Luigi Serafini
Luigi Serafini (Rome, 4 August 1949) is a complete artist: an Italian draughtsman, architect and designer, he is known worldwide for having created the Codex Seraphinianus, the encyclopaedia of an imaginary universe, published by Franco Maria Ricci in 1981.
In the 1980s, in Milan, Serafini tried his hand at designing furniture elements such as the Santa and Suspiral chairs, lamps and glass for Artemide. He also measured himself with the creation of set design, lighting and costumes for Frederick Ashton’s ballet The Jazz Calendar at Teatro Alla Scala; he later also worked for the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. He collaborated with Federico Fellini on the 1990 film, La voce della luna. His works have been exhibited at the Mudima Foundation in Milan, the XIII Quadriennale, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the Futurarium in Chicago and the Didael Gallery in Milan.
In 2003, he created the polychrome bronze sculpture Carpe Diem and bas-reliefs for the Materdei metro station in Naples; in 2007, at the PAC museum in Milan, he held an ontological and anthological exhibition entitled Luna-Pac; in 2008, he created the polychrome installation Balançoires sans Frontières in Castasegna, Switzerland.
For many years, he collaborated elbow to elbow with intellectuals of the calibre of Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges and Roland Barthes.
In this Orlando’s special interview, you will have the opportunity to discover the wonderful world of the Codex Seraphinianus, through a very unusual perspective, and to admire the unpublished work La langue des oiseaux, which the artist has expressed his wish to share with us. Serafini will open the doors of his creative universe to us.
The Codex is the “encyclopaedia of a visionary”, discovered by the enlightened philanthropist and patron, Franco Maria Ricci, who curated the first publication in 1981. Like Dante and Diderot, Luigi Serafini has included into one large volume everything that actually exists. And yet, nothing of which it is made up exists in real terms. The language is made up of exceptionally clear graphic signs, although inaccessible in terms of meaning. The paintings represent elements which are trackable, in reality, yet they are metaphors, thus demonstrating that all of the aspects of the existence are permeable and may be combined among themselves. What comes out of it all is, as a matter of fact, a new world, articulated into various sections, among which, zoology, botany, anatomy, technology and gastronomy, none of which is completely defined. Indeed, the Codex is the embodiment of opposites: the digression of the known towards the unknown, of detail to the undefined, from the fairy-tale to the unsettling. Italo Calvino, with regard to the Codex, claimed that the written word had preceded the image and, as a matter of fact, Serafini himself, in the Decodex (a small appendix included in the Edizioni Rizzoli of 2013), stated that what he had created “was a writing that contained the dream of other writings”.
We have had the honour to interview this brilliant author, allowing ourselves the joy of being able to create the passages you are about to read. They are complex and cryptic, I tell you in advance, but if you love meta-narrative like us you will go crazy! Follow our Super-Codex and let’s decipher it together!
We have decided to begin right from one of the oldest testaments to writing in ancient Italian – in vulgar Italian – which within its very structure contains metaphorical stratifications, thus becoming a further example of writing that contains yet more examples of writing. More specifically, it is the famous Indovinello Veronese, (Veronese Riddle) written by a scribe in the Eighth and Ninth centuries who, just like Serafini, used writing in order to speak about writing itself. Made up of four verses, the scribe asks us to solve a riddle. He speaks about a farmer who is intent on ploughing his fields, however the solution has little to do with the land and his oxen.
«se pareba boves
alba pratalia araba
et albo versorio teneba
et negro semen seminaba»
«He kept his oxen in front of him
He ploughed white fields
And he had a white plough
And sowed a black seed»
The farmer is a metaphor for a scribe, whose oxen were the fingers of the hand that wrote upon the white pages, originally the white fields, by means of the white plough, or rather, a goose-quill pen, dipped in ink that is the black seed from which all originates.
The key elements that have been learnt are:
hand;
page;
pen;
ink.
