Confini

deplora il suicidio per due motivi: il primo motivo è che il suicidio, non è dettato da un

annullamento della volontà bensì di una situazione

dall’insoddisfazione dell’individuo

particolare che sta vivendo; il secondo motivo è che di una singola volontà

l'annullamento

minimamente infatti la volontà continuerebbe a vivere, perchè

non intacca la volontà in sé,

assoluta e infinita.

Tuttavia la via che per eccellenza porta all'annullamento della volontà è l'ascesi: Per

Schopenhauer annullare la volontà significa entrare in uno stato di distacco ascetico

. Annullando la volontà si

che permette l'annullamento del desiderio di gioia e di vita

entra in uno stato di quiete in cui ogni possibilità è indifferente (nolontà ), ogni sofferenza

viene privata della sua base; spenta ogni volontà si spegne ogni dolore. Il rifiuto della

volontà è l'unico atto liberamente concesso all'uomo costretto nella sua sofferenza.

Anche Leopardi …

La concezione del piacere come cessazione del dolore era stata già sostenuta da Giacomo

Leopardi. Schopenhauer, in uno scritto, cita esplicitamente il poeta Leopardi manifestando

grande apprezzamento per “l’italiano che ha saputo rappresentare in maniera profonda il

dolore”.

Poiché la Volontà di vivere si manifesta in tutte le cose, il dolore non riguarda solo l’uomo

ma investe ogni creatura. Tutto soffre: dal fiore che appassisce all’animale ferito, dal bimbo

che nasce al vecchio che muore. L’uomo, tuttavia, soffre più d’ogni altra creatura perché è

dotato di maggiore consapevolezza ed è destinato a sentire in maniera più vivace e distinta il

pungolo della Volontà. Fra tutti gli uomini, poi, il genio sperimenta la più acuta sofferenza:

“chi aumenta il sapere moltiplica la sofferenza” (Ecclesiaste I, 18).

Anche a questo proposito è evidente l’analogia con il pensiero leopardiano. Il poeta italiano,

infatti, scriveva nel suo Zibaldone di pensieri: “Non gli uomini solamente, ma il genere

umano fu e sarà sempre infelice di necessità. Non il genere umano solamente ma tutti gli

animali. Non gli animali soltanto ma tutti gli esseri al loro modo. Non gl’individui, ma le

specie, i generi, i regni, i globi, i sistemi, i mondi”.

INGLESE

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the third child of

Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Jackson. The girl was brought up

in a household crowded with people and devoted to

intellectual efforts of every kind. Virginia was educated at

home, while her brothers went to University, reading in her

father's library, meeting many men of letters and learning

Greek from Walter Pater's sister. Her youthful paradise was

her parents' big house at St. Ives, in Cornwall, where her

family spent the summers with friends.

1895 was a very difficult year for Virginia, because her

mother died. This event was followed by a long period of

depression for her, the first sign of a nervous fragility that

would accompany her throughout her life. After her father's

death, the Stephens moved to Gordon Square, in Bloomsbury;

their house became the centre for an important literary, artistic

and philosophical group of writers known as the Bloomsbury Group, where Virginia met her

future husband, Leonard Woolf, married in 1912. They founded The Hogarth Press, which

became a major publishing house.

In 1930, Virginia tried for the first time to commit suicide, but this attempt was not

successful; she succeeded in doing it in 1941. On 28 March 1941, Woolf drowned herself by

weighing her pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse near her home. Before

drowning herself, Virginia left a beautiful letter to her husband, where she explained that she

had started hearing voices, and that she was afraid of becoming mad. Also the war could be

considered a cause that led Virginia to kill herself: she was unable to face the terror and

destruction that surrounded her. The war was too much for her.

In her last note to her husband she wrote:

“I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of

those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I

can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have

given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that

anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this

terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your

life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even

write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of

my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I

want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it

would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your

goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people

could have been happier than we have been.”

MAJOR WORKS

Although Woolf wrote a number of short stories, her best-known fiction has always been her

novels, particularly Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and to a lesser extent, Orlando

(1928) and The Waves (1931). Mrs. Dalloway, frequently compared to James Joyce's 1922

work Ulysses, is an expansion of "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street," a short story Woolf

produced for Dial magazine in 1923. The events of the plot occur over a period of twenty-

four hours in the life of society hostess Clarissa Dalloway and culminate in a large,

elaborate party. The work is not only a critique of the social system, but deals as well with

issues of madness and suicide through Woolf's characterization of Septimus Smith, a

psychological casualty of the war. To the Lighthouse, a family novel with obvious

connections to Woolf's own early life, involves Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, thinly disguised

versions of her parents. Notwithstanding the subtitle's claim that Orlando is a biography, it

is, in fact, a novel featuring an androgynous main character said to be modeled after Woolf's

friend and reputed lover, Vita Sackville-West. The Waves, a complicated exploration of the

inevitable mutability of human life, is perhaps Woolf's most complex work, considered by

some, including her husband, to be her masterpiece.

