling on his arms, starts crying and sobbing): It has been really very hard outside there, in the darkness… I saw death in the face…

Virgil (l.b.): Please, take a sit, my son… It’s all over now…

Dante(reacquiring some trust): Thanks to God I’m with you now…

Virgil (l.b. pouring a glass of water from a jar on the table) Of course… It will be all right now… Please have some water…

Dante (drinking with desire the water): I have escaped three horrible beasts…

Virgil: Have you?

Dante (trembling again and looking afraid at the door): Yes… A tiger, a serpent and a monkey persecuted me up to here…

Virgil: Be calm now… they can’t surely get inside here…

Dante (reassured he looks gratefully at Virgil): I know they can’t my sweet master…

Virgil (with a gesture of affection): Forget about everything now…Are you still determined to take over our journey?

Dante (with a sigh of relief): More than ever master! With you by my side I can face anything fearless!

Virgil: (pointing out the spiral staircase) Don’t you fear to face a long and risky journey through the Universe with that spaceship?

Dante: Not at all, master!!! I told you: I’m ready to go anywhere with you by my side!!!

Virgil (taking a map on his hands): Let’s talk about it then! Everything is ready… I’ll show you…Do you know what is this?

Dante (bending on the map): Well … I see two cones turned upside down …

Virgil: Come on! It’s an astronomic figure!

Dante: I’m sorry…It might be a double cone diagram …

Virgil: That’s better. The bottom cone represents the past and the light cone, instead, is future! The point where the apices meet is the present; so we are here now , can you see it?

Dante (pointing the map): Yes master, I surely can! But what is this kind of spiral down here ?

Virgil: The Great Spiral contains all the human’s history, since our brain can retain trace of it…Every concentric circle corresponds to a century time… the inner you go to the center, the nearer you get closer to our ancestral roots, do you get me?

Dante (with a thrill of excitement): That’s makes me feel a bit lost…It’s all so stately… so magnificent…

Virgil: Of course it is! We are talking about the space-time…That’s what the spiral really represents…

Dante (like lost in the clouds): That’s would be fantastic…

Virgil (preventing and reassuring him ): It’s out of our route to travel the warped direction… we’ll walk the expanding direction instead… with our spaceship we’ll intersect the space time right here (he points up with a finger the map)… at the beginning of the fourteenth century and from there we’ll continue towards the present;

Dante (surprised and excited): But that’s the anniversary of my exile from Florence!!!

Virgil (with an accomplishing smile): Of course! Right the 1302… Don’t you want to know what happened after your left the town???

Dante (enthusiastically): So I’ll be able to see my beloved wife???

Virgil (beating him dear on his head): Have you forgotten we are going to visit the Hell??? You’ll see her in Paradise!!! Or at least in the Purgatory realms…

Dante (disappointed but thoughtful): I’m sorry master… I didn’t forget it but for a while I thought it might me a sort of passageway in the way to hell… ‘you know?

Virgil: Not at all, my son. Look! All along the spiral’s arms we’ll find the different circles of Hell; in its last part we’ll be in the so called Ante Hell; but here (he points the map again), where the final part of the spiral almost touches the present’s point we’ll aim the peaks of Purgatory…

Dante (with lively curiosity): so I may argue that the Hell is in the same dimension of past life?

Virgil (complying with satisfaction): That’s right my dear learner. As a matter of fact the right established punishment for the sinners is to stay in the unhappy condition of human life forever, without evolving in a better life like we’ll see for the Purgatory and, above all, for the praised of Paradise!!!

Dante: I see…

Virgil: Don’t be disappointed. Can’t you imagine a worse punishment than sharing your own time only with the evil without any good at all???

Dante (positively thoughtful): Of course you’re right…

Virgil: Put it this way: you’ll be able to see your enemies… those who exiled you… lost forever in their thirst of power, in the vacuity of their nothingness… and those who betrayed you…

Dante: I’m not sure to want such a revenge…

Virgil: That goes to your praise and merit…Aren’t you curious about the destiny of the big priest Boniface? Charles landless Valois? And what about Raniero Zaccaria?

Dante: (sadly) I would prefer to forget them!

Virgil: You don’t have to stop forcedly with them…We can decide the first stop in advance by the on board controls…

Dante: Do you mean we can land anywhere in the spiral lines of space-time?

Virgil: That’s exactly what I mean!!!

Dante: I fear to face events too close to my own story…

Virgil: There’s no problem, my son. We can go straight way to any of the circles of any century!!!

