Page 72 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

72 from Italy to the Canary Islands

learnt something from the ancients, and this is irrespective of the thirst for
knowledge that every individual carries within him by nature, which takes
him to sea.
Had he learned of Cicero? Was there some other ancient writer as a
guiding light, a polar star leading towards the unknown? Let us settle on
the likelihood that he had read small works and stories told by seamen: in
this way his soul is perfectly illustrated.
But it took wealth to take to the sea, because only with money could
one fit out one or more galleys. There was a sublime moment for sailors
– and we believe that Lanzarotto Malocello felt this too – when two ideas
were grasped at the same time, later joining together: putting to sea meant
tracing a route for traders, finding places where these relations would be
reinforced but, at the same time, travelling itself prepared the second idea,
raised the importance of it, so that it almost became the most important in
the end. This second idea was to discover new lands, conquer them, baptise
them with one’s own name, extend one’s own homeland with that patch of
land somewhere in the ocean. We think that all sailors were moved by the
association of these two ideas, also because conquering meant strengthen-
ing the positions acquired on the sea and indirectly declaring one’s power
to the world.
In the absence of busts, not only like those of the Roman emperors, but
also, we could say, like those of princes, popes, cardinals and captains of
fortune which we can see in noble palaces, Sacred Rooms and in church-
es and squares as well, and also, in the absence of drawings, of a sketch,
we have to draw the face of Lanzarotto Malocello ourselves, with a more
spiritual than poetical technique.
How do we envisage it?
A patrician, first and foremost. The face of a patrician almost always
has an element of restlessness. And yet, from that expression emerges the
Absolute. One does not have to be noble to possess the Absolute which, as
a feeling, belongs to all men, albeit with different levels of intensity. It is
just that the mixture of restlessness/absolute distinguishes a nobleman for
the fact that he has perfectly grasped the idea that glory, the possession of
things, will end sooner or later.
Therefore glory, earthly happenings, will get lost in the blur of
Everything. This is how the great Italian poet, Giorgio Caproni, who was
born in Livorno but who adopted Genoa as his second homeland, expressed
this feeling of the afterlife in the poem “Dies illa”: