Spieghiamo le vele con la scienza e la letteratura

Leopardi che prevedeva la traduzione di una Scelta di Moralisti greci per l’editore Stella; fu però

censurato.

L’opera si compone soprattutto di Dialoghi tra personaggi di grande varietà (immaginari, storici,

mitologici, filosofici, letterari, comuni, inanimati o simbolici). Ne deriva una molteplicità di temi

modulati con grande sapienza.

Leopardi pensa per quest’opera a una lingua più ironica e disincantata, che sia strumento di indagine

filosofica e ricerca della verità.

IL DIALOGO DI CRISTOFORO COLOMBO E DI PIETRO GUTIERREZ

Nelle Operette morali il tema del viaggio viene ripreso, in un’accezione particolare: è viaggio di

scoperta, impresa temeraria alla conquista dell'ignoto. E' la sfida di Cristoforo Colombo che tenta la

rotta verso le Indie, passando da Occidente. 9

Il Dialogo di Cristoforo Colombo e di Pietro Gutierrez viene

composto tra il 19 e il 25 ottobre 1824 a Recanati ed è

presente in tutte le edizioni delle Operette morali, ma esce

10

ancor prima sull’“Antologia” di Firenze e sul milanese

“Nuovo Ricoglitore” nel 1826 insieme ad altre due

operette.

Alle domande dell'amico Gutierrez, che inizia a dubitare di trovare terre emerse nella nuova direzione,

Colombo non sa opporre valide argomentazioni. Anzi, confessa che le speranze che lo avevano

condotto all'ardita navigazione, che ha messo a repentaglio la sua vita e quella dei suoi uomini, gli

sembrano ora fallaci. Si sente totalmente smarrito nell'ignoto: la sua mente di audace navigatore, che

si è appoggiata alle più rivoluzionarie teorie scientifiche, è in totale balia del mistero. Il primo tema

presente è dunque la demistificazione del viaggio come tentativo vano di carpire i segreti della natura.

9 L’operetta analizzata è presente in allegato

10 Alcune pagine di “Antologia” sono presenti in allegato 23

Tuttavia il viaggio ha un'altra valenza importante e questa volta positiv a. Si lega all'insopprimibile

spirito della vita, un istinto altrettanto misterioso. “Di questo dialogo viene messa soprattutto in risalto

11

la tesi della necessità del rischio a sollevare la vita dalla noia” . Se il dolore e la noia dominano

l'esistenza, c'è pure in essa il vivo desiderio della felicità, di una pienezza dell'essere, che la ragione

scopre illusoria, ma tuttavia ineliminabile. Vengono così connotati positivamente la navigazione, il

balzo nel buio e nell'ignoto; quel rischio che solo può dare all’uomo l'illusione di ricominciare la vita in

uno slancio costruttivo, facendogli per un attimo scordare la consapevolezza del nulla in cui è immerso.

Il mare, che all'inizio suggerisce il senso del dubbio e dello scetticismo sulle false sicurezze umane, dà

voce positiva a uno slancio speranzoso e, almeno parzialmente, liberatorio. Solo nell'attesa di qualcosa

che non conosciamo, possiamo vivere l'unica felicità a noi concessa, creando con l'immaginazione una

realtà conforme alle nostre profonde esigenze e attese.

11 Galimberti C., Operette morali, p.353 24

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

COLERDIGE BIOGRAPHY

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in

Devonshire. Coleridge proved to be a brilliant student and was

heavily influenced by the French revolution.

He developed a growing addiction to opium that he had to take to ease his bodily pains caused by

chronic rheumatism.

In 1797 Coleridge began his famous friendship with William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy. They

settled in Somerset where an important collaboration started.

Their intellectual and artistic exchanges culminated in Lyrical Ballads – appeared anonymously in 1798

– in which The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was first published.

Coleridge published the second version of his masterpiece in 1817 in the volume Sibylline Leaves.

On the verge of suicide, owing to his pain and his strong opium addiction, he moved in with a doctor

who managed his care for the last eighteen years of his life. While in the doctor's care, Coleridge

published the unfinished poems Christabel (1816) and Kubla Khan (1816), which became icons of

Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge died in 1834 at the age of 61.

LYRICAL BALLADS

Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems produced by S.T. Coleridge and W. Wordsworth. It was first

published in 1798 and a second edition in 1800, which also contained Wordsworth’s famous Preface.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the first poem of the collection and became, along with

Wordsworth’s Preface, the Manifesto of English Romantic movement. 25

In this collection the two writers exemplified the examination of the mundane, natural, and intensely

subjective. They agreed that Wordsworth would write on the beauty of nature and ordinary things

with the aim of making them interesting; Coleridge, instead, should deal with visionary topics, the

supernatural and mystery.

According to the objection to the ‘poetic diction’ contained in the Preface, many of the poems were

written in everyday language, avoiding the ornamented styles of speech and elaborate rhyme schemes

favoured by poets of earlier periods.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one exception to this trend, as in it Coleridge used both a rhyme

scheme and words derived from Middle English.

Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge did not view nature as a moral guide or a source of happines s, because

his strong Christian faith did not allow him to identify nature with the divine in that form of pantheism

which Wordsworth adopted. Coleridge rather saw in the nature and in the material world the

reflection of the perfect world of ‘ideas’. He believed that natural images carried abstract meaning and

he used them in his most visionary poems.

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is Coleridge’s masterpiece. It was first published in Lyrical Ballads

(1798) and – after a restyle – a second edition was published in Sibylline Leaves (1817).