Dante : As far as I know something about some good guys I could really go further..Can I know only a few names before we go?

Virgil: Go ahead with the names please!!!

Dante: (thirstily) Giovanni Boccaccio, Cino da Pistoia, Pieraccio Tebaldi, Bosone da Gubbio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Johannes Gutenberg and his pupil Johann Numeister!

Virgil: You’ll find them all in the Purgatory or maybe in the eternal joy of Paradise!

Dante (with a sigh of relief): I think they deserve it, don’t you master?

Virgil: It’s not up to me to decide, not even to discuss such matters…

Dante: I’m sorry master…

Virgil (overflying any argument): Have you got any other name?

Dante: Can you just tell me something about a certain Francesco, the son of my friend, the notary Ser Petracco?

Virgil: Despite everything he has deserved to play another chance to reach Paradise..at least for literary merits… Don’t you think so?

Dante (bewildered, pedantly listing ): Well, I surely prefer Rinaldo Cavalchini, Menghino Mezzani, Manuello Romano, Giovanni Quirini, Angelo Poliziano, Luigi Pulci, Lorenzo di Pietro, Giovanni di Paolo, Cristoforo Landino, Franco Sacchetti, Leonardo Bruni, Francesco da Barberino and …

Virgil: (cutting him straight) That’s ok, my son!!! I have got your point of view!!! May be you would like to make our first stop further in the fifteenth or in the sixteenth century…

Dante (changing attitude, almost apologizing): Oh, the sixteenth is my favorite one..so full of art…discoveries…new ideas…

Virgil: I’m with you… you can start from there our journey… if you want to…

Dante: Well, it depends from the people we might find over there…in the lines of the infernal spiral I mean…

Virgil: You can make some names, if you want…

Dante: I have a great number in mind…

Virgil: Make ten of them… just to start…

Dante: Let me see… I would start with… Martin Luther, Nicolaus Copernicus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Barker, John Calvin, Sandro Botticcelli, Tintoretto, Luca Marenzio…

Virgil: All in Paradise!!!

Dante: That’s good!!!

Virgil: Any more names?

Dante: Oh, I’ve a great copy… Why don’t you tell me, master, some names worth to be heard? I would be so grateful…

Virgil: (surprised): Well, there are really plenty. What do you think of Hernan Cortes?

Dante: Do you mean the Spanish conquistador???

Virgil: That’s him, my son…

Dante (a bit upset): Speaking about Spanish people I would prefer to talk with Diego Guillén de Avila, Pedro Fernandes de Villegas or with Pedro de Padilla, ‘you see?

Virgil: Well, of course I see, but they are all guys of Paradise…

Dante (quite mortified): I’m really sorry, master…

Virgil (with resolution): Never mind! Do you have any other names?

Dante: if I were assured about some other figures I would ask you to start straight to the beginning of the seventeenth century…

Virgil: Whom would you like to know of?

Dante: Raffaello Sanzio, Giorgio Vasari, Sir Francis Drake, Amerigo Vespucci, Giovanni Bellini, Adriano Bancheri, Anne Boleyn, John Calvin, Catherine de Medici, Mary Queen of Scots, Charles the Fifth, Nostradamus, Ivan the Terrible, GianPierLuigi da Palestrina, Michel de Montaigne…

Virgil: All of them out of the Great Spiral except for Francis Drake, Nostradamus and Ivan the Terrible!

Dante: (very thoughtful) I’m in two minds… I’m not sure I want to stop just for three names…May I ask for any others?

Virgil: Come on with your last names then!

Dante (in one breath): Oliver Cromwell, Johannes Keplero, William Shakespeare, Cervantes, John Donne, Francis Bacon, Renè Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Walter Releigh, Mazarino and Richelieu…

Virgil: Only Richelieu and Mazarino have got trapped on the Infernal spiral! But all these names lead us straight to the seventeenth century!

Dante: Very well! I’m ready for the 17th century now!

Virgil: Let’s go then!

(while they go towards to the staircase which leads to the spaceship the lights will be off)

Norwegian Jon Fosse wins Nobel Prize in Literature

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/entertainment-arts-67015949

Born in 1959, his works span 40 plays, a wealth of novels, essays, children's books and translations.

He is also one of the most recognised and widely performed playwrights.

In the words of the Swedish Academy, he "blends the nature of his Norwegian background with artistic technique" and is commended for "exposing human anxiety and ambivalence at its core" in his works.

