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Vesper No. 6 | Magic | Spring-Summer 2022

 

 

Franco Purini

Waiting for a little magic

 

The word ‘magic’ has more than one meaning. Within an approximate and limited list it defines something impossible and extraordinarily surprising that comes to pass; the transformation of an unlikely potential into an action; a mystery that has been haunting us over time which suddenly becomes clear; a fabled world we have dreamed of and desired that physically manifests itself, like the magic realism of Massimo Bontempelli.

As far as I am concerned, I see the strongest, most lasting and therefore decisive embodiment of magic in metamorphosis, that is, in the relentless mutations of both living and non-living entities, the latter seemingly unchangeable. Ovid’s greatest work reveals precisely that the constant change in all aspects of the world, including the human aspects, is the principle that allows the world to express itself in time. Or better still, that which we call time is indeed the metamorphosis, an ideal but also concrete succession of transformations that make life an immeasurable and multidimensional intersection of events and successive changes that make all and each one of us into as many animated labyrinths. Mobile labyrinths moving within a series of stable labyrinths, ever larger, on a boundless journey, fascinated by that which is unfinished.

 

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