“ It’s not what I saw, but what I didn’t see that made me go back” says Novecento to his friend Max. Exactly. Moreover, he did not see what he should have seen: his repressed hatred and his drive to get revenge.
I believe that the uterus of a mother who does not want to have a child becomes worse than a cardboard box for the fetal I, and the fetal I can hardly wait to destroy its mother and itself along with her.
I believe that Novecento identified the ship with his mother’s womb, and he is happy to blow it up, even though he will blow up along with it.Haven’t we done the same thing, by inventing the atomic bomb and holding on to thousands of nuclear warheads in all different parts of the world? There is a strong temptation to use them, and this temptation is what the nineteen hundreds will bequeath to future generations. The existence of many human beings is also ridden with mini atomic bombs, which continuously explode.
Not only does the artist in the movie not get off the boat, he won’t let his music get off either. He makes only one record, and he won’t allow anyone to listen to it; he would like to give it to the girl who inspired the music in him, but he is unable to do it, and even worse, instead of sending it to her by mail he smashes it into a million pieces and throws it in the garbage. If this isn’t hatred, I don’t know what is! But this is repressed hatred, and how many are capable of contacting it and recognizing it?
Repressed hatred is like dynamite. It is only a question of time. For a while, even for twenty years or more, it stays completely still like a crouching beast, but at some point comes the day when a secret timer goes off and quickly counts down, and everything is blown to bits.
I don’t like the fact that Novecento’s music remains a gift only for a select few and not for all of humanity. Just think what would have happened if J.S. Bach had destroyed his musical masterpieces! (During the year of writing this, we are celebrating 250 years after his death, as he was born in Eisenach on March 21, 1685 and died in Leipzig, July 28, 1750).
Unfortunately, for Novecento his music is only the covering of a new womb that he hides inside of so he can avoid his pain and hatred and refuse to grow up and become a man. This way when the ship dies he dies along with it. His friend, who tries to convince him to save himself and create a new life, cannot comprehend his response.
What he says is that there is too much land and that he would not know how to handle it or how to transform it into music. What? Isn’t the sea he has been sailing on greater than land? Maybe he can see its edges when he looks at it out of the portholes in the hold where he is hiding? Is this why he doesn’t come out of the hold and doesn’t go to play his music in the first and third class halls? These inconsistencies mask the presence of an unconscious drive for revenge.
His life has never left the cocoon of his narcissistic I, whose pride was mortally wounded. Because of this I, his life will end with him, and he will fail to fulfill the purpose he was to accomplish with it.
Life has been given to us not to go from one port to the next, back and forth like work animals, but to navigate from one universe to the next and from one invention to the next, until this higher purpose has not been accomplished.
When this universe will either explode or implode, it is still too early to tell which hypothesis will be correct; Life does not want to die along with it. It wants to become immortal and navigate towards another universe, and after that towards another one, into eternity.
Life does not want ferrymen like Charon or even like Beatrice. It wants creators and inventors that are capable of transforming the impossible and making it possible, by creating a type of beauty that neither time nor death can ever destroy.
It wants inventors that know how to create a synthesis between life and death and that know how to extract a new life form from that synthesis that no longer must experience death.
Life wants inventors that know how to get to the port of secondary beauty after leaving the port of primary beauty.It wants artists that are different from the artists of the past. The artists of the past knew how to create an initial transformation from primary to secondary beauty, and in doing so, they opened the door to a dimension that was previously unknown in the world. Nevertheless, this transformation is not enough so that Life can go from one universe to another.
Another type of art is necessary, and maybe Cosmo-Art is the right kind, that can help us achieve the goal, dreamed of for millennia, of Life’s immortality.We are not talking about the immortality of the global I, nor of the soul’s immortality as invented by Socrates and Plato, where the body is only a prison that we must free ourselves of.
The I as we know it must die, not just once but many times. From its life and death experienced through its connection with its body, a field of energy must be formed that is so powerful that it can overcome universal gravity, the limitations of biological life and those of cultural and spiritual life.
The global I must die so the I of the artist can leave the body and incarnate in the immortal work of art. It is the work of art, then, that becomes its body, and it is no longer mortal.
My must die and incarnate in the central nucleus of secondary beauty, by flowing together with the I’s of others.In this manner, the energy field that has reached a new identity and a new substance while being created can freely expand into parallel and concentric universes, without having to die.
