Allegoria come segno e bi-sogno di cambiamento dell’uomo

Abstract

Allegory is, as already observed in antiquity (Heraclitus), an expression that says something different from what it means. This difference is linked to the origins and the development of language itself, as a factor that promotes the humanization of man in the historical development. An unveiling process - that leads, beyond the conventional form and the conventional connection between the name and the thing, to the infinite plurality of signs and meanings - is opposed to the discursive logic of rational reasoning. This vocation to the ‘ulteriority’ on the one hand approaches the allegory to the philosophical tendency looking for truth, on the other hand it shows the intimate connection with the dimension of the dream, with the philosophy of the path (Taoism) and with serendipity. In being kept in suspense between silence and speech, in saying things ‘otherwise’, in the ‘possibility’ of the impossible and in the possibility to say the ineffable, allegory gives man (a being perennially on the move and in dialogue with himself and with others) the gift of thought, opening new and unexpected horizons of meaning and change.