Shakespeare Denied

One interesting fact about Shakespeare - whoever he may have been - is that most scholars refuse to address his overt homosexuality, which is evinced in the Sonnets, and threaded throughout his plays. This effort to avoid any reference to his polysexuality says much about the inherently homophobic and conservative nature of these Shakespearean enclaves.

Sindrome da deficienza acquisita

Credo che tutta la questione di una correlazione tra virus (retrovirus) HIV e AIDS (sindrome da immunodeficienza eccetera) possa essere studiata limitandosi a studiare gli articoli scientifici "elaborati" fin qui (a partire dai primi, risalenti agli anni Ottanta del secolo scorso), indipendentemente da test fasulli e altra mondezza varia. Se lo si facesse, e con la serietà che qualsiasi indagine scientifica richiede, tutta la questione non potrebbe che assumere le movenze di un giallo (non ancora scritto) di cui le persone veramente intelligenti conoscono già da trent'anni il finale, cioè l'assassino, che non è certo un innocuo retrovirus, ma qualcosa di più umano, di apparentemente pensante, nascosto negli inutili dipartimenti di ricerca medica e farmaceutica.

Del cinismo degli universitari

Che i cosiddetti specialisti di Leopardi - tutti nessuno escluso, come d'altronde tutti gli specialisti in qualsiasi scienza o disciplina - non capiscano niente dell'oggetto delle loro ricerche dovrebbe risultare chiaro dalla loro totale indifferenza alle ragioni di un Leopardi cinico. Leopardi, si dicono costoro (tra un inutile convegno e un altro, e tra un inutile articolo accademico e l'altro), non può essere cinico per la semplice ragione che accusava gli italiani di essere "cinici d'animo" (Discorso sopra lo stato presente degli italiani - del 1824). Fanno finta di non accorgersi che lo Zibaldone inizia desolatamente proprio con l'immagine di un cane che abbaia nella notte, e che tutto il diario è disseminato di riferimenti al cane e alla felicità con la quale il cane pare godersi il suo dolce far niente. Comunque la si veda, l'etimologia di cinico sempre all'immagine del cane bisogna farla risalire. Vedi quello che ho scritto in L’infinito di Leopardi e il “caro” egoismo degli antichi; Leopardi i cani e gli uccelli; Il cane filosofo. Dal cinismo alle monadi informatiche.

A very telling Oscar

It would be too easy to show that the most prestigious awards in the entertainment industry are political and based on self-promotion, not actual merit. The most flagrant example at the time was when an ordinary film Crash won an Oscar for best film over Brokeback Mountain.

Man's journey towards ease and grace

The majority is always wrong. It is the most attractive aspect of democracy. Bad rulers are reelected, after all. The crowd waffles, cheers for one and then switches sides and root for the other. Such flagging has no effect on one's journey towards social and personal betterment, every scum politician knows it. This dialectical exchange of views may be compared with the disposition in prose or poetry of a single colon into two commata of approximately equal length (see Denniston). There’s barely a perceptible pause between them. It makes for ease and grace.

Top or bottom? Ancients versus Moderns

The argument that a man into a homosexual relationship must be the top because he’s an active male in a heterosexual relationship can be turned on its head. Perhaps he craves being topped by another man because he doesn’t get that with his wife or girlfriend. One can have relationships with women until he falls with another man who is a stallion. The unavoidable implication of that argument is, however, that 'a real man' should always put an effort in a relationship. The superiority is based not on class but on merit. Compare this with the view of a well-respected free Roman citizen of the I century A.D.  - though  the Romans didn’t have a concept of heterosexuality or homosexuality:

aut si de multis nullus placet exitus, illud

nonnne putas melius, quod tecum pusio dormit?

pusio qui noctu non litigat, exigit a te

nulla iacens illic munuscula nec queritur quod

et lateri parcas nec quantum iussit anheles (Juvenal, VI, .

If none of these exits (different manners of killing oneself as a way of escaping insatiable women) pleases you
wouldn't a lad suit you better? a lad who would share your bed?
who wouldn't wrangle all night, wouldn't ask
little gifts when in bed, and would not complain
that your hips remained idle, that you didn't breath hard as he ordered.  
 