These ingredients provide our base which is implemented by yet other suggestions:
We have tried to associate with each one of the four elements four imaginary literary languages:
the language of the wise horses in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift,
the language of flowers in the West-Eastern Divan by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
the Newspeak from 1984 by George Orwell and
the Granfrugnese in the Viaggio in Drimonia by Lia Wainstein.
In order to summarise the criteria of our Super-Codex we have examined:
1- The verses of the Riddle
2- Imaginary literary languages
3- Paintings of the Codex Seraphinianus that belong to the respective sections of the work such as Zoology, Botany, Technology and Gastronomy.
RIDDLE VERSE IMAGINARY LANGUAGE CODEX DRAWINGS SECTION
HAND | Language of horses | Zoology |
PAGE | Language of flowers | Botany |
PEN | Newspeak | Technology |
INK | Granfrugnese | Gastronomy |
Are you still following us?
«My Master heard me with great appearances of Uneasiness in his Countenance, because Doubting or not believing, are so little known in this Country, that the Inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under such Circumstances. And I remember in frequent Discourses with my Master concerning the Nature of Manhood, in other Parts of the World, having occasion to talk of Lying, and false Representation, it was with much Difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute Judgment. For he argued thus; That the Use of Speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive Information of Facts; now if anyone said the Things which was not, these Ends were defeated; because I cannot properly be said to understand him, and I am so far from receiving Information, that he leaves me worse that in Ignorance, for I am led to believe a Thing Black when it is White and Short when it is Long. And these were all the Notions he had concerning that Faculty of Lying, so perfectly well understood among Human Creatures». (J. Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, [1726] Penguin 2003, p. 221).
At long last here are the questions:
For Swift, the language of horses knows only the truth. On the contrary, in your language, is it possible to tell a lie?
LUIGI SERAFINI:
VCNMN CBCN NCBBV HNHDNDCV MM MNDMDJM DMDMDDDDB
: DFGAVC BCVC NBXMX BBBNXS GBDHNS DGDBD DDNMAS
. CGBD BDGDVB BDBDBH NNNHGDBDN HNDNDGB HNNMNH N
We have linked the PAGE of the Riddle, the Botany category of the Codex to the language of flowers by Goethe.
We suggest you a selection of correspondences between flowers and human feelings, conceived by Goethe:
Amaranth – I look and I am enchanted
Scented Herbs – risky desires
Bermuda Grass – how grim you are
Narcissus – I will see your face
Violet – do not rush
Hyacinth – you’ll witness my extinction
Thistles – I’ll receive attention
Mallow – you’re safe with me
Pansies of thought – my messenger will come
Climbing plants- come on, come on!
Myrtle – I want to look after you
Jasmine- two upon a cushion
(J. W. Goethe, Exchange of flowers and signs, in Notes dissertations on the West-Ostlicher Divan, [1817-1819], Translation by Orlando)
In Goethe’s verses, the language of flowers is the mouthpiece for the encoded messages of lovers. What do your ambassadors speak of?
LUIGI SERAFINI
: CVGBE BB NHBDND MJND N MNDM MDSN NNNDNNDNDMDND
. VBBCVBS BSDF BBSHSB BDFGHN JHBN SSMMSNS MMM
: DF BCVDGNNDB BAG GEVDN DFGHHJZ NJDHNNBD NBNCM
. VBB BAFGVE BFGEJ NNJN XCVS BBVD NMC BNCMMMC
«Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-colored bread, chewed it briefly, and went on: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak”, he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. “Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”»(G. Orwell, 1984 [1949], Penguin 1991, p. 52)
Orwell’s newspeak makes the world uglier because it reduces and simplifies its complexity; the language of the Codex, on the other hand, enriches it. What is its potential?