And so Life that was before eternal but was not immortal ( eternal, because it has always existed and created billions and billions of life forms, but not immortal , because all of these life forms are mortal and they all must pass through death so they can perpetuate themselves into other forms of life) now can become both eternal and immortal. This is its dream and its goal and it always has been, and it will not find peace until it has reached it.
.... “the myth of Cosmo-Art comes from the dream that Life carries within itself. This dream is what the myth of Cosmo-Art wants to transform into reality.Beauty, of the kind that artists have created throughout the history of art, is immortal within the time-space dimension of this universe, but it will never be able to pass into the time-space dimension of other universes. Every work of art has a spiritual soul that is connected to a material support, and every material support will perish when this universe does. In any case, and this is what is most important here, artistic beauty does not have the power to untangle anyone’s repressed hatred.
There is no doubt that works of art contain energy, just as ideas contain energy, but they are two different types of energy that are completely different from each other. No one has yet studied what the energy consists of that emanates from a work of art. It is an energy that never runs out.
Today we know that an atom’s energy contains terrible power, and we know that this energy burns out at some point. However, we do not know everything yet.Tomorrow we could find out how much destructive power the human I is capable of and how great the destructive energy is that is condensed in repressed hatred.
One day, we could also end up understanding the energy contained in the I of an artist, and also the energy that can be concentrated in the Choral SELF of Cosmo-Art, or in any other group. We just might become capable of learning exactly what this energy is, that condenses in secondary beauty and never runs out.
It does not matter if we are only at the very first steps of this new art. What does matter is that we cultivate the myth of Cosmo-Art by condensing all the energy we have in it, even though we are not yet fully aware of exactly what it is that we are dealing with.
..........................In the movie, the emigrants have hope but the pianist has none at all. How can someone watching this movie, who is looking for hope, identify with the pianist if he or she does not want to identify with the emigrants?
If you reflect closely on this you will realize that Tornatore’s pianist is full of a pessimism and a cynicism that is completely in contrast with the hope of the poor who are crossing the ocean to build their lives in a new world.
There is a death wish in the pianist that the others do not have. The pianist is full of creativity but it dissolves into nothingness, whereas the others’ creativity is not stopped by any obstacle.
These immigrants, whom today have become the capitalists of the New Economy, have given rise to the next evolutionary phase of the human species. We would be blind not to see it.
But as far as I am concerned, being a European who has not emigrated, I would like that yet another evolutionary phase could emerge from our Europe that is mostly de-Christianized, but is still full of infinite potential:, a phase that involves a new way of creating art and a new way of creating secondary beauty.
This is why we Cosmo-Artists want to leave the womb. We want to be born and we want to become artists of our lives and artists of the life of the universe. We do not want to remain stuck within the womb nor do we want to blow up with the ship, like Novecento. However, it is indispensable that we learn how to process our repressed hatred that is what mostly keeps us bound to it.
Just as gravity keeps all the celestial bodies in orbit around each other, repressed hatred is the gravitational field that keeps people bound to the maternal womb for much longer than even love can bind them.
The Ulysseans have chosen Ulysses as a model, and Ulysses did not stay long in the cave of Polyphemus or in the cave of Circe or Calypso.Ulysses sailed all over the sea but he learned to process his repressed hatred by making it become manifest and by facing all the monsters that he met during his journey. He forgave Helen and he saved her life; he forgave Circe and Calypso; he forgave his companions and he forgave Penelope, with her heart of stone.
But whom did Novecento forgive?Did he ever try to find his mother? He did everything on his own, just like he learned to play the piano on his own. What does he need the others for? He is an Absolute.
We do not want to smash the beauty that life has given us into pieces, as he does. We want to create a new type of beauty with which we can travel from one universe to another and not just from one port to another.
Is it easy to do so? No, it is extremely difficult. It is even impossible for a mind that reasons only technologically. It is not impossible for a visionary mind like the ones that artists and poets had in the past. We cannot take as role models the artists of today, because they have mostly decided to smash already existing beauty, since they are incapable of creating beauty that does not yet exist.