PLOT

An Ancient Mariner stops a Wedding Guest and compels him to sit and listen to

his woeful tale. The Ancient Mariner set sail with two hundred other

sailors, but suddenly a terrible storm hit and drove the

ship southwards; they eventually reached Antarctica

and were blocked in the ice. 26

An Albatross appeared out of the mist, no sooner than

the sailors fed it did the ice break. As long as the

Albatross flew alongside the ship and the sailors treated

it kindly, a good wind carried them and a mist followed.

One day, however, the Ancient Mariner shot and killed

the Albatross on impulse. Suddenly the wind and mist

ceased, and the ship was stagnant on the ocean. The

other sailors alternately blamed the Ancient Mariner

for making the wind die. The sun became very hot, and

there was no drinkable water. The sailors hung the

Albatross around the Ancient Mariner's neck as a

symbol of his sin.

After a painful while, a ship appeared on the horizon, it

was a ghost ship manned by Death, in the form of a

man, and Life-in-Death, in the form of a beautiful,

naked woman. They were playing dice for the souls of

the crew. Life-in-Death won the Ancient Mariner's soul,

and the other sailors were left to Death. The sky went

black immediately as the ghost ship sped away.

Suddenly all of the sailors cursed the Ancient Mariner

with their eyes and dropped dead on the deck.

The Ancient Mariner drifted on the ocean seeing the

curse in the eyes of the crew's corpses, unable to pray.

One night he noticed some beautiful water-snakes

swimming in the water, he suddenly sees their true 27

beauty and blesses them. When he was finally able to

pray, the Albatross fell from his neck and his guilt is

partially expiated.

Then the dead sailors arose and sailed the ship without

speaking. Once the ship reached the equator again, the

ship jolted, causing the Ancient Mariner to fall

unconscious. He heard two voices discussing his fate.

They said he would continue to be punished for killing

the Albatross, who was loved by a spirit. Then the two

voices and the dead sailors disappeared.

The wind picked up, bright angels appeared and guided

the ship home, where it sank in a vortex. A Pilot, his

boy, and a Hermit were rowing a small boat out to the

ship. The rescuers were able to pull the Ancient Mariner

from the water, but thought he was dead. When he

abruptly came to and began to row the boat, the Pilot

and Pilot's Boy lost their minds. The Hermit asked the

Ancient Mariner what kind of man he was and he

related his tale. It was then that the Ancient Mariner

learned of his curse; he would be destined to tell his tale

to others from beginning to end when an agonizing,

physical urge struck him.

The Ancient Mariner tells the Wedding Guest that better than any merriment is the company of others

in prayer. He says that the best way to become close with God is to respect all of His creatures,

because He loves them all. The Wedding Guest walks home, stunned. We are told that he aw akes the

next day "sadder and wiser" for having heard the Ancient Mariner's tale. 28

STRUCTURE

The poem is made up of seven parts and it is introduced by an ‘Argument’ containing a short summary

of the whole poem:

“How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole ; and

how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange

things that befell; and in what manner the Ancient Mariner came back to his own Country.”

The poem consist of two narratives: one is made up of the captions to the right of the stanzas, which

constitute the framework and introduce the protagonist and his listener; the other is the poem itself.

LANGUAGE AND STYLE

The first version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner went against the emerging Romantic tradition of

writing in contemporary, unrhymed language. In fact the poem contains many of the features

associated with traditional ballads, that is: the combination of dialogue and narration; the four line

stanza; the archaic language, rich in alliteration repetition and onomatopoeias; the theme of travel and

wandering and supernatural elements.

In the second version Coleridge removed much of the original poem's deliberate archaism and added

marginal glosses. These explanations not only amplify the allegorical feel of the poem, but work in

place of the omitted archaisms to establish a nostalgic, fictitiously historical mood. They also express

directly that spirits, and not just nature, are responsible for punishing the Ancient Mariner and his

shipmates.

There are three remarkable stylistic tendencies that make The Rime of the Ancient Mariner a Romantic

poem: the presence of a moral in the last part; the importance of the individual; the subjectivity of

experience, the Romantics were some of the first poets to place a literary work's focus on the

protagonist's empirical experience of the world. 29

ALLEGATO

 Esempio di carta delle isobare, previsione per il giorno 23 giugno 2008.

 Classificazione dei venti secondo la scala di Beaufort.

 Carta dei principali venti locali della zona mediterranea.

 Pagine da Antologia vol.21 (Capponi Gino, Gabinetto scientifico e letterario di G.P. Vieusseux,

1826) contenenti la prima pubblicazione dell’operetta analizzata.

 Il Dialogo di Cristoforo Colombo e di Pietro Gutierrez da “La Grande Letteratura Italiana

Einaudi”

BIBLIOGRAFIA E FONTI

Scienze

 Medas, Stefano. De rebus nauticis: l'arte della navigazione nel mondo antico. L'Erma di

Bretschneider, 2004.

 Neviani, Ivo, e Cristina Pignocchino Feyles. Geografia generale. Torino: Società editrice

internazionale, 2004.

 Pontos, scuola nautica. materiale didattico.

 Santelia, Claudio, e Marco Tibilietti. La patente nautica da diporto. Milano: Mursia, 2003.

Fisica

 Bellofiore, Raffaello, Paolo Corazzon, e Andrea Giuliacci. La Meteorologia in mare: guida

completa per diportisti e regatanti. Alpha Test, 2005.

 Ferri, Silvia. Meteorologia Pratica Per Il Diporto Nautico. HOEPLI EDITORE, 2005.

 Medas, Stefano. De rebus nauticis: l'arte della navigazione nel mondo antico. L'Erma di

Bretschneider, 2004.