A Confirmation Letter To The Priest

“Che vedi, figliolo?” gli chiese padre Emanuele. E Roberto, ancora di poca eloquenza: "The meadows." "Of course, anyone is able to see the Meadows over there. But you know that depending on the position of the sun, the color of the sky, the time of day & season, they can appear in different forms inspired various feelings. The peasant, weary work, they appear as Meadows, & nothing else. The same happens to the fisherman appalled by some of those wild night Images of Fire that sometimes appear in the sky, & scare; ma non appena i Meteoristi, che son pure Poeti, ardiscono chiamarle Comete Crinite, Barbate & Codate, Capre, Travi, Scudi, Faci & Saette, queste figure del linguaggio ti rendono chiaro per quali Simboli arguti intendesse parlar Natura, che si serve di queste Imagini come di Ieroglifici, che da un lato rinviano ai Segni del Zodiaco & dall’altro a Eventi passati o futuri. E i Prati? Vedi quanto puoi dire dei Prati, & come dicendone tu vieppiù ne veda & comprenda: spira Favonio, la Terra s’apre, piangono i Rosignoli, si pavoneggian gli Alberi chiomati di fronde, & tu scopri il mirabile ingegno dei Prati nella varietà delle lor stirpe d’Herbe allattate dai Rivi che scherzano in lieta childhood. The Meadows festive cheer with joy lepida, at the appearance of the Sun open the face & see them in the arc of a smile & rejoice for the return of abstraction, drunken kisses sweet Austria, laughter & dancing on the earth itself that opens a blank Letizia, & the warmth of the morning makes them so full of joy that they give vent to his tears of dew. Wreath of flowers, lawns give themselves up to their genius & witty hyperbole of Rainbows. But soon their youth known to hasten death, their rice is disturbed in a sudden pallor, the sky fades & Zephyr sighs already lingers on a Ianguente Earth, so that the arrive early wrath of winter skies, saddening the Meadows, a Frost & s'inscheletriscono. Here is my son: If you had said simply that the grass is no more pleasant would that represent its verdant - we already know - but if you say that make me laugh Meadows see the earth as a man will Lively, & learn how to observe each other human faces in all the nuances that I took in the meadows ... And this is the office of the Figure-eminent among all the Metaphor. If the engineer, and then the know, are to tie together remote notion and find similarities in dissimilar things, the metaphor, among the sharpest and Figures peregrina, is the only one capable of producing Wonder, that led to the Beloved, as the changes of scenes in the theater. And if we cause the Beloved Figures is to learn new things without effort and a lot of things in stem volume, that's the metaphor, bringing to mind the flight from one genre to another, there is only one word in travedere more than one goal. "
Umberto Eco - The Island of the day before - pag.85

by Eugenio Prati