LUIGI SERAFINI
. V BAFNMN NNNEJ NBJN XMMVS HGBVD NBN BNCMBNB
: VBV NMB NN MNMNB MNB M BBBNM SDCF NJMKL KKN
. BVSCVNB BSDF NBSHSB MJNGHN JHNM SSMNBN BMMMN
: DF VBFVBNNDB BAG NHGB DFGHHJZ NJDHNNBD NMNBM
. BVCMN MJNCN NCBBV BNVNDCV MM BBBMDJM DMDMDDD
: DFGAVC BCVC NBVBF BBBNXS NBVC DGDBD DDNMASMN
. SSBD BDGDVB BFGDBN NNNHGDBDN HNDNMNB HNNMNB N
Lia Wainstein claims that present-day Granfrugnese consists of variable or non-variable elements and that the variable elements are merely a mixture of different sounds with no form of regulation or restriction. They are to be used according to each and every person’s own imagination at any given moment. People understand each other according to the particular situation that each person is in and they may even resort to gestures which are essential tenets of Granfrugnese. According to Lia Wainstein it doesn’t really matter what we say at any given moment. The non-variable elements however – according to Ms Wainstein – are actual permanent terms and possess only one meaning at any given time. These are the elements that she uses to create her dishes since if these permanent terms were not used a diner in a restaurant might well end up with the wrong dish! Her dishes in Granfrugnese are given names that are not changeable and are highly original since they are ably combined with other food.
(L. Wainstein, Viaggio in Drimonia, Feltrinelli 1965)
In Granfrugnese, the dishes, the only ones that have a fixed name, stand out on account of the originality of their combinations with other food. The very same effect comes about from the sight of the two gastronomic paintings: could you suggest us a menu of the day from your Codex?
LUIGI SERAFINI
. VCNMN VBV NCBBV HNH VBVNV MM MNDMDJM DMDMDV
: DFGAVC ERGETF NBXMX BBBNXS GBDHNS DGDBD DDNCX
. VBBCVBS BSDF BBNBC BDFGHN JHBN SSMMSNS MMMC
: DF BCVDGNNDB BAG GEVBC BDGAV SNJDHNNNBC BNCM
. BSDFN CDFC NCCHEB DFGDNDCV MM BFDSVBJM DMVBDD
: SGDFAVC SDVC NDFBF SFDFXS NXCC VBVBD CVBMASM
. VBBCCCC BSDF BBNBC BDFGHN JHBN SSMMSNS MMMC
: DFGAVC ERGETF NBXMX BBBNXS VBNVVDGDBD CVNCX
. CCCCVBS BSDF CVBBC BDCVBN JHBN SSMCVB VBMCV
Download now the Crossword inspired by this interview:
Ready for the next enigma?
————
Victor Hugo
The second section of this complex article has been set into an opera-esque structure, subdivided into three acts and marked by precise musical movements. Le langue des oiseaux, the bird’s language, is an ancient pre-Babelesque language, mother of all languages, the direct expression of the language of Nature, bearer of mystic values and unknown to humans. Since antiquity, birds have assumed a fundamental role in both archaic religions and animistic traditions throughout the world. Man has always striven to decode the language of birds since this would even have led him to the discovery of Nature’s secrets and to make prophecies about the future. An intermediary element between the sky and the earth, symbol of spirituality, Nature embodies the soul of Man in ancient traditions. In alchemical traditions, in the esoteric world, reference is made to a green language, the language of birds, a secret and mysterious tongue that scientists studied in order to reach the pinnacle of knowledge.
The interview has been inspired by three works connected to the world of birds:
The Birds by Aristophanes, the moral operetta – Elogio degli Uccelli – “Praise to the Birds” – by Giacomo Leopardi and, lastly, Palomar by Italo Calvino.
1-In the comedy, The Birds, from 414 BC, the definition of a new world, both ideal and better is outlined; Nubicuculìa, an intermediary between earth and sky, in which men accept their submission to birds, consecrating them as their new gods.
