Salvatore Nicosia, "died in my place" by Elias Canetti HELIUM ARISTIDE “Studi italiani di filologia classica”, Supplemento a VII.1, 2007, pp. 105-20 In this article, suggests that some aspects of a broader research on the relationship between the individual and the author's death, Nicosia focuses on a phenomenon of the cycle, as you might say, using the pattern of 'eternal return
Eliade , for which death is an element of the alternation of states that back to life: a prelude to the rebirth of spiritual darkness of death and mourning, overcome and lead to an advancement of the psyche, so the start, for example, but also more ingenerale in the various rites of the society about the relationship with
thanatos.
The specific issue of Nicosia is the emotional identification with a person deceduta, la cui morte provoca la rinascita di colui che vi si era immedesimato, partendo da una constatazione di Elias Canetti sul suo rapporto di fratellanza spirituale con Cesare Pavese. Canetti scrive: “Quando la notte scorsa, in preda alla più cupa disperazione, ho preso i suoi diari [i diari di Pavese], […] lui è morto per me. È difficile crederlo: oggi, attraverso la sua morte, io sono rinato. Si potrebbe ricostruire il corso di questo misterioso processo: ma non voglio farlo. Non voglio toccare nulla. Voglio tenerlo segreto” (p. 106).
Il secondo esempio è tratto dalla vita di Jung che, colpito da infarto nel 1944, scrive in MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS OF CALR GUSTAV JUNG (New York, Random House, 1961, trad. italiana di G. Russo, Ricordi, sogni, riflessioni, 1992, Milano, Rizzoli BUR, 2006) ebbe visioni del cosmo e di un meteorite al cui interno c’era un tempio indiano, entrando nel quale ebbe la sensazione di apprendere il senso della vita e, in seguito all’apparizione del suo medico curante sotto la forma di
basileus di Coo, si concluse l’apparizione lasciando l’impressione di un ritorno al mondo della falsità e del grigiore dopo aver visto la luminosità. Jung commenta: “Improvvisamente mi assalì il terrificante sospetto che il medico [che gli era comparso in quello stato di visione] dovesse morire al posto mio” (ed. it. cit., p. 348). Nicosia spiega the psychological mechanism, "someone has died in his place, and Jung may continue to live" (p. 108).
addition to an example from Joseph Karo, Nicosia deals with Aelius Aristides (117-180 years or so), which he received in a dream a "prophecy of the year" by Apollo or Asclepius (the figure is uncertain in the dream piece) which foreshadow perhaps 13 or 17 years of life left. Falling ill seventeen years after the dream, appears in another dream that Athena "heartened and promised his help" (p. 113): so we started again, but the adopted son dies in his place.
In all four cases treated, "is the same feeling of anguish death "and" identity is the psychological process that relieves: convinced that the death of someone, totally unaware of the use that he is doing, is the surrogate of his own, and that the other person 'dies in his place' "and it is always a loved one, family member or friend. Here you have a particular series of the broader context of "dying for another", which deals with research in Nicosia at the time the article was in progress). In this sense, "there is a generous and loving self-sacrifice, nor violence omicidiale exercised over others, nor any relationship between two people, but a simple, painless hermeneutic operation [...]. The frequency and variety of cases documented in other contexts, independent and distant in time, shows that we are in the presence of a deep psychological structure. It also explains why psychoanalysis is so determined to find much in Greek culture, and not only in mythology, archetypes are able to clarify certain that world, but at the same time to explain what came after "(p. 119).
[Roberto Bertoni]
