Taking refuge in Agrigento after the results of the European elections

I was in Agrigento, Sunday, a late afternoon spent talking about wars, among people deserving of peace. Then I spent the night following the elections on Radical Radio: the European disaster, the Spanish and Italian half-tie. On Monday I wanted to distance myself, even from myself. Agrigento is perhaps the most double city in the world. That of the sack and landslide of 1966, which still looms over the upper city, and that of the Valley of the Temples. The first is especially diurnal, the second is especially nocturnal, when the illuminated temples and their song to the moon show the overwhelming artistic and moral superiority.

The day after an election like this you want to take refuge in the long term. So I scrupulously revisited the archaeological park, wearing a fake straw hat, and then the Griffo Museum, which has many memorable things, including the Telamon reconstructed from its pieces. These Telamones were the 8-meter colossi that 2,500 years ago supported, or only decorated, the temple of Olympian Zeus. In the park a little while ago another Telamon was erected in mid-air, which caused a lot of noise, because it was rebuilt with more than 90 pieces of at least 8 different statues – and inserted into a 12 meter high steel structure. I have no right nor desire to participate in the controversy – although I seem to be more fond of the ruined pieces lying on the ground, disiecta membra that allowed us to imagine the past and the vicissitudes of earthquakes and wars. However, the warmest wishes go to Agrigento, because in 2025 it will be the capital of culture.

Thus diverted elsewhere, the day suggested to me only one reference to current events, with its fierce discussion on monuments that had fallen to pieces and were rebuilt according to the criterion called anastylosis: because in the Italian elections there were lists and parties made up of pieces not from the earthquake or from the battles with the Carthaginians, but conceived and put on the market from the origin as pieces. So precious that they want to perpetuate or revive small personal careers. So small that it does not reach 4 percent of the whole. An anastylosis would have been enough, even if it was spurious like the one accused of the new Telamon, but modest enough to offer survival. Here is a case in which hubris, the arrogant challenge to the gods, wanted to be supported by pettiness and fragmentation, and the gods swept it away as they do with useless fragments, with a distracted stroke of the broom.