Catastrofe e forza della natura

- I -

La catastrofe e la forza della natura

Tesina multidisciplinare per l’esame di stato - II -

Indice

1. Inglese:

1.1 Percy Bysshe Shelley life and production

1.2 Ode to the West Wind comment and analysis

1.3 The role of nature in Shelley

2. Latino:

2.1 Plinio il Giovane le Epistulae

2.2 Testo de “La morte di Plinio il Vecchio durante l’eruzione del Vesuvio” dalle Epistulae VI, 16; commento

3. Filosofia: l’Illuminismo e la filosofia della catastrofe.

3.1 Riflessioni del più grande pensatore dell’epoca illuminista, Immanuel Kant, sulla catastrofe naturale e sulle forze della natura

4. Geografia astronomica:

4.1 Il rimbalzo elastico

4.2 Le onde sismiche

4.3 Magnitudo e intensità di un terremoto - III -

Introduzione alla tesina

La tesina ha come fine una sorta di “indagine” su come si sia evoluta e come sia mutata nel corso dei secoli la concezione della forza della natura e della sua più prorompente dimostrazione: la catastrofe. Fin dall’antichità l’uomo si è interrogato su quale fosse il principio secondo cui assisteva ad eventi naturali straordinari come ad esempio la piena del Nilo. La spiegazione che si dava a tali fenomeni era o di natura divina, ovvero, un segnale della presenza metafisica del proprio credo in grado di plasmare a suo piacimento la natura, o attribuibile alla natura stessa, grande madre e giudice universale. Con il tempo l’uomo ha trascurato l’aspetto metafisico della forza della natura per cercarne le cause scientifiche.

All’interno della tesina è presente: il primo articolo giornalistico scientifico della storia, quello redatto da Plinio Il Giovane e indirizzato all’amico Tacito desideroso di conoscere le vicende riguardanti l’eruzione del Vesuvio (la più grande catastrofe del periodo romano) che hanno condotto alla morte di Plinio Il Vecchio; una poesia romantica inglese di Percy Bisshe Shelley: Ode to the West Wind che si riallaccia a quella concezione arcaica della natura come madre universale, quasi un panteismo naturalistico; un saggio di Imanuel Kant che analizzava con razionalità illuministica ma con un elevata dose di fantasia e immaginazione gli eventi del terremoto di Lisbona del 1755 avvicinandosi quindi solo in parte all’indagine scientifica moderna e infine la descrizione della più grande catastofe di tutti i tempi presente sulla Terra, quella che non lascia superstiti se di entità eccezionale, i terremoti.

Dalla sua trasmissione, il 31 ottobre 1931, Walter Benjamin, diceva al suo pubblico radiofonico, nel programma di venti minuti sul terremoto di Lisbona, secondo appuntamento di un mini ciclo catastrofistico che comprendeva la scomparsa di Ercolano e Pompei, e l’incendio del teatro di Canton, “le catastrofi naturali sono tutte uguali. Le case che crollano, l’incendio che si propaga, la paura per l’acqua, l’oscurità, i saccheggi, i lamenti dei feriti sono cose che ricompaiono identiche in ogni catastrofe naturale.”

Eppure non riesco a trovarmi d’accordo con questa affermazione: ogni uomo può vedere la catastrofe in modo diverso, c’è chi come Plinio, non intravede in essa la distruttività ma la grandezza dello zio defunto per analizzarne le cause, chi come Shelley crede che essa contenga un messaggio rigenerativo per i popoli, chi come Kant medita filosoficamente, ne cerca i motivi, ne analizza gli effetti ma finisce per riconoscere l’inferiorità dell’uomo di fronte a cotanta forza. - IV -

1.1 Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Tempestuous Life

The son of a prosperous squire, he entered Oxford in 1810, where readings in philosophy led him toward a study of the empiricists and the modern sceptics, notably William Godwin. In 1811 he and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg published their pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, which resulted in their immediate expulsion from the university. The same year Shelley eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, by whom he eventually had two children, Ianthe and Charles.

Supported reluctantly by their fathers, the young couple travelled through Great Britain. Shelley’s life continued to be dominated by his desire for social and political reform, and he was constantly publishing pamphlets. His first important poem, Queen Mab, privately printed in 1813, set forth a radical system of curing social ills by advocating the destruction of various established institutions.

In 1814 Shelley left England for France with Mary Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin. During their first year together they were plagued by social ostracism and financial difficulties. However, in 1815 Shelley’s grandfather died and left him an annual income. Laon and Cynthna appeared in 1817 but was withdrawn and reissued the following year as The Revolt of Islam; it is a long poem in Spenserian stanzas that tells of a revolution and illustrates the growth of the human mind aspiring toward perfection.

After Harriet Shelley’s suicide in 1816, Shelley and Mary officially married. In 1817 Harriet’s parents obtained a decree from the Lord Chancellor stating that Shelley was unfit to have custody of his children. The following year Shelley and Mary left England and settled in Italy. By this time their household consisted of their own three children and Mary’s half-sister Claire Clairmont and her daughter Allegra (whose father was Lord Byron). On July 8, 1822, Shelley drowned while sailing in the Bay of Spezia, near Lerici. - V -

1.2 Ode to the West Wind

The poem:

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, - VI -

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Comment and analysis: - VII -

While Shelley was sitting in a wood beside the river, he was fascinated by the power and the manifestly of the wind and hopes it will help him to pull out his depression. The ode is divided in 5 parts, and is composes of 14 lines. It is not easy because there are long and in concluded sentences.

It is very important the presence of many enjambments which accelerate the rhythm of the ode

Stanza 1 describes the effect of the wind on in autumn and in spring. The autumnal wind is a destroyer: its action is characterised by images of death. In spring then, he becomes a preserver so Shelley introduces words which evoke rebirth and life.