Crines without punishments
Sommary
di Lilla Consoli
What do Nora Joyce, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ipazia and many others have in common? They have been forgotten, cancelled, misunderstood... Down below, a unpretentious list of many crimes without punishment. I have always been fascinated by submerged continents, cities and villages. The town of Riso sunk in the small lake of the city I live in: although I have done my best, I never succeded in perceiving the spire of its bell tower. What a pity. But I'm obstinate. Thus, I patiently set off to find traces of a lost continent, whose pieces emerge every now and then here and there, and ask to be grabbed and put together again. Women, women, women... Women's voices and knowledge, women's writing, women's silence. Coloured stone and shells I brought to shore. What baby - girl will want to see a part of my treasure? To see and tell others. So that our history may not be "obscured and rewritten", as Celeste West says in her so brilliant work "A Lesbian Love Advisor. The Sweet and Savory Arts of Lesbian Courtship. With the Commentaries of Lady Clitoressa and Her Circle". It's Celeste to quote a sensational case of homophobic censorship: passages of the diary of Anne Frank, where a loving feeling for another woman appears, have been accurately taken out and concealed. Just like Eleanor Roosevelt's 3,360 letters to Lorena Hickok passed to silence. But at least Anne and Eleanor's names have remained. A worse fate happened to other women. Forgetfulness. No. There is something yet more disgusting than oblivion. Expropriation... Who will give back to Zelda Fitzgerald and Nora Joyce their notepads and their images? Their men took both, their famous husbands have been thieves of memory and daily, intimate and ingenious writing. Women's writing. Zelda and Nora's diaries, filched, elaborated again, adapted. the voracious Ulysses phagocytized Nora's very personal style, without periods or commas, Zelda the mad and Nora the addressee of obscene, trivial conjugal letters: that's all that's left of them. Besides expropriation, distortion, disfigurement. In this world history rewritten by males, they couldn't fail to cancel philosophier. Not even the greatly acclaimed Jostein Gaarder resisted to the fascination of non-existence. In the role of the philosophy professor Alberto, he transmitted to Sofia the rudiments of this human science, writing among other things, with irritating candour, "women, because of their everlasting oppression, only in our century do they appear in the history of philosophy". And what about Aspasia of Miletus (460-401 BC.). It seems she was the one who developed the "maieutical method", which later became famous by the name of "Socratic method". Socrates himself spoke of Aspasia as his teacher. And what about lady Anne Conway (1631-1679). She was the one who inspired Leibniz in creating of the monadic theory. And what about Harriet Hardy Taylor-Mill (1807-1858)? Her husband John Stuart Mill recognised to due to her collaboration "the best of his works". It would be wise to us not to let men tell us wheter if and to what extent women have philosophised. (A woman recently wrote a book with regards to this. Marit Rullmann: "Filosofe. Dall'antichita' all'Illuminismo"). The elimination of our thought at times coincided with the elimination of thinkers, as in the bloody case of Ipazia, whose brutal assassination remains concealed in between the pages of an unknown story. Ipazia lived in Alexandria in Egypt in the fourth century AD, she was the most interesting personage of her time; mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, remarkably beautiful and of proved moral integrity, she found herself in the middle of intrigues and struggles for power, in a cosmopolitan city where the patriarch Cirillus and the governor Ores hastily, but not openly, fought each other. Far from Rome, in the background (at that time Julian was the Emperor); close - much too close - to fanatic and violent Christians, among which the notorious "parabolani". They came from the lowest social strata, they took care of the victims of epidemics in change of low fees; they had constituted a sort of "Ku-Klux-Klan" terrorising Alexandria. Ipazia was slaughtered not by these gloomy monattos but by a "pious" official reader of the Holy Scripture, Pietro il Cireneo, and by his followers. They killed her in a church with oyster valve slivers cutting her body up to pieces. They remained unpunished even though the whole city knew the names of the responsible. Ipazia's fault? That of being the true "beacon of Alexandria", of representing a virtual danger both for the temporal and spiritual power: both Ores and Cirillus were afraid of the enormous authority of this remarkable woman, besides she was the head of the Alexandrine new- platonic school. (A philosophy school in those days could influence city politics). The beautiful and cultured Ipazia, leaves the stage, and forever! An incredible silence shrouds her figure, only few scholars occasionally and badly are concerned with her. For example, the historian Hans Georg Beck in 1986 wrote: "She was a famous scholar, even with scientific and mathematical interests". Annemarie Maeger, author of a splendid book about Ipazia, comments in the following way Beck's writing: "I wonder if he would write about Mozart: he was a famous pianist, even interested in composing!" But men, by instinct of preservation, tend to play down women's work, consciously or unconsciously they share Sir Galahad's assertion: "As soon as they are equal to us, they will overwhelm us". It is up to us to tell "our" events to each other, to weav the cloth of a never-ending story that covers with elegance - and authoritativeness - our days, without waiting for any Ulysses. Ulysses goes, Ulysses comes, and he is the one who carries exploits: he is the genius and the hero, let it be clear. Thus it can happen that two dadaist painters, a woman and a man, live together for seven years (let's say from 1915 to 1922), together they discuss and research, together they invent photomontage; and it can happen that the man brags about being the only inventor. (Of course, all this happened, she is Hannah Hoech and he is Raoul Hausmann). Ulysses, arrogant, landed on Kiltarton, in Ireland, under the name of the thirty-year-old poet William Butler Yeats; there was lady Isabella Augusta Perses who was waiting for him (she had invided him to her estate) and who introduced him to the magic world of Irish tales and folklore. On the matter, Lady Gregory wrote two great books, but the one to be mentioned by history - and repeatedly quoted - is Yeats's text, "Irish Folk Stories and Fairy Tales". Frederik Hetmann, a scholar dedicated to tales, asserts that friendship between the two was precious for Irish literature and theatre, but we know about our Lady only by chance, for example, reading the preface to a collection of Irish tales. Now it's time to close my casket full of shiny stones, to weave a secret patchwork. I didn't show you everything, my dear playmates. But now it's up to you to tell me about concealed treasures and wrecks. Celeste West, "A Lesbian Love Advisor", Cleis Press, San Francisco 1989. Luisa Francia, "Spielend scheitern" ("Fallire e' un gioco da ragazze"), Frauenoffensive, Monaco 1990. Marit Rullmann, "Philosophinnen - von der Antike bis zur Aufklaerung" ("Filosofe. Dall'antichita' all'Illuminismo"). Annemarie Maeger, "Hypatia die Dreigestaltige" ("Iparia la triforme"), Reuter+Kloeckner, Amburgo T92). Sir Galahad (Berta Eckstein - Diener), "Muetter und Amazonen" ("Madru e Amazzoni"), Francoforte - Berlino, riedizione 1987. Lady Gregory, "Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland", Buckinghamshire ried. 1970. Lady Gregory, "Cuculain of Muirthemme", come sopra.