Page 320 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

320 from Italy to the Canary Islands

Manuscript chart of the North Atlanticby Pedro Reinel. Munich, c. 1504.

what is seen takes place outside familiar cognitive parameters.
This is how we can comprehend that lyrically described fear, “girando
attorno all’isola da ogni lato vedevano accadere lo stesso; per cui, stiman-
do questa meraviglia essere per virtù d’incantesimo, non ebbero ardire di
scendervi” (Turning around the island, from each side they saw the same
thing happen, believing that wonder to be by virtue of a spell, they did not
dare to set foot on it).
The purpose of an archaic description is to set a difference between sce-
narios, between worlds. It is like affirming on one hand the good starting
point - in this case the West, home, harbour, the known life, although that
too is in a state of becoming - and on the other the newly discovered, that
which could only be imagined.
We can however affirm that this approach is not an absolute; the starting
point is not always safety, Good, and the awareness of a wealth of values.
Often, the soul of an individual puts the question in different terms and
establishes its own values. And almost always, that individual is a poet.
In Poetry, for example, the remote, that which has just been discovered,