Inherited
from the Antiquity, the topic of love
formerly develops in European culture
as an anthitetic exchange between
the poison and the remedy of love.
The most interesting element of this
conflict lies in the relation between
these two themes in the symbolic and
mythological traditions.
We
just need to think of Achilles' lance,
which can either poison its victim
or set it free from love illness reminds
us of Eros, who made people fall in
love by the means of golden arrows
and set them free from by the means
of lead arrows. We can add to all
this the tradition of the magical
fountains, whose waters once drunk
can make people who drink their water
love or hate. This tradition continues
through the Orlando Furioso
at least until the XVIII century in
Voltaire's Pucelle d'Orléans.
In
this articulate antithesis the debate
between sacred and profane love is
set; the origins of this debate are
to be found in the contrast between
the philosophical traditions of Plato
and Lucretius, an ideological contrast
where the former oversteps the latter
though Lucretian tradition keeps on
revealing its repressed presence through
the centuries.
All
this makes the attention brought to
the passage between the perceptions
of the Humanism and the Counter-Reformation
really pertaining. At the same time
we must not forget that the symbolism
sprung from the subject of Eros pharmakon
matches with some archetypes of the
human mind as well as some basic rhetorical
forms like the oxymoron, whose fortune
during the Baroque period is widely
known.
Again,
the epistemological meaning of love
remedy could reach also some very
interesting imbrications in the alchemical
and paralchemical vision like Paracelsus'
one.
Be it as it may it is evident that
the topic chosen for the Symposium
of Cesenatico (May 2006) urges to
a transversal attitude capable of
taking into account different fields
of knowledge, at the same time pushing
historical and anthropological disciplines
to confront on a common field, as
it is clearly showed by the variety
of the interventions presented. Most
of the papers refer to different aspects
of a literary European tradition that
seems astonishingly compact and uninterrupted
in treating question of love. Anyway
the incursions into other domains
are frequent, testifying the richness
and vitality of this topic throughout
the centuries.