2- In the operetta, Elogio degli Uccelli, the poet celebrates the freedom of birds which, thanks to their ability to fly, can move around in total liberty, with no limits, without having to accept human destiny and characterised by the continuous resurgence of boredom. Furthermore, their song is compared by the poet to human laughter, one of the few outpourings of joy in a life studded with disappointment.
3- Palomar – the name of the main protagonist – by Italo Calvino, is a taciturn and detached man, mono-syllabic with his loved ones and peers; a contemplative character who spends hours and hours at the window attempting to understand the world. By observing the thrushes and listening to their birdsong Palomar draws the deepest of philosophical reflections and begins looking at things from outside of them, no longer as a man but as Nature looks at itself. Notwithstanding repeated defeat, Palomar chases away his frustration and invites himself and the reader to tirelessly begin and begin again this quest for sense.
Each question of this interview is very connected to the artist’s unpublished work: I advise you to watch it carefully and try to catch all its hidden symbolisms, which we will help you unveil. Man to whom we will refer to is the man of the painting.
ACT I
Aristophanes, The Birds:
Cavatina
LUIGI SERAFINI: Let’s waste no more time, then, in introducing the Goldfinch, Carduelis Carduelis. For this reason, I would like to ask the reader to open the site above containing Goldfinch’s song; or rather, his “cavatina” which, in nineteenth-century operas, was the aria with which the singer introduced himself to the public. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VtAtECgw08 )
Now listen to its variations, modulated by its “tweet tweet tweets” and tell me whether or not you have the impression that the bird is speaking to itself in an unknown language. The effort and fatigue of the past winter, the meticulous construction of its nest with the thinnest of interwoven branches, the laying of five or six little dappled light blue eggs, the continuous work on the nestling, the surprising silence, flying up and down and around (just like its song), the pride in its facial mask like a tricolour flag of some unknown country, ranging from black to white to crimson. Crimson is a colour that would seem to reveal the bird’s passion for the seeds of the red thistle, which peeks out in sunny spots, dry and stony. This leads us to the Red Priest – alias Antonio Vivaldi – who dedicated a marvellous tribute to him with the concert for flute no. 3 in D major for two violins, viola, organ and basso continuo. Having made therefore this necessary premise, let’s now imagine the dialogue between the two characters in the setting who I would define as the Ambassadors of the Human and the Aviary. The goldfinch reminds us of the times in which they, the birds, provided us with indications concerning what would have happened – mellonta tauta – or the auspices that the soothsayers divined from their flight paths. It is as if they had carried out the role of clockmakers for such a long time, long long before the Swiss, quoting the evangelical antequam gallus cantet or the tragic “It was the lark, the herald of the morn. No a nightingale”. Our compunctious Ambassador, thanking him for what he had already done, replies that the tribute to the winged populace still forges ahead with Twitter which, with its tweets, is one of the main soundtracks of our digital era …for good or for bad.
And I thank him especially since it is thanks to the flight of birds that we learn to look at the world. The ability to move our eyes is so important for us and the further ability to shift our gaze determines our ability to look at the world itself. For example, in a city, in the morning, there is no better training for our eye muscles than chase after the swifts as they fly around in supersonic arabesque patterns. In the evening, there is nothing more relaxing than the fluctuating flocks of birds in the sky at Vespers. Maybe one day these exercises will become obligatory in schools in order to heal from the steadiness of the gaze that the various electronic devices have caused.
Solemn
L.S: I will begin from the Button since it evokes in me a universe of meanings and perhaps, on account of this, I made the Goldfinch wear it as a sort of backpack-mishmash-almanac. In Italian, inside the word button or – bottone – there is the word botto or boom which is onomatopoeic and immediately produces a bang. “King Botto” is a character that I created a long time ago by adding to a capital O, little arms, legs and a crowned head. Besides, in the Italian word “botto” there lies a magic number, the number 8 which, when it lies on its side it is transformed into infinity and/or the Lemniscate of Bernouilli. For the Chinese, on the other hand, it represents the number “Bā”(八), a symbol of great luck and there are urban legends in which it would be dangerous to have Zhōngguó in a telephone number or on your number plate. And, in English, it means the lower part of things, us humans included, with all of the most imaginable consequences. Then there is copper, ottone (part of the word bottone!) in Italian, poor’s gold and, then again, the BOTs which, every so often, are popular again. Also, there are the four little holes through which the four corners of the world are controlled since the First Unmoved Mover looked like a button, with no shadow of doubt.
