Dante and the Penguin. On Bertrand Westphal’s Line

Abstract

Conceived of as an answer to Bertand Westphal’s learned notes on the spatial implications of the horizon, my paper focuses on the way geocritical analysis structures its subject matters by recurring to a thorough deconstructing survey of the meanings which a certain place, or a certain idea of space, received in time.

What I define ‘the geocritical ethos’ provides the basis for a comparative view on the changing profile of the horizon as seen from the perspective of literary imagination: the wavering line reflects the uncertainties of the viator Dante, caught in his unique experience between the paralysing fixity of the Sacred Mountain and the infinite promise of space which derives from observing the maritime stretch; the description of an icy spot with a view, disputed between an exploring I and a penguin, pervades with exquisite irony the genre of scientific reportage, as brilliantly reworked by Daniele Del Giudice in his recent Orizzonte mobile.

Thus, in this critical rereading of the foundation of modern thinking we can grasp the essential liaisons involving geographical discoveries and the achievements of literary imagination: a bright path to modernity comes to the fore, signalling an ever-refining consciousness of human boundaries, and the way literary creation defies and transgresses the very notion of limits by displaying the fruits of a limitless imagination.