Superuomo,nazismo

In particolare, con la formulazione della teoria della relatività, ha permesso agli astronomi di fare importanti

scoperte sull’origine dell’Universo e soprattutto sulle modalità con cui il Sole irradia la sua energia in tutti i

punti del cosmo, permettendo così la vita sul Nostro pianeta. L’azione di tale astro sulla Terra è riscontrabile

continuamente, ma una delle manifestazioni più spettacolari è rappresentata senz’altro dalle aurore boreali,

dovute all’interazione delle particelle ioniche provenienti del Sole con la magnetosfera, cioè la zona che è

sede di un intenso campo geomagnetico.

In ultima analisi, ho voluto porre l’attenzione sull’importanza di tale astro, anche in letteratura, ed in

particolare nel "Paradiso di Dante", dove il Sole domina il quarto cielo, dimora celeste degli spiriti sapienti.

INTRODUCTION: THE AESTHETICISM.

The term " aestheticism" derives from Greek and means: "Perceiving through senses". It was also for the

Romantic culture, in fact the movement has its roots in the Romanticism, but, at the same time, it signs a

turn: now tartist, or better the aesthete, has to feel the sensations but also live them in his life. The message

of the aestheticism is: "Living the beauty!" The figure of the aesthete presents some corrispondences with

the French figure, "the poete maudit", who refuses all the values and the conventions of the society, he

chooses the evil, he conduces a dissolute, unregulated life, till the extreme limit of the destruction through

the vice of the flesh, the use of alcohol and drugs. Both of them refuses bourgeois normality: Also the "poete

maudit" follows the mystic cult of the art and exalts the evil for its aesthetic value, for its sublime and horrid

beauty. The aesthete too refuses the moral rules and the conventions, he arrives to accept the crime

because it indicates free action without rules. The movement evocates a return to the art of Middle Ages,

when the artist is a sort of craftman, who creates his art- work with his creativity, he is free from any rules

(while the academic art of the Victorian society is characterized by a rigid respect of the rules),he creates

entirely his work, not only a piece of it.

We can consider as forerunners of the movement John Keats, who belonged to te second generation of

Romantic poets, D.G.Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelithes, who wanted an art closer to the primitive beauty. In

France the best representative of Aesteticism is J.K.Huysman with "A ribour" (1884), whose protagonist Des

Esseintes becomes the ideal incarnation of the aesthete. In Italy G.D’Annunzio creates another important

model of the aesthetic movement with Andrea Sperelli in "Il piacere" (1889).

OSCAR FINGAL O’FLAHERTIE WILLS WILDE:

A major spokesman for the Aesthetic movement in the late 19th century and an advocate of "Art for art’s

sake", which proposes that beauty has no utilitarian value and is independent of morality, is Oscar Fingal

O’Flahertie Wills Wilde. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854, of professional and literary, but

also very eccentric parents: his father, Sir William Wilde, is a known eye and ear surgeon, he gives him

several names, which are a concentrate of ideas ( for example "Fingal" is the name of a legendary Irish

figure, a sort of ossianic poet , "O’Flahertie" is the name of a warrior tribe of Ireland), his mother, Jane Elgee,

is a fervent nationalist poet, and she, for her desire to have a daughter, dresses little Oscar in girl’s clothes.

After attending Porpora Royal School (1864-71), Wilde goes, on successive scholarship, to Trinity College,

Dublin (1871-74), where he studies Latin and Greek literature. Here he first reveales his unconventional

personality and thanks to his love for classics he wins a Gold Medal for Greek and a scholarship for

Madgalen College, Oxford (1874-78), which awards him a degree with honours. Soon he becomes famous

as poet winning the Newdigate Prize in 1878 with a long poem, "Ravenna". During these four years he is well

known for his wit, his ostentatious dresses and his eccentric behaviour as well as for his aestheticism. He is

an anticonformist , a wonderful entertainer and a brilliant talker; his conversation is a provocative

combination of satire, paradox and epigram through which every Victorian institution and value is criticized

and ridiculed. He is deeply impressed by the teachings of the English writers John Ruskin, a critic of art, and

Walter Pater, the theorist of aestheticism, on the central importance of art in life and particularly on the

aesthetic intensity by which life should be lived ( the life imitated the art and not vice versa). Like many in his

generation, Wilde is determined to follow Pater’s urging "to burn always with a hard, gemlike flame". But

Wilde also delights in affecting an aesthetic pose; this, combined with rooms at Oxford decorated with

"objects d’art", results in his famous remark: "Oh, would that I could live up to my blue China!" ( However,

Japanese and other oriental art, eighteenth-century furniture, distempers walls in pastel colours, stylised

floral motifs have all made their appearance in English art before Wilde becomes their advocate; in fact in

1885 the essayist and cartoonist Max Beerbohm affirms: "Beauty had existed long before 1880. It was Mr

Oscar Wilde who managed her debut"). by skuola.net

In the early 1880s, when the Aestheticism is the rage and despair of literary London,(where he inherites from

father) Wilde establishes himself in social and artistic circles by his wit and flamboyance. Soon the periodical

"Punch" makes him the satirical object of its antagonism to the Aesthetes for what is considered their

unmasculine devotion to art; and in their comic opera "Patience", Gilbert and Sullivan base the character

Bunthorne, a "fleshly poet", partly on Wilde. His caricature is provoked above all by his eccentric way of

dressing and behaviour : he wear an aesthetic costume of velvet jacket, knee breeches, black silk stockings,

strange tie and exotic flowers in the buttonhole, and he uses to walk up and down Piccadilly with a sunflower

in his hands. In constant need of money to live up to his worldly life, Wilde acceptes an invitation to lecture in

the United States and Canada in 1882,pronuncing on his arrival in New York his famous sentence: "I have

nothing to declare except my genius!" , in reply to the Customs officer’s routine question. On his return to

Europe, he spends three months in Paris, where he meets writers and painters like Flaubert and Huysmans.