We must also change the scene of the musical duel that takes place between Novecento and Jelly Roll Morton, which seems like a fight to the death between Far West gunslingers. The pianist’s cynicism appears clearly during this duel. He tells his friend Max Tooney that Morton is very good, that his music is moving and he does not want to compete with him. Then, he suddenly changes his mind and becomes absolutely heartless. At the third round, he humiliates him; he pounds him into the ground and destroys him in front of all those who had so admired him. Morton locks himself up in his cabin and doesn’t come out again.
It does not take much talent to kill others. However, it takes a lot of it to build harmony with others, to form a single living organism. This is a more difficult work of art to create, and very few know how to do it.
We must concentrate our talents and our energies on this type of art if we want to introduce something truly new to the world.Life must not be a duel to the death and for death.
Death and life must blend so that a superior life form can emerge from this synthesis.
When, in October of 1994, a bullet killed the little seven-year-old American Nicholas Green while he was traveling with his family in Italy, a potent vibration of new energy and new life shook the whole planet. After this tragedy, organ donation accelerated throughout all the continents, saving thousands of human lives (see Reg Green, “The Gift that Heals: Stories of Hope, Renewal and Transformation”).
Here death and life melded together and a new world consciousness arose that unites thousands of people of every race and every country throughout the planet.
In the immense pain of two parents, life and death met and fused together, and from this fusion new hope and a new vision were created that everyone could benefit from.
They did not react by being victims; they expressed neither hatred nor any need for revenge. They expressed life as a gift and life as a work of art.I wish I could say the same thing for our lives. It all depends on us. Every day life puts us to the test and we can learn how to live with gratitude and art, instead of with anger and violence.
In the meantime, let’s develop our imagination and learn to create our own legend and our own myth. Let’s change the storyline in this movie: it is not true, as the director says, that it’s a nice story; it’s a horrible story.
We want to leave the womb and we want to step on to land. No bird can ever fly if it doesn’t have feet and cannot stand somewhere on land.
In this book, I have put the spirit and the matter of Tornatore’s story together so they begin to macerate: now you can resurrect them by transforming them.
Through the passion and the death of matter, the spirit goes through passion and death as well, and when the spirit rises up again transformed, matter, too, rises up transformed.
This dual process is present in every authentic work of art and it presides over the creation of any real work of art. Sometimes this happens in a visible manner, but it more often happens in an invisible way, above all for those who know nothing of the artist’s toil and labour.
In J.S. Bach’s “Passion according to Matthew”, an appreciative listener can perceive and intuitively understand the process as a whole as well as all the single steps of the process. If one is in love with this music the process becomes visible.
When you receive this booklet, get to work on creating a new storyline for the film. The Cosmo-Art group is already working on one, but during the laboratory, you can all create one together”.
(see A.M. “La nascita della Cosmo-Art” {The Birth of Cosmo-Art}, Published by The Sophia University of Rome, (S.U.R.) 2000, pp.303-312)
I will return to discuss further repressed hatred and how oppressive its presence is in Ulysses’ life.
CHAPTER XVI
Both the enchantress Circe and the nymph Calypso, two of the goddesses that fall in love with Ulysses, promise they will make him immortal if he marries them. Ulysses, however, refuses to obtain immortality in this way. This makes of him an unprecedented hero in the Greek world; he becomes a hero who is equaled by none and who is unlike any other hero in world literature.
Ulysses says to Calypso: I know you are immensely more beautiful than Penelope, but I know that I can create a higher form of beauty if I manage to transform Penelope’s “heart of stone” so she can become a woman capable of loving a man for her whole life, capable of melding her feminine side with her masculine one, capable of combining her will with mine, capable of blending the will of the I with that of the Other in a single will. If I can do this, I can create secondary beauty, immortal beauty.
In this answer Ulysses puts two different conceptions of beauty in front of each other: one refers to physical beauty, which Calypso has more of compared to Penelope; the other refers to a beauty that does not yet exist but that Ulysses wants to create by returning to Ithaca and initiating a fusion of opposites between himself and Penelope.
This answer also contains the deep choice Ulysses is making towards Penelope as his wife and the radical decision to embrace the cosmic goal of creating secondary beauty together with her.
This choice is so radical that after Calypso tells him of the pain he will still have to undergo should he decide to leave:But if only you knew how much suffering
awaits you, before you reach your homeland,
staying here with me, you could share my home
and become immortal, even though you are so anxious
to see your bride again, whom you call out for every day.” (Od. V, 206-210)
If still some one of the gods will wish to torment me on the stormy sea, I will tolerate it, because my heart is used to suffering.
