Anatomy of an obsession.
Locus desperatus it’s the last one phantasmagorical novel by Michele Mari out for Einaudthe.
To talk about a book that leaves nothing to chance, but that sees every word like a precise arrow, shot into the air with infallible aimthe choice of words must be equally surgical.
And “phantasmagoric” is an adjective that etymologically embodies the nature of this book; breaking it down into the two words of ancient Greek origin that compose it: phantom «apparitions», e agoreuenin «manifest», literally means manifest apparitions.
And this is undoubtedly what this book does, stages a “phantasmagoria” in all respects, meaning with this noun that particular form of theater which in the 18th century was enriched with special effects thanks to “magic lanterns” – forerunners of projectors – capable of creating and bringing to the stage images that were shadows, changing, monstrous or fantastic.
The narrator of Locus desperatuslives in a house that is for him “den-museum”where they find a home, or rather exposurean incalculable amount of thingscollections of every kind, books of every kind, objects of every value, occupying as if in the grip of a horror vacui basically, all the space and time of the protagonist, that of the present as well as that of memory. But the house and the things are nothing but an extension of the Self.
The reality that we find ourselves observing, in fact, is none other than that its projection on the bottom of the cave. What we find ourselves observing is nothing but the shadow – elongated, shrunken, distorted – of what is real.
