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Manlio Sgalambro
62 quotes
“If we were to ask ourselves about the usefulness and harm of pessimism in life, there would be only one answer: truth or life.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He saw Paris as a set of ideas. To think in this city is to think it, he said. And for a time, he devoted his self to it.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[About Angelo Scandurra ] With his language, this poet skins things alive. Imagination does not deal with current affairs but knocks imperiously on the doors of the universe. The image of an enormous spider grows before our eyes. The spider with which Spinoza plays, throwing flies at it and laughing, evokes in the philosopher the image of the ‘orto divinus’, whose insistent geometricity is the implacability of a God without passions. Like an enormous mass looming over terrified beings. In our poet, the spider is a ‘grumpy and cunning god’. The overbearing image, however, is not satisfied. The theme looms behind the courtesies of a man of the world. The poet is always vigilant. Whether with sharp lashes or caresses, he takes us from behind. As in an ambush in which we risk our prudent tranquility. Old sensations stir from afar, worn-out emotions are reawakened, and in the end we encounter ourselves.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From the foreword to Angelo Scandurra, Trigonometria di ragni, All'insegna del Pesce d'oro, Milan, 1993, pp. 7-8.
“Where the insular element dominates, it is impossible to save oneself. Every island waits impatiently to sink. A theory of the island is marked by this certainty. An island can always disappear. A talactic entity, it is supported by the waves, by the unstable. The metaphor of the ship applies to every island: shipwreck looms over it. The insular feeling is a dark impulse towards extinction. The anguish of being on an island as a way of life reveals the impossibility of escaping it as a primordial feeling. The desire to disappear is the esoteric essence of Sicily. Since every Sicilian would not have wanted to be born, he lives like someone who would not want to live: history passes him by with its hateful noises, but behind the tumult of appearances lies a profound quiet. Every story is vanity of vanities. The presence of catastrophe in the Sicilian soul is expressed in its vegetal ideals, in its historical taedium, a kind of nirvana. Sicily exists only as an aesthetic phenomenon. Only in the happy moment of art is this island real.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From ‘'Teoria della Sicilia’' (Theory of Sicily), prologue to the opera ‘'Il Cavaliere dell'Intelletto’' (The Knight of Intellect); quoted in Guido Guidi Guerrera, ‘'Battiato: Another link’', Verdechiaro edizioni, 2006,…
“[About the relationship with Sicily] As far as I am aware—and I can only answer for this, not for so-called unconscious things, which I do not presume to investigate—I have no “relationships,” it is rather the extension of my skin [...] I have written something about Sicily. But as for living here, I must say that I feel at home, I have an immediate connection. As a boy, I lived in Lentini, where I was born—there were no gardens to replace the small boarding houses—my father was a pharmacist, my uncle was a lawyer and owned some land in the countryside, where we would go from time to time. It was a very rich land, where archaeological finds were later made, and so I found myself playing with bones — those of the Greeks, the Graeculi, of all those who had lived there or had passed through (you can find this in one of my short poems...); well, I felt at home, I feel at home there.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in ‘’Il pessimismo osé di Manlio Sgalambro‘’, ‘'PsychiatryOnline.it’', March 4, 2013.
“The light emanating from Spinoza, Colerus explained, was no less than sunlight. I suspected that heaven and earth had conspired to create this simile. Yet there is a less fortuitous reason why I will never fail to mention Spinoza's name. By disappearing before his own work, he bound himself to it forever. Where, in fact, are the traces of a living being in the ‘’Ethica‘’? Can anyone point out a place where even his shadow is present? But doesn't this little bit of reality seem to be his greatest attribute? This, then, is what Spinoza did, and the reason why we must remember him. He managed not to be the ‘author’ of the ‘'Ethica’'. (p. 100)”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For physics, the meaning of the world lies in its end. The gaze that relies on physics sees things from the point of view of their end. This reverses the fundamental attitude of the individual. In the light of physics, it is not the origin but the end that is the goal. To see everything in the light of this, with life already destroyed, everything in eternal stillness, is to see it as it will one day appear. But it already appears today to those who can discern its morphological contemporaneity with us. It is a matter of already seeing the world in the light of this final catastrophe and referring to it as contemporaries from now on.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here we see an attempt to construct a public theology—or rather, if we may borrow a stylistic feature from a great memory, a European public theology. If the age of theology appears to be over, or if only its shadow remains, it is because the dull intellects that have dealt with it (with a few exceptions) carry within them the worm that has gnawed away at the discipline. As if it had to follow the fate of the religion to which it was subjugated. The very fall of religion, now only an object of faith and hope – squalid supports of our uncertain destiny – was to favor it and clear the field of any misunderstanding. That God exists is just a sinister little fact. Nothing more. (Given the way things are going, it was to be expected).”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why do I insist on calling myself a “philosopher” even though neither philosophers want me nor I want them? Because I entered this discipline, with its venerated rules, as a child and my loyalty has never wavered. For more than fifty years I have studied it without distraction. I have grasped its secrets and reticence, I have seen its exaltations and declines, its excesses and forgetfulness. Philosophers on the altar and then hurled down. I witnessed their reign and the dominance of their ideas, and I studied it more than that of leaders and commanders. I had lasting loves, I imitated models (but how can one imitate the Idea, alas). I grew old there. I know three or four things about it better than my contemporaries. I have nothing more to add.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I define thinking as paying attention to everything that is not oneself, or paying attention to oneself as if one were not oneself. Because of the misunderstandings this causes, I tend to use “being attentive” instead of “thinking,” and ‘attention’ instead of “thought.” One of the benefits would be to leave “thought” in its current usage. The idea of effort connected with it would be well explained by the concept of attention that is implicit in it. I then define idea as the gap between us and things. I am taken aback when I hear people say that ideas and things are identical. It is the power of this gap that defines the ability to think.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who has been educated in pessimism and has become its disciple, and moreover, as an epigone, intends to carry it into his own time, sees in it a classic theme, an eternal theme. He knows well what pessimism demands and what is demanded of it. He is the pessimist of truth, if one can call him that. Pessimism honors truth: this is the general thesis. This pessimist has followed the righteous path of honor. He has honored truth. This is the pessimism we want with all our strength, he says: to walk the path that every man who has approached truth walks to its cruelest core, where it is no longer with him. Because truth is the whole against the part, the whole against you.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had learned that irrational things have no system but narration. But that was not enough for him. He loved concepts and through them he sensed the smells of things and their quintessences and felt their power flowing in his blood, and he could even call them by name one by one... Concepts were his soul and through them he also filtered his moods. Individuals are embodied concepts. What do I care about possessing their flesh, he used to say. The image of an individual about whom nothing can be known except through his psychology seemed to him outdated and linked to a becoming image of man. Whereas, on the contrary, the individual is complete and can no longer be the object of psychology but of concept. This was his conviction. He had no fear of having prejudices.”
Manlio Sgalambro (1924–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source