As far as the size of the Goldfinch is concerned, in the picture only “Aesop’s Formula” has been respected (which nobody knows, obviously) according to which an animal, at the very moment in which he enters inside a metaphor he automatically assumes different sizes – large or small – according to specific demands. This formula has been recently and unwittingly applied by Walt Disney in the success that is familiar to all of us.
While speaking of birds and divinities, the Woodpecker was sacred to Mars who did not only deal with war but also with agriculture considering the ambivalence of iron, used as much as a dagger as a plough or a hoe. Indeed, when a woodpecker looks for nourishment on the ground, instead of tree trunks, he turns himself into a spectacular little electric hoe. For the Picentes, he was a totemic animal, as his name recalls in so much as he guaranteed an agricultural vocation to his descendants right up to the present day.
March
L.S: Let us have a look at the house, where there isn’t a roof and there isn’t a door. Obviously, it’s a customs house, a sort of Checkpoint Charlie, positioned at the last frontier between the Vertical and the Horizontal. Only there, languages might quite suddenly change and, just like in Ventimiglia, there might be a meeting of two Ambassadors. Our one, instead of feathers, has an egg on his hat as a tribute to the person standing before him; perhaps a little egg-centric, but very ab-ovo (ovo in Italian is egg).
Perhaps it is Walther von der Vogelweide, the German Minnesänger, whose nickname means, “a bird pasture”, relatively widespread in medieval times considering the significance of singing birds in noble residences or falcons at the Court of Frederick II. Among other things, a legend tells that Walther left a substantial sum of money in order to feed the birds with seeds to be sprinkled every morning upon his tomb. Singing canaries – a privilege of the Spaniards – were equally important in the Sixteenth century until a sailing ship loaded with little cages was shipwrecked on rocks off the island of Elba setting the birds free for the joy of everyone. In 1784, Mozart purchased a starling and looked after it attentively for three years in an atmosphere of educative singing. When it died, he organised a funeral ceremony in the grandest of styles before burying it in his garden. Soon afterwards, in a theatre in Vienna, Papageno, the “wandering bird” of “The Magic Flute” made an appearance, in a suit all covered in feathers. However, let’s just go back for an instant to the troubadours from Provence and to the invention of the “cansò” (song) in the local language, thanks to which they sang of love, like blackbirds in Spring.
It was a real resounding revolution, just as the radio was, a few centuries later. The mother of St Francis came from a noble family from Provence, Madonna Pica, a name that then indicated the elegant magpie, as Dante mentioned. Pica also took to Assisi, along with her dowry the glittering world of the troubadours, so much so that Francis became impassioned with the Chansons des Gestes and joined the war between Assisi and Perugia. He was made a prisoner and so began the process of his conversion which was the highest spiritual moment of troubadour culture where courtly love was exalted into universal love including the love for Chiara, the embodiment of the “amor de lonh” by Jaufrè Rudel. Proof of this are the two cathedrals at Assisi, Saint Clare and Saint Francis whose rose windows still look at each other, and still at a distance. Francis, with his Praises laid down the foundations of Zingarelli – still yet to appear, of course – and certainly understood the “language of birds” of celestial origin as then it was believed to be so, as depicted by Giotto’s fresco with his homily to the birds in a wood near Bevagna: “exultant they stretched their necks, spread out their wings, opened their beaks and touched his tunic”.