I have suffered immensely, I have faced many dangers
between the waves and in war: after all that, may this come to pass as well!” (Od. V. 221-224)
It does not matter to Ulysses how much he will have to suffer so he can see his long-desired spouse. His is a heart that is used to suffering and even though he has faced many dangers, he is willing to face yet others, but he will not give up his project.
How many people can say as much?Who wouldn’t be afraid to have to suffer again, knowing how much they have already suffered in the past?
During his long stay on Calypso’s island, Ulysses has plenty of time to meditate and reflect on the meaning of life. He carefully recalls his descent into Hades, which was possible because of Circe’s indispensable help, and he understands the illusion that devours those who run after power and glory.
This is where Ulysses understands the meaning of the Universe, and the cosmic project that it entrusts to men and women.Some of the words that I earlier attributed to Ulysses are not the exact words Homer uses. It is I who describe them in this way because I am convinced, after long reflection, that Ulysses’ strategy to become immortal is as follows: after having accomplished the fusion between the I and the SELF (Ulysses and Athena), he wants to accomplish the fusion between the I and a You, even when the You represented by Penelope strongly resists. She, in fact, does not want to make any decisions to recognize and love Ulysses, as she is still attached to her childhood, her expectations, and the maternal element that devours her life (the Suitors).
Ulysses falls madly in love with Circe and stays in her house one year, and he stays with Calypso for seven years, making love with her the whole time.During the last years, though, Ulysses makes love with the goddess in her bed at night, where by day he sits on the seashore and cries the whole time because he is not free to continue his voyage home to Ithaca. This had not happened with Circe.
There on the island he lies, suffering great pain, in the home of the nymph Calypso, who keeps him there by force. (Od. V, 13-15)
But generous Odysseus was not to be found inside (by Hermes); he was sitting on the promontory, crying, just like always, with tears, moans and suffering lacerating his heart, and he looked tiredly at the sea, letting his tears fall. (Od. V, 81-84)
No primary beauty, not even if of divine origin, can satiate a person’s heart. We will always feel an internal torment that will push us to find a superior beauty that we can create ourselves.
*****CHAPTER XVII
Is there another reason why Ulysses must spend so much time with Calypso?
Yes. This, too, is the return of a past experience that we will call “intrauterine incest” (see Francesco Sollai, Cosmo-Artistic interpretation of the film “The Shawshank Redemption” in “La nascita della Cosmo-Art” {The Birth of CosmoArt}). This is the most terrible weapon a mother uses to seduce her son and take over his life forever. Unfortunately, the son allows himself to be seduced with great pleasure and a great sense of complicity.
The same thing happens to daughters, and director Jane Campion, in her film “The Piano”, gives us a beautiful demonstration of this (see the Sophiartistic interpretation of this film in A.M. “La vita come opera d’arte e la vita come dono spiegata in 41 film”{Life as a Work of Art and Life as a Gift explained in 41 films} , Published by Sophia University of Rome, (S.U.R.) Rome, 1995).
When in the proem Athena begs Zeus to free Ulysses from Calypso, she describes the nymph’s actions as follows:and always with tender, seductive words
Before a child encounters the devouring mother, he encounters the seductive mother and the castrating mother. The Junghian analyst E. Neuman introduced the concept of the devouring mother, and the Freudian analyst Fairbairn introduced the concepts of the seductive mother and the castrating mother.
In the Odyssey, the enchantress Circe, Calypso and the Sirens are all representations of this mother that first seduces and then castrates her son. Ulysses, though, knows how to defend himself from Circe and from the Sirens and knows how to transform both Circe and Calypso so they act in his favor.Circe, whom Ulysses manages to tame, gives him all the esoteric knowledge that she possesses and she shows him the way to go in to Hades and meet the soothsayer Teiresias, and get out again. Then she warns him of the Sirens and tells him the best way to face Scylla and Charybdis.
Calypso, when she finally decides to let Ulysses go, first teaches him how to build himself a raft and then, even more importantly, she teaches him the art of sailing by night and how to use the stars as a guide.
