Catastrofe e forza della natura

- 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 PIU’ 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 INTENSITA’ 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.

The wind is addressed directly through the use of the second person, personification further

developed through the attribution to the wind of verbs denoting human faculties, like hear, etc.

Stanza 2 talks about the Wind’s action shifts from the land to the sky. The clouds are compared to

leaves and boughs. They are messenger angels of the rain and lightning that will come at nightfall.

So the autumnal wind is presented again in its destructive function. Words as dirge and sepulchre

give it the Death’s countenance.

Stanza 3 describes the spring wind in his creative action on the sea. The sea is seen as the place

where in ancient times civilisation was born.

Calm and peace, the poet talks about, is the one typical of the Mediterranean Sea. This one is also

personified as a languid form, “lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams”, and reflecting “old

palaces and towers” lazily like a person asleep. Soft consonants and falling cadences have replaced

the earlier harsher consonants of the preceding stanzas. The storming air is taken again at the end

talking about the chaotic world of the Atlantic Ocean whose vegetation in the depths shakes with

fear.

Stanza 4 introduces a more personal tone is; the poet identifies him-self with the wind.

Shelley speaks about his childhood when he ran after the wind. He asks the wind to help him

regain the physical and spiritual energy he has lost because he feels to have lost his boyhood’s

freedom. This evocating Wordsworth’s idea of childhood: the natural, spontaneous and innocent

age.

Stanza 5 underlines the relationship between poet and the mankind. The poet speaks to the wind

asking him to help him, to spread his verses over mankind, he prays him to be his instrument, to

drive his thoughts over the universe like dead leaves for, then, bringing new life. He hopes he will

be a messenger of a prophecy.

At the end he concluded the poem with a rhetorical question that is also a declamation of hope: “if

winter comes can spring be far behind?” we see that wind becomes a symbol, he is personified but

also the leaves are important. They are the metaphor of the poet’s words, so this figure is

predominant.

Role of Nature in Shelley

1.3

Shelley had a pantheistic conception of nature. But for him, pantheism was an actual true faith, and

not a doctrine as it was for Wordsworth. He proclaimed himself an atheist, but contradicted himself

by believing in an eternal spirit of the universe. Nature is also for Shelley like we have seen in his

poem “ode to the west wind”, an object for describe behaviours in society. Like the wind sweeps

way the leaves on the ground, Shelley hopes a force in society that radically changes the values of

his time. According to Shelley, nature is at once splendorous and deadly, a dynamic force that

cannot be tamed by man. While appreciating nature's aesthetic majesty, Shelley warns man not to

equate beauty with tranquillity. Rather Shelley advises us to view nature from both sides of the coin,

admiring its unapproachable synthesis of power and grace. - VIII -