ACT II
Leopardi, Elogio degli Uccelli – “Praise to the Birds”:
Fantasy
L.S: In all cosmogonies there is a reference to four fundamental elements: water, air, earth and fire, as also recalled by Empedocles from Akragas (Agrigento) in Sicily. So, if by liberty you mean the ability to move within the afore-mentioned four elements, then only birds may boast in their community species that can fly, swim and walk. And then, if we add the phoenix, the “bird of fire”, birds beat – in this animated classification – all other creatures on the planet. However, there is also another type of liberty; or rather, the one brought about by our standing-up position, the result of a thousand-year old evolutionary effort that we seem to live through again when we find it difficult to get out of bed for any particular reason. This is an exclusive feature of Man since he has transformed it into Faber, freeing his forelimbs and equipping his hands with an opposable thumb; a fortunate copyright possessed only by Primates. Therefore, without thumbs we would not be what we are; or better still, we are our thumbs. For this very reason, an eternal thumb’s up for the Poet of the Infinito, Giacomo Leopardi.… hoping, too, that our thumbs also get greener and greener.
Trick
LS: I adore those little details that are revealed after the first few moments and create, in such a way, a sort of temporal extension in the perception of the picture. It is a discrete – or better – enjoyable trap on behalf of the artist to capture the viewer and make him or her stay longer in front of the work.
Today, on the other hand, advertising has emphasised, dilated and deafeningly exploded right in the forefront and only in the forefront, leaving the background blurred. Advertising campaigns have become transformed into military campaigns that devastate all that they encounter, leaving nothing behind them: the wasteland…
Falling
L.S: Leopardi died in Naples in 1837 and the Naples-Portici railway line was inaugurated only two years later, in 1839. It was the first section of railway line built in Italy and the Poet just missed the passage from horses to those “steam-horses” which would have transported our bodies into new space/time dimensions. Who knows, maybe his verses upon the magnificent destinies of humans might have become even more pessimistic or, perhaps no. However, Man has become such by not staying perched upon a branch, by walking. Having left from the Afar Triangle, where most probably he first achieved his upright position, he walked, walked and walked before arriving in the Peripato, in Athens as a philosopher. Later, he approached the sea of fog as a Wanderer, and up and down the Parisian boulevards as a flaneur. Lastly, here he is now – clenching his fists – in the protest marches for George Floyd. While on the subject of boredom, Leopardi examined it carefully as an aspect of the human soul; or rather, that type of void generated by the abandonment of pleasure and displeasure and that, later, even Sartre would investigate by means of Antonin Roquentin in his “Nausea”. However, neither one nor the other manages to bore us. As a matter of fact, they offer us escape routes. On the contrary, the famous old hits by Califano, open Pandora’s fridge door wide and let out all the most consumeristic, bulimic effluent of our times.
Allegro con fuoco
L.S: In the Greek world it was claimed that men – or better, mortals – were part of Nature and not its masters. Later Judaic and Christian thought made us believe the same thanks to the greatest of ideas, the New Year’s Eve lottery ticket. For the Greeks, metamorphosis was always such an obvious thing so, a young woman who escapes from a rapist, even though divine, is transformed into the laurus nobilis of the poets. This tells us that the laurel was a lesser thing than the woman in that they are both actors and participants of the Living where everything is blended into a continuous transformation. And this is what we are discovering day after day with climate change and pandemics, surprised by the swiftness with which Nature has shown itself to be with plants and animals in urban areas, now purified by carbon monoxide.
Therefore, along with that sense of suffocation that we feel when they show images of those hospital wards in these Covid times with the ill attached to life support machines there is an overlap with the images at 8’46” with the martyrdom of George Floyd who, with his “I can’t breathe” sets off an escalation of the Spirit of Time beneath the knee of the executioner Chauvin; he of that cursed name. The Spirit of Time that is, actually, the lack of air with the masks that hide at this point the smiles of humans as well as the smile of Dionysos, a tangible sign that the planet is now at its last breath and that there is no time left to lose… porque, acabado el postrer punto de la vida, ya no hay mas tiempo de penitencia.