Four reasons why I'm not a fascist

I'm on the left because I didn't vote for David Cameron (nor for Farage).
I'm on the left because unlike David Cameron I don't place profit above people or the environment.
I'm on the left because unlike David Cameron and his kind I don't want to succeed at the expense of other people.
I'm on the left because unlike David Cameron and his kind if I do suceed I'd rather use it as an opportunity to help other people rather than blame them for not doing well.

Do Brits like their beer warm or cold?

The Brits have to decipher baffling American words all the time, even though one notices a huge amount of Americanisms used by Brit writers. On the other hand, if you are American it could take you years to realize that "having tea" is something more than having a drink, and includes supper. The Brits say pants when the Americans say undershorts, the Americans say pants when the Brits say trousers. In British English an out house is a shed, to an American speaker an out house is a an outdoor toilet. An American once asked in a forum if Brits liked their beer warm or cold.

Follia dell'iperbato

Follia dell'iperbato, come in questo verso di un frammento del nono libro dell'Antologia Greca:

πορφυρέᾐ δ᾽ ἀνέκοπτες ὕδωρ πεπιεσμένον αἰδοῖ

dove si parla della vergogna pupurea dell'Alfeo, che si trattiene dal coricarsi nel letto di Aretusa per non imbrattarlo di sangue.

Vera e propria schizofrenia stilistica, mente scissa, divisa, separata, dissociata. Mi divertivo, da studente, a prendere in giro qualche presuntuoso, qualche professore, qualche italianista (la maggior parte degli italianisti non conosce il greco, hanno misere nozioni dal liceo, non riescono a capirci niente se non hanno il testo a fronte). Dicevo, ad esempio, schizzzofrenia, alla romana, schizo che suonava come schizzo, cacatella di conoscenza, e mi facevano immancabilmente osservare che siccome era greco andava pronunciato schizo, con una sola zeta e per di più sonora, e allora rispondevo qualcosa nel greco della fine del sesto secolo, continuavo la conversazione come se fossi nell'agorà di Atene, e il povero professore arrossiva, come l'Alfeo, perché lo pronunciavo pure come nel greco bizantino, che era la vera pronuncia del greco dei tempi di Erodoto e Tucidide e Platone eccetera. 

On Hope

Hope is a dangerous thing. It belongs to religion to pay reverence to Hope and Superstition.

The art of puppetry. What made Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory so successful

Marcus Quintilianus was a very conscientious and cautious man. He saw nothing wrong with the idea that man should be the measure for everything. Man is partly animal, it is true. What is left is social. To the extent that he may be manipulated by language control. Quintilian's instruction on how to achieve this was a gift to all manipulators of history seeking present authority. His work should have been given the title How to fool a man into acting as a perfect social puppet. He carried out coordinated research for the perfection of humankind. And this was two thousand years before the publication of Heinrich Kleist's essay On the Marionette Theatre in which puppets are described as being more graceful than humans.

L'impazienza

A parte forse i pochi casi di un amico del cuore che ti telefona il più delle volte per regalarti qualcosa, o per chiederti semplicemente come stai, tutte le altre telefonate che ricevi sono di persone - la cosiddetta grande cerchia di amici - che vogliono qualcosa. Queste persone non sanno tenere a bada la propria impazienza quando è una cosa che li riguarda. Sanno invece tenerla a bada nel caso contrario ("most people are able to hold their impatience within reasonable bounds" - W. Somerset Maugham).

The myth of Italian mental superiority

Being stupid is like being addicted to drugs, it reflects our higher purpose. There are potential long-term consequences to it but one can still carry on with life. From my experience all cases in Italy hooked on stupidity (about 60 per cent of the adult population) begin with one's presumption of mental superiority.

What a sociopath needs to know

I don’t know why so called normal people make me so uncomfortable. The trouble is, one can never tell a regular person from a sociopath. Choosing to mix with people whom others would think of mixing with it’s a bit like travelling to one of these wonderful places in the Middle East, on the edge of the desert, between the desert and the sea. You hope it'll not be an unattractive desert - dark brown sand and modern buildings with no architectural style. And of course  it’s a five hour flight, and you start being terribly nervous going on El Al, thinking it’s bound to have a bomb on it, you'll keep thinking on the plane I’m about to be blown up, so I’m here one moment, about to disappear the next.

