The Planet of Plants with Teresa Saponangelo and Stefano Mancuso. Friday, September 16, 20:XNUMX p.m., Men's Baths, Ercolano Archaeological Park.
Myths, especially those of metamorphosis, conceal a truth behind fiction. Metamorphosis should not be understood only as a change of state, a transformation, but also as a manifestation of a hidden nature. The hunter transformed into a deer witnesses helplessly the emergence of his inhuman side, of the animal he has always been and has forgotten to be.
Similarly, the nymph who becomes a laurel and the young man who is reborn as a flower return to an original dimension of unity of the living, to what Merleau-Ponty defined as undivided communion. Transforming herself into a laurel to escape Apollo, Ovid's Daphne meets the destiny written in the name she bears. Name of a plant: daphne means laurel, bay laurel. There is therefore coherence – method – in the metamorphosis.
Of that communion, of that indistinctness, plants are an essential part. Herbaria are also mythological repertoires. It is no coincidence that poetry has always drawn from them. But forests and gardens are much more than mere scenography, between sublime landscapes and pleasant places. They are the world, if we consider that 80% of biomass is made of plants.
On Friday 16 September at the Terme Maschili of the Ercolano Archaeological Park (corso Resina 187, Ercolano) the actress Teresa Saponangelo and the botanist Stefano Mancuso will meet and entertain the public on the concept and state of metamorphosis in a narration that from Ovidian poetry (undoubtedly the most well-known and loved text that has inspired and inspires writers, poets, artists and even stylists) will arrive, in a continuous and profitable exchange, to the metamorphoses of nature, those that we have been witnessing for millennia and those for which we will have to prepare ourselves in view of an inevitable change in the nature that surrounds us.
“Perhaps Ovid's poem itself – declared Teresa Saponangelo – reaches a more heterogeneous audience like the one we hope to have. And this is because it is immediate to receive, especially in the context in which we will read it. The Park has become a wonderful place in these years because a very prestigious work has been done. I am very happy to be able to see it again now, since I have been away for a few years”.
On the metamorphosis underway on the planet, Gennaro Carillo, artistic director of the meetings, says: “We are made of matter, man is part of nature, he is part of matter. There are no great hierarchical differences. Indeed, thinking about hierarchical differences has put us in a very serious and delicate situation. The presumed superiority of the human animal over all the rest of the living, in a certain sense is as if it has authorized him to make havoc of the living, madly considering nature as an unlimited resource when we all know very well that nature is not”.
Stefano Mancuso: Italian botanist, academic and essayist teaches general arboriculture and plant ethology at the University of Florence.
Theresa Saponangelo: Italian actress, winner of the David di Donatello for best supporting actress for “It Was the Hand of God”.
Admission to the meetings is free until all seats are taken, with mandatory reservation.
Info: www.gliozidiercole.it and gliozidiercole@gmail.com | 3472931317
Article published on 12 September 2022 - 17:23
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