Woolf explored issues of sex, gender, and feminism to some degree in her novels,

particularly Orlando, and in her short stories, particularly "A Society." However, she most

thoroughly articulated her ideas on the equality of women in her essays, especially A Room

of One's Own and Three Guineas (1938). Both books explore male power and the injustices

associated with it; Woolf especially criticizes the lack of legal rights, educational

opportunities, and financial independence for women. Unlike some of her contemporaries,

however, Woolf did not believe that women should strive to be like men. She believed,

rather, that men should take on some of the characteristics associated with women.

THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL TIME

The idea of time was questioned also by the philosophers James and Bergson; the first held

that our mind records every single experience as a continuous flow of “the already” into

“the not yet”. The second made a distinction between historical time, which is external,

linear, and measured in terms of the spatial distance travelled by a clock, and psychological

time, which is internal, subjective, and measured by the relative emotional intensity of a

moment. Moreover, he said that thought and feeling could be measured in terms of the

number of memories and associations attached to it. So life is not made by time, but by the

emotions, the free association of thought out of real time.

We have the best example of the use of TIME in: Mrs Dalloway.

It takes place on a single ordinary day, from the morning to the night, in a

stream of consciousness narrative. In particular Virginia was interested in

giving voice to the complex inner world of feelings and memory and

conceived the human personality as a continuous shift of impressions and

emotions. So the events were not important for her; what mattered was the impression they

made on the characters who experienced them. In her novels the point of view shifted inside

the characters’ minds through flashbacks, association of ideas, momentary expressions

presented as a continuous flux. The themes she explores are the nature of personal identity;

memory and consciousness; the passage of time; and the tensions between the forces of Life

and Death.

She gives a very lyrical response to the fundamental question, 'What is it like to be alive?'

And her answer is a sensuous expression of metropolitan existence.

In Mrs Dalloway she tells the story of Clarissa's preparations for a party she is giving at her

house. With the interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards and backwards

in time, and in and out of the characters' minds, to construct a complete image of Clarissa's

life and of the inter-war social structure. We can observe how the main characters have a

different idea of suicide: Septimus is not always able to distinguish between his personal

response and the nature of external reality; his psychic paralysis leads him to suicide.

Whereas Clarissa never loses her awareness of the outside world as something external to

herself; so she recognizes her deceptions, accepts old age and the idea of the death and is

prepared to go on.

With all this elements, we can observe in V. Woolf the border between the sanity and the

madness related to what is life and what is death, but not only through her characters: the

poetess herself pass her life at the border, succumbing, at last, to her fears.

STORIA

“ Israeliani e Palestinesi: un confine indeterminabile”

Si avvicinava la seconda guerra mondiale che sarebbe stata totale e gli inglesi che

controllavano il territorio in Medio Oriente mantennero la loro influenza dichiarando di

voler garantire la propria sicurezza nelle comunicazioni con i territori che possedeva. La

situazione che si presentava non era delle più stabili, per le tensioni che dividevano i

sostenitori dell’ universalismo islamico- che aspiravano all’unione di tutti i paesi dell’area

in uno “stato arabo”- ; per di più la Palestina era diventata terra di scontro tra arabi e

israeliani.

Gli inglesi dettarono, quindi, le loro condizioni: l'indipendenza sarebbe stata accordata entro

dieci anni; in Palestina potevano immigrare altri 75 mila ebrei, dopo di che successive

immigrazioni sarebbero state decise dalla maggioranza araba.

Nei disegni ultimi degli inglesi c'era uno Stato bi-nazionale in cui gli ebrei sarebbero stati

un terzo degli arabi.

Violente furono allora le proteste del movimento sionista, di cui per altro erano sostenitori

gli inglesi, che vedeva limitata la possibilità di immigrazione, proprio mentre Hitler

cominciava a martirizzare un intero popolo, riempiendo i campi di sterminio ed i forni

crematori.

Dal canto loro gli arabi mantenevano una posizione di attesa: erano certamente di sentimenti

antibritannici, ma puntavano ad uno Stato formato da un terzo contro due.

Il governo inglese decise allora di internazionalizzare la questione sottoponendola

all’Assemblea Generale delle Nazioni Unite: era il 20 aprile 1947. Nacque così l’UNSCOP,

una commissione composta da undici Stati (Australia, Canada, Cecoslovacchia, Guatemala,

Iugoslavia, India, Iran, Paesi Bassi, Perù, Svezia, Uruguay), incaricata di indagare sulla

situazione della Palestina.

L’Unscop assistette, tra l’altro, al drammatico episodio della nave Exodus: 4.500 ex

deportati, tra cui 950 bambini, furono costretti dalla marina inglese, dopo una lunga

controversia e scandalose peripezie durate quasi due mesi, a far ritorno ad Amburgo, dove

furono di nuovo rinchiusi nei "campi" della zona di occupazione Britannica.

Il 29 novembre 1947, alla seconda sessione dell’Assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite, il

piano di spartizione (Risoluzione O.N.U. n. 181) fu accettato con 33 voti favorevoli, contro

13 contrari e 10 astensioni (tra cui la Gran Bretagna).