Carpe diem

The maxim "Carpe diem" has currently risen to a different meaning from the original Horace's lyric poet of the Carmina.

As a matter of fact Horace's dialogue to the young Leuconoe is not an invitation to enjoy blindly the life, but is better a call to live the possible happyness that the incertainty of our life can offer to us (carpe diem: quam minimum credula postero).

In this point of view "carpe diem" accords with the right meaning contained in Saint Mathew's Gospel (Chapter 6, 25-31) with which Jesus invites us to live today without the ambush for tomorrow.

So we can say, with Novalis,  that the great latin poet  Horace,  was the real priest-poet. 

Manifesto for a new Literature's Magazine

Ars Poetica Magazine- Life and Poetry is a new literary review for classic and modern poetry, edited both in english and italian languages.

The first number will be issued very soon. The magazine won'nt follow a regular,   periodic publication but it will be issued as we need.

The name of the Magazine has been chosen thinkink at the contents of  the Horace's work (also known as the Epistle to Piso) incredibly pungent and present after more than 2000 years (the epistle attracted also the attention of Giacomo Leopardi who made, in 1811, a fine octave transposition in rhyme).

 The Magazine wants to deal with poetry in the conviction that poems are strictly tied with life and society, as the subtitle of the magazine shows.

 Our references will be directed to all  the great italic poets: between the Latins Horace,  Lucretius, Virgil, Ovidio; between the Italians Dante, Iacopone, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni, Carducci, Pascoli ( the list is only an example and is not exhaustive).

This does not mean that our magazine won't take in the right count other great poets like the English Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron, Sheller,, Keats, Eliot or Dickinson; or like the Americans Whitman, Poe, Pound, E.L. Masters or Ginsberg.

Nowdays there are so many poets writing so many poems so much long! And all seems to be so easy!

That's due to the general literacy which took place in the last century and there is nothing bad on it.

Nevertheless there is a precious heritage of poetic culture which is on risk to be lost.

Words are  like  rough stones: before they become verses or poetry, they need to be smoothed like river's stones.


Horace uses a more efficient metaphore in his epistole to Piso:" If you want to deserve altars or temples / wait at least nine years, dear brother / before to publish your poems/and work on them as blacksmith does to make the iron shape!!! " And forward in the poem: " But if you are in  search of  honor and praise / writing four verses, oh Piso  / show them to your  parents or to a wise and good censor ;/ keep them locked up for a long time / for if a man has once ever escaped/  he's not  coming back never indeed ! "

 Of great poets of the past I appreciate their skill on shortness and synthesis. A skill that does not belong to free versifiers of present days. and neither they seem to shine for rhyming. Again with the Horace's words:

" Meanwhile, everyone is kindly asked to be short  / and either delight or to be useful in his rhymes! "

Of course I the Magazine will deal and accept also plain verses and free versifiers will be welcome; though I think that poetry has paid a price for the democrat diffusion of popular literacy. The quantity gained by poetry in width has been lost in depth.

So many writers confuse poetry and prose misregarding of any distinction. So, some writers, who could be so cool in prose, become, with Horace's words, cruel poets:

" We can tolerate mediocrity in anything ;/ but not in  poetry: thus in honey /  choosey mouths do not like   / a bitter almond  inside . / The best would be to write on prose / if a versifier  is just too cruel / as the football player leaves balloon and balls / and  abandon the disc who is not too strong!

Naturally I believe the in poetry  contents,  meaning and even  social involvements are the most important things; nevertheless I like to underline that  metric patterns and poetic structures are not cages for prisoners but frames which bound to freedom and liberty is not equal to anarchy.

Poetry is nourishment for the souls and souls need  distilled food.

But whom readers does our Magazine apply to?

First of all we would like to recall those who love  poetry metrical structures (both poets or just readers); a poetry framed into patterns like terza rima, octaves and whatelse is made by syllables with the right accents.

Secondly our Magazine would like to approach the  Italian who live abroad (specially those who live in English speaking countries but not only them); either because they have emigrated or they live in foreign countries for different reasons;

Finally everyone who wants to have a free change of ideas, even with those who might have different points of view, are welcome for reading, commenting or contributing to our Magazine.

We'll give information of the web's site publishing the contents of Ars Poetica Magazine, as soon as we are ready for publication.

I hope you'll be joining us for sharing time and ideas together. In the meantime, I wish all the best on your life.