Traveling in space-time with Virgil

A drama in a prologue and three acts

Characters

Virgil:  a Latin dead poet

Dante: an   Italian poet still alive

Men from  Hell

Ealk : Great Beast, guardian of the Ante Hell

Waitress

Men 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 of the Prologue

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 17^th century now!!!

Virgil: Let’s go then!!!

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

...to be continued...

Memoirs of London - 6

In 1979 I was back on the road to work for the B.B.C., a company that, apart from the initials of its name, had nothing else to share with British state television. In fact, the Benjamin Building Company did not afflict people with boring programs, neither it  talked with shameless lies about national and international political events. Finally my Company did not even put its nose in the lives of the Queen and the other members of the Royal Family,  generally speaking.

The company I worked for delighted their customers  by selling ice cream and drinks, logistically relying on a chain’s shop of souvenirs, sweets and tobacco’s  strategically located at several points in the great London area known as West End.

 This vast and famous London metropolitan area, which also includes Soho district and numerous small and large parks, is bordered by a perimeter that runs through the important streets of Oxford Street, Charing Cross Rd, Shaftesbury Av and Regent's Street, forming an irregular trapeze whose four tops pass from Tottenham Court Rd to Oxford Circus; from there to Piccadilly Circus and  finally end at Leicester Square, couple of yards   from Trafalgar Square, where Admiral Nelson's statue, according to the likely intentions of the public authorities who wanted it so powerfully high, witnessed  the  British’s greatness and glory to all those who would walk from there: French people, foreigners  and British from all over the Empire.

 In those years, the greatness and glory of England, after the almost total depletion of the British Empire,  seemed more remote and far from the statue of the great conductor of the seas. And nostalgia, it’s all over known, is a feeling that more acutely manifests itself, when the best times are over and  a crisis is bound to come.

 And that Great Britain was in crisis at the end of the seventies of the twentieth century, it immediately became apparent also to the "street traders" who, living among the people, felt the moods of the average citizen in an emotionally direct way.

 On the street, they felt discomfort and nervousness, though the real troubles were still to come, shortly thereafter, with the irresistible rise to power of the Conservatives headed by Margareth Tatcher (later known as the “Iron Lady"), which would mark the end of a cycle in London's administrative life, characterized by a policy of traditional securing of democratic freedoms and sympathy for the weaker social classes.

Moreover, the English metropolis had represented since the rising of the first music liberation and protest groups (born on the wave of the American Hippies movement, also known as the "beat generation") a decisive cultural reference point, helping to make London the Capital of the Rock Movement, where refugees disappointed by the illusion of the failed revolution of 1968, could find a safe refuge escape from the backflow of the reaction which  had gone through  the whole world.

And it was right there, in London, that they could still see the last glow of brightness before its definite sunset. So, in a good way, I agreed to resume my job and sell ice-creams and drinks in the street. By my side I had a refrigerating machine that turned milk into ice cream and a refreshing machine dispensing orange and lemonade.

Where  else could I work, let alone  the road? And to do what? Maybe to get into some office with air conditioning in the summer, heating in the winter, and the stench of paperwork under my nose? There was no other world for me, now, if not that; no other destiny, no other life I could have wanted, than the free life  of street's traders.

 Returning to the road meant for me to relive from the very beginning my adventure in that mysterious and fascinating city that, unfortunately and superficially, is too often considered cold and inhospitable, considering also that never or almost never come into you get a direct contact with English or British people.

 This story is devoted to London and to the dear places where I have lived in.  But it is also dedicated to all the peoples that those places with such variety and vivacity animated in those years who will pass through the main scene of my story: the streets of London.

6. to be continued...

London for ever - 9

According to a recent survey, reported by the yesterday's Guardian news, 60% of British people want to mantain the EU rights even through Brexit process.

I'm glad of that for I still believe that UK is part o Europe: forst of all from a cultural point of view; but also economically and historically speaking.

I think that we don't have to be afraid of exalting our differences amid the  European memberships (of course I'm generally speaking now, for I know Brexit is hardly a revoking subject at the moment);

I mean that French, Spanish, Germans, Italians, must proud of their specific characters and they never have to neglect them. 

But all together, with our own peculiar specificity, we need to work for a stronger Europe, to be alble to face the challenges in the next decades. First of all we must fill the space will be left by USA in the world wide scenario. Secondly we have to face the new arising econimies: such a giants like China, Brazil, India, SouthAfrica and even Russia itself can't be faced by UK, Germany or France  on their own.

Further more we need British by our side side, with their language, their culture, their experience.

Please, people of Europe, let fall your walls of suspicion and  forget your dreams of greatness. In the globalized world there is no primary role  for small country, how much  full of ancient glory they might be.

We can make a great empire of Europe, but only all toghether.

Politicians fron all over the Europe, great descendants of great leaders, be worthy of your ancestors, and please keep on dreaming with folk and not by yourselves.

And London is still for ever!

9. to be continued...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/01/poll-european-eu-rights-brexit