Erro lungo la casa dall'ampia porta di Hades
In the eschatological architecture of the heroic epos the otherworldly journey of the dead apparently follows only one direction, resolving itself in the image of the «descent to Hades», that is generally used to designate the end of life. A certain geographical configuration of the other world is a...
| Published in: | Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni |
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| Subtitles: | Erro along the house from the wide door of Hades |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | Italian |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Morcelliana
2014
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| In: |
Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni
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| Further subjects: | B
Hades (Greek deity)
B eschatological architecture B Metaphysical cosmology B architettura escatologica B otherworldly journey B simbolismo della soglia B Dead; Religious aspects B material passage B doorway symbolism B RELIGION & culture B paradoxical space B Hesiod, fl. 8th century B.C B spazio paradoxos B viaggio oltremondano B passaggio materiale |
| Summary: | In the eschatological architecture of the heroic epos the otherworldly journey of the dead apparently follows only one direction, resolving itself in the image of the «descent to Hades», that is generally used to designate the end of life. A certain geographical configuration of the other world is already present in the Iliad. In the first of the two Homeric poems, the necessary step to gain access to the Netherworld is materially displayed by the «steel doors» and the «threshold of bronze» marking the entrance to a place that, in a vertical (and not yet spherical) dimension of the universe, fits into place of absolute centrality at a middle point on the perpendicular line going from heaven down to the earth and sea chasms. However, in the Homeric anatomy of the cosmos, there are also further elements that seem to suggest also a horizontal dislocation, forming a seemingly unstable and contradictory image of the otherworldly route from the center of the world to more peripheral, markedly decentralized lands. In Hesiod, the twofold localization of Hades seems to be perfectly coordinated in an unitary representation, where the high-low contrasts are solved. The resultant image seems to be inspired by a conscious vision of the mutual interrelations between horizontal and vertical dimensions, both deeply qualified by those geometrical places (centre and borders) that are perceived as key points in the articulation of the cosmological space. Such a power to rotate representations (from a vertical plane to a horizontal one) could be interpreted not so much as an example of residual divergent mythologies, but rather as a feature of the mode of construction of a certain type of representations, that is to say as a dynamic way to incorporate contradictory elements, in their turn witnesses of that «work of culture» (Obeyesekere 1990) in which one could recognized the action of processes aiming to face up to the ambivalence of anxiety-inducing contents. As part of a dynamic relationship between margin and center - that is inspired by a blatantly «counter-intuitive» (Boyer 1994, 2001) logic making the underground realm an actual «paradoxical» space - the Threshold of Hades can be conceived and perceived simultaneously as absolute Centre and extreme Periphery, ending to represent an actual cosmic Gate that is also identified with the gates of Night and Day or with the doorway of the Sun. Within such a theoretical horizon, the Netherworld's entrance looks as a dynamic concept operating in a religious and cultural system that recognizes in the experience of «the threshold crossing» an axiomatic item in the self-building process of social man (Calame 2003). (English) |
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| ISSN: | 2611-8742 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni
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