Page 76 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

76 from Italy to the Canary Islands

our vote goes on him being a young Descartes, with a head of long hair and
a moustache that seems to want to create a contrast with a paleness that is
indeed too spiritual. Also, with the young Descartes in mind we can dwell
on Bernini for a moment, he too with long hair and a moustache, wavy in
his case, and with that goatee-style beard of a true epic poet of the History
of Art.
So there we have it, the features of Lanzarotto Malocello’s face are
for us a mixture of the two individuals mentioned: a philosopher and an
artist. But the dream gives way to reality if we think that in every House,
the young gentleman surrounded by glorious ancestors, almost always has
these characteristics. And it does not matter if he was or was not an expert
of art; in reality, what we can gather is that, as a sailor, he must have been
constantly amazed at how the scenario before him was changing; his soul
was therefore continuously invaded by sensations which led him, in the
calm that followed, to reflect, and so, in this way, the two “professions”
were, so to speak, intertwined.
What is setting sail and collecting horizons about if not questioning
oneself about the meaning of life, about facing the unknowable, where we
hope to encounter the “prime cause”? Here is another point in our favour:
travel, discovery, conquest, wealth, glory: all this has a sense and a value,
but do men who set sail not desire “to go and see” how things really are,
precisely like in the case of the curiositas of Ulysses?
Now, from great sailors to sea writers, from John Cabot and Vasco de
Gama to Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad, it is also the examination
of nature and of man before those uncontrollable forces which demands
to undertake the Journey: reaction before the unknown, the behaviour of
nature and of those who have dared to look it in the eyes and challenge it.
Journeys are also contemplated over land, including “safe” journeys
over flat land, and their ultimate purpose is the same. Together with the
Divine Comedy, “Don Quixote” is among the greatest journeys conceived
by Man. But was it only a journey over land? Not quite, in fact. In both
representations, the most immediate response to the realisation of the dis-
solution besieging us is in “travelling”, in the quest for the absolute and for
external pacification. “Embarking on a journey” is a chance to continually
change the horizon (as far as the final backdrop, of course), and therefore
to review, classify, reflect and free oneself from earthly outrages.
These days we feel nostalgic about the unknowable, for what once upon
a time could have been defined as a “non-jurisdictional place”. Nowadays,