(see A.M. “Rules for Nocturnal Navigation”, chapter XIV of The Ulysseans, published by the Sophia University of Rome, 2009)
Inside the uterus, a fetus has very few ways of being able to defend itself from its mother. She is its primary love object, its absolute love object, that does not yet have a face but that most certainly has a sweet voice, much sweeter than even the Sirens’ voices. The child remains charmed by it and entrapped forever.
The song she sings is clearly one without words, just as the Sirens’ song is one without words. It makes no sense to try to understand what the Sirens are singing, as many have done from ancient times until today.
Only the laws of biological growth manage to detach the child from its love object and send it off to the neck of the uterus so it can be born.Very often, however, these births are completed only on a physiological level, because the fetal I that continues to survive well into adulthood is still in the womb, fused and enmeshed with its primary love object. The adult I will have to face terrible battles so it can emerge and be born, and conquer the freedom to detach from its primary love object and turn to another love object that is truly different from the first, not merely a substitute for it.
We can often conquer this freedom by surrendering to the need to return to the womb through regression, and deciding to re-live the original experience registered in our cellular memory and in our fetal I, by projecting it on substitute maternal figures.
By actively reliving this archaic experience, the adult I can find the freedom and the strength it needs to definitively detach from its first love object and from its incestuous relationship with the mother.
This is the only way one can truly love another person.A mother who does not want her son to be free will try to castrate him. Either she will not give herself to him completely, or she will hold on to her power of life or death over him. One of the most effective ways a mother can castrate her children is by taking possession of their lives.
When Ulysses follows the god Hermes’ advice and goes into Circe’s house, he threatens her with his sword and makes her solemnly swear that she will no longer dare cast spells either on himself, or on his companions. (Od. X, 321-347)
In the passage from the pre-Oedipal phase to the Oedipal phase, the power relationship between mother and son is reversed, if the Global I decides to make the passage.
First of all, the mother possesses her son, then the son possesses his mother.
Homer says that this is possible with the help of Hermes and of the moly herb, that only the gods are able to extract from the earth.
What do this god and the moly herb symbolize? They most certainly represent the decision to grow up and the type of courage that one needs to be able to do so.
And while I was walking through the sacred valleys
of Circe who knows many potions, I was about to reach her palace, when Hermes with his golden wand came to me,
while I was reaching the house, he seemed like a young hero, whose first beard is sprouting in all his youthful beauty.
He took my hand and spoke to me, saying:
“Where are you going among these hills all alone,
without knowing the area? Your companions are in Circe’s house locked up as swine in solid stalls.
And you have come to free them? I tell you
that you will not return either, but you’ll be captured with the others. Here, I want to keep you free and save you from danger.
Take this good herb and go into Circe’s house;
its power will save you from harm.
I will also tell you of all of Circe’s evil spells.
She will make a mixture and put poison in it;
but she won’t be able to cast a spell on you,
the herb I am about to give you will protect you, and now listen to me: when Circe will strike you with her long wand,
unsheath your sharp sword
and jump on Circe as if you want to kill her:
frightened, she will invite you to her bed.
So don’t reject the love of a goddess,
because she will liberate your companions and will let you go; while with her tell her to make a solemn oath,
that she will not cast any evil spell on you
or make you weak and powerless while you are naked and vulnerable. (Od. X, 275-301)
Having taken away the power of life and death from the mother, now Ulysses can fully enjoy the possession of his love object, and when it is time, he will be able to easily detach himself from her and grow up in complete freedom.
The same thing happens when he re-lives his intrauterine incest with Calypso the nymph. He gives himself all the time he needs. When he is ready to detach himself, the god Hermes arrives and helps Ulysses save himself.
Hermes’ appearance, which is Athena asks for and then Zeus orders, is only a symbol of the profound transformation that Ulysses goes through inside himself, with the help of the Personal SELF and the Cosmic SELF.
Many women make their men become “weak and impotent”, either by being seductive or by stubbornly going against them, and fighting them with all the weapons they possess.
It is not necessary to run into Circe to be reduced to swine, lions, wolves and the other animals that are all powerless, and stuck in the goddess’ house. (Od. X, 431-433)
These are every day occurrences, because often men remain imprisoned by their maternal imago that makes them weak and impotent. Nor do they care about learning to contact their Personal SELF and their Cosmic SELF.
We have used two diff