In 1884 he marries Constance Lloyd, who bears him two children. Their style of life is beyond their means

and Wilde is obliged to work as a reviewer for the "Pall Mall Gazette" and then as editor of "Woman’s world"

(1887-89).

In 1889 Wilde produces his anti-realistic manifesto "The decay of Lying" which asserts that "Art is our spirited

protest, our attempt to teach Nature its proper place". Art’s aim is to offer man pleasures and sensations

without regard to any preconceived standard of morality and utility. The life has to be similar to an art-work

and so his same life is an example of it in its reckless pursuit of pleasure. In addition, his homosexual

relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he meets in 1891, infuriated the Marquess of Queensberry,

Douglas’ father. Accused, finally by the Marquess of being a sodomite, Wilde, urged by Douglas, sues for

criminal libel. Unfortunately the accusations are proved true, and Wilde is arrested, tried and sentenced to

two years’ hard labour. After the prison, which provokes him many sufferings, because of public opinion

against him and the impediment to read and write, he adopts a new name: Sebastian Melmoth. "Sebastian"

remembers the Christian martyr transfixed with arrows, but also the arrows printed on his prison uniform and

"Melmoth" is inspired by Maturin’s Gothic novel " Melmoth, the Wanderer" . He spends some time in Naples

and Switzerland, writing against the brutality of prison life. Then he settles in Paris, where he dies suddenly

on November 30, 1900, from an attack of meningitis. In his semiconscious final moments, he is received into

the Roman Catholic Church, which he has long admired.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

It is the only novel written by Wilde. When it is first published in 1890 in the "Lippincott’s Monthly magazine",

it is fiercely attacked by critics who judges it immoral. To reply to these accusations the next year Wilde

publishes another edition, with the addition of six chapters and its famous "Preface" which becomes the

Manifesto of the Aestheticism. The novel challenges all the fundamental values and beliefs of Victorian

society and probes deeply into the shadow world behind the respectable social façade. The novel is the story

of Dorian Gray, a typical dandy, that’s to say a heroic figure, created by Wilde, that is the living protest

against this democratic levelling, he is at his ease everywhere and in every situation. He is against any social

convention. Nothing can surprise him. He is never vulgar. He presents all the canons of the classical beauty:

handsome, young, aristocratic, refined. His sex is ambiguous: he unites the feminine grace and the male

virility. On his lips there is a smile of a stoic philosopher. He is the last romantic hero, the last manifestation

of heroism in a moment of decline, like the sunset, the last ray of sunlight of human pride, for his elegance in

dressing and his intellectual honesty. His only ideal is to realize an inimitable life. And proper this ideal

conduces him to the perversion. When his friend painter Basil Hallward paints his picture he can translate on

it even the soul of Dorian, the young is enchanted by it and together Hanry Watton, an elegant and cynic

man, whose principles have corrupted him, makes a reflection on the fugacity of the time and desires

intensely to transfer the passing of the time on the picture and to remaine always beautiful and young. His

desire is so strong that it really happens. So he lives a dissolute life, in search of the most unrestrained

pleasures: he despises the love of Sybil Vane, a kind actress because an evening her performance, for a

bodily discomfort, isn’t perfect as always. It will conduce her to suicide. At this point the decadence of

Dorian’s soul begins, he becomes a criminal, his physical aspect remains beautiful, but inside he becomes

cruel and cruel. The signs of the time and of his decadence appear on the picture, where his face becomes

evil and it is furrowed with wrinkles, so, to appease his conscience he collocates the picture in the attic even

if every evening he goes to look it :every day the signs of the decline increases. A day Dorian shows the

picture to his friend Basil but he recognizes it only for his signature, painted in red; the painter, who is a

sincere and integral man, reproaches him for his shameful conduct, but the cruel Dorian kills him, because

he is the creator of the picture, and dissolves his body in the nitrile acid. Then he has also a dispute with

Sybil Vane’s brother. But, better than every word, the picture remembers to Dorian the deception of his

double life, showing him his real face, unknown to everyone in its own cruel eloquence up to, overcome by

unhappiness, he brakes the picture with a knife and he immediately falls down dead, as if he has stabbed

himself. The servitude rush to the place and they look a wonderful picture of their master and on the floor a

by skuola.net

dead man with an evening dress, with a knife in the heart, with an old and cruel face. They understand that

he is their master only for his rings. The life, broken the charm, prevails over Dorian, who wants to oppose to

his necessary pain another life, fictitious and mysterious.

The allegoric meaning of this novel exalts the absolute and eternal value of art, which triumphs over all the

ugliness and lowness of the life. In this work the author states that for obtaining the essential detaching from