ACT III
Calvino, Palomar
Pizzicato
L.S: I met Calvino and I believe that in another life that he was a bird because his is a birds-eye view type of writing, just in the same way that architects define perspectives from up above. Indeed, he had the ways and the inquisitive look of a bird on the ledge of a roof, looking down at all that was going on in the square below. He is the Cosimo in “Il barone rampante”, “The Baron in the Trees” in English and yet translated into French as, “Le baron perché”, generating a sort of ambiguous rhyme with the Italian perché (“why, because”) something that Totò forever craved.
As I have written above, the scene of the picture takes place in a space, a threshold, where the Horizontal crosses the Vertical, just like in the Settimana Enigmistica (a crossword puzzle magazine). Nature is right there outside. Indeed, looking towards the horizon. In order to go in, you need to use a doormat, a ritual gesture so you will not contaminate it. With no roof, you soon get the desire to fly which, up to the Wright brothers, had been exalted in the figure of the Angel. And among the Angels there are the Seraphs, celestial spirits that burn with love and charity. The strange thing is that they have six wings. Isaiah has seen then and tells us that with two wings they conceal their faces, with two wings their feet and with the remaining two they fly. However, the prophet had not understood that they were a new-generation angelic species with rotating wings, instead of flapping wings, just like our helicopters.
Rhapsody
L.S: Some time ago, a man with a thick moustache wrote that God was dead; three words together that, put in such a way, had never till then been read. Everybody was speechless. Prophetic words since if you try today to exclude the word God from your lives, you’ll understand in amazement that practically nothing will change. If, on the other hand, you take out the words economy and/or technique a disaster is soon bound to happen – your bank will no longer give you a loan anymore for the few things you had wanted done in the kitchen, your HDMI television set in the sitting-room will suddenly go off during the final of Champions Cup and the same for your design light that you had purchased in highly convenient instalments.… My goodness, what’s happening? – you’ll be wondering the same thing when you try to get the news on your smartphone but….no service! So, therefore, an initial scenario where the word God is reduced to a mere interjectional expression.
As you will notice in the picture, economy and technique are represented by the four gold coins on the floor and by the electric cable with a plug. It is as if everything has been abandoned and is useless since everything is concentrated upon the Dialogus between the two….
Tale
L.S: …At the bottom of the inkwell/ there’s a hidden treasure/and he who fishes it out/ will write words of gold/ in the blackest of inks. – Gianni Rodari
Luigi Serafini
We have created a second Orlando Crossword inspired by the artwork La Langue des Oiseaux,
Download it here:
Download the Crossword here:
https://acesse.one/orlandotalescrosswordserafinilalanguedesoiseaux
Unveiling the Superba city, through 16th century palaces, hanging gardens, frescoes and historical boutiques.
Wilhelmina Skogh has been the first female manager of the Grand Hotel in Stockholm in 1901. Discover her story!
Dear reader, let me suggest you an experiment. Enter into a “conversation” with words, pictures and the power of music. This is Musword!
It’s called the Garden of Marvels, most probably because it never ceases to surprise its visitors.
They are called Cultivators and they are mazes to let us reflect on the power and the coexistence between Mankind and Nature.
Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is strictly prohibited.
Orlando is registered in Genoa
on January 10th, 2020, n° 02/2020
Orlando Magazine published twice a year, by Tessiore & Co Srl, Via C. Roccatagliata Ceccardi 4/5, 16121 Genova, Italy
Copyright 2024 Tessiore & Co Srl, all right reserved
ANTONELLA DELLEPIANE PESCETTO
Founder & Creative Director
FLAVIA SCARANO
Editor in Chief
DANIELLE ALLEN
Business Advisor
info@orlandotales.com