I know there is a particular pattern sociopaths follow, the way they keep their victims in bondage, nice to them one day meanly manipulative the next. But that doesn’t help either. In their own perverse ways they are quite rational. I know they lie a lot. But that’s also s what normal people do. If I had to choose between the company of a normal person and a caught sociopath I’d be more keen on the latter. At least I’d know where I stood with him

Il casino del bi

Il fatto che sia bilingue, come sono bisessuale, sembrerebbe una gran fortuna e invece è un gran casino ...

Religious Trauma Healing

It was pity to see a bar row spoil a couple's little tête-à-tête in Rome yesterday (the couple presumably belonged to one of these modern Catholic social movements, Comunione e Liberazione). A thirty-something man unleashed a succession of uppercut punches after arguing with a younger man over a “boorish” (coatto!) and offensive behavior against a woman. The poor little couple left quickly. It was a mix of her being embarrassed because of what her boyfriend had been saying about the necessity for people to present themselves perfect before God (I'm pretty sure it came from one of the epistles of the New Testament) and her trauma for having come face to face with the sheer brutality of life.

Good judges in the Bible

I don't see why an innocent man cleared of all charges before him ought to be fined for contempt of court after taking the Bible in his left hand and hurling it at the head of the presiding magistrate.

I malati sani

Non c'è nessun dubbio che l'omofobia, di qualsiasi tipo e gradazione sociale - secondo le distinzioni contenute nell'ottimo saggio di Jorge Kantor - sia una malattia mentale, se la schizofrenia è una malattia mentale. Non c'è nessuna differenza tra degli psicotici che infilano il tubo di un compressore nel culo di un ragazzo omosessuale e gli fanno scoppiare le budella e una vecchia deputata pagliaccia che giustifica non la sua omofobia sulla base della Bibbia, come vorrebbe far credere, ma la Bibbia sulla base della sua omofobia. Questa gente andrebbe tutta prima di tutto non semplicemente accompagnata ma letteralmente trascinata in tribunale. E in secondo luogo rinchiusa in qualche posto dove le sia impedito di far danni, da dove non possa più attentare agli interessi sani di quella parte sana dell'umanità (della quale fanno parte anche dei meravigliosi - romanzescamente parlando - delinquenti, che tuttavia non sono omofobi, non sono malati, come invece lo è questo lerciume schizofrenico-paranoideo, questi psicotici in sordina che albergano dapertutto e la cui puzza di m. fa precisamente cagare).

A history of humanity through the higly coloured lens of hyperbaton (conflicts between logical and rhetorical precedence)

Much of the effectiveness of Greek prose depends upon a non-logical development of the thought. A bare logical development would kill the effect (“striking colours, placed side by side, kill each other” – Denniston). This is quite obvious in a reading of any Greek text. Hyperbaton is what strikes most. Whenever a word refuses to wait it will either press to the fore taking its turn in the logical development or be placed late by dislocation of natural order. 

Ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο ἐὰν ὁμολογῶμεν (Plat., Prot., 360a)
(but that too if we admit)
 

instead of

 Ἀλλὰ ἐὰν ὁμολογῶμεν καὶ τοῦτο
 (but if we admit that too).

Τρέφεται δέ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ψυχὴ τίνι; (Prot., 313c)

(nourished, Socrates, is a soul with what?)

 instead of 

ψυχὴ δὲ, τίνι τρέφεται, ὦ Σώκρατες;

(with what, Socrates, is a soul nourished?)

The meaningless drivel of Catholicism

The Catholic church  is nothing less than an acolyte of the bipolar machine of power (politics and economy), a gang of  fiddlers peddling meaningless and contradictory slogans masquerading as Christianity.

On the circularity of racism

Whenever I see the top of Calderoli's head on television –  this atlas and epitome of Italian stupidity - I can’t help but think of a real bowl of shit. His head  also makes me think of an urn containing its own remains.  I can’t imagine him riling up an audience but it shouldn’t be too difficult for his followers to wash out this urn into the sink. It would serve very well for their homemade racist freak feculence.