Page 62 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

62 from Italy to the Canary Islands

Divine Hadrian was more than a necessity, would in any case have written
that book which put her in the Pantheon of great writers.
While we are reflecting about emperor Hadrian, the great canvas of His-
tory is moving within us. The boats of archived centuries are bobbing on
the waters and the crew are calling out to us: it seems they want to continue
their adventure on Earth. They gesture to us, they invite us to write about
their lives and we have a feeling that they can feel a part of this world again
if we write about them.
Not altogether different from emperor Hadrian is the case of Lanzarotto
Malocello. He came into the world many centuries after, but the dignity is
the same. He happened to be in a precise place at a given time, but he too
traced a trajectory. But if this is true, we are left speechless, in the same
way, at the thought that “little is known” about him, despite the fact that
he lived almost one thousand years after the emperor Hadrian. We recover
our composure at the thought that a sailor is completely different from an
emperor, but it is just as certain that we would definitely find some more
sources if we decided to investigate the lives of Christopher Columbus or
Vasco de Gama.
It is also a question of three-dimensional space. In our case we see
everything as flat and depth is difficult to grasp, as it only seems to belong
to the greats of the past. That depth which is smartly created in paint-
ings thanks to colour variations and shades, for example by using different
shades of pink – alternated with white – in paintings, for a face.
Lanzarotto Malocello is a drawing and not a bust, and it is therefore this
difference in the finds that we have at our disposal which makes it hard to
write about him. To this is added the not so abundant written documenta-
tion, or rather those charts which are not there and that we are looking for
and dreaming of as though they were a treasure. Certainly in our favour
are references and quotations in even quite thick books and in shipping
th
directions drafted by key seafarers in the 14 and subsequent centuries.
However, we are in a situation where the “anchor of salvation”, it has to
be said, can come to us from that small mass of documents which makes
us move as though we ourselves were following the Genoa – Pillars of
Hercules route.
It is therefore from this sensation of void, from this “sublime disorien-
tation” which seizes us, that the need for the word triggering arises, which,
with a true domino effect, provides us with a torrent of images that are not
however born of fantasy but which gush forth from an essay as juxtaposi-