Emanuela Ferragamo | Università degli Studi di Torino (original) (raw)

Talks by Emanuela Ferragamo

Nel contesto del VII convegno interdisciplinare dei dottorandi e dei dottori di ricerca promosso ... more Nel contesto del VII convegno interdisciplinare dei dottorandi e dei dottori di ricerca promosso dall'Universita di Roma Tor Vergata a tema "Conflitti" interpreto il grottesco della poesia Il ginocchio attraverso il concetto freudiano di perturbante e la pervasività della metafora bellica del linguaggio nietzschano dello Zarathustra. Nel testo morgensterniano l'uomo diventa un campo da guerra....disertato dai suoi stessi resti.

The essay "Going beyond the Window: the deconstructed Window" provides a critical interpretation ... more The essay "Going beyond the Window: the deconstructed Window" provides a critical interpretation of Zäzilie in Palmstrom (Humoristic Poems, III, 1990:128), one of the humoristic poems by C. Morgenstern. The essay has an important reference to W. Ross, Zäzilie(II) (in Ein Knie geht einsam durch die Welt, 1989:108–111). In such a context, the essay fist focuses on the concept of anti-bourgeois in Morgenstern's poetics and interprets the reduction of the window to its wooden skeleton as a challenge of the man to the role of the objects in bourgeois aesthetics: the deconstructed window turns into a metaphor of an anti-mimetic view of the world. Second, the essay examines Zäzilie within the philosophical side of Morgenstern's poetics: the “philosophical dilettantism” (Giffei, 1931:28). In conclusion, the essay provides an analysis of Zäzilie based on the main concepts of Morgenstern's poetics. Such an analysis highlights that Zäzilie's houseworks reproduce the author's never-ending philosophical research and his way of looking “beyond and though” the man (Morgenstern, Letters, 1979:138).

Papers by Emanuela Ferragamo

Fillide, 2023

Erica Pedretti's novel Engste Heimat offers interesting examples on how Christian Morgenstern's h... more Erica Pedretti's novel Engste Heimat offers interesting examples on how Christian Morgenstern's humoristic poems can express the sense of alienation and desperation of the second world's war generation. The protagonist of Pedretti's novel, an ironic alter-ego of the author, goes back to her childhood, she travels through Czechoslovakia and recalls Morgenstern's grotesque poems and calembours: They help her cope with the loss of past and find a way to interpret her own present.

Cento-Texts in the Making, 2022

In 1896, Christian Morgenstern is 25 years old. He is a soon-to-be poet and, in his own words, a... more In 1896, Christian Morgenstern is 25 years old. He is a soon-to-be poet and, in his own words, a “Zarathustra’s lark”, a devoted admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche. This year, he publishes his most interesting homage to him: the essay, “Nietzsche as Educator”. The article shows a high intertextual complexity, thus reminding a Cento, according to R. Furness. Although Furness drops the suggestion soon, the Cento genre offers an enriching approach both to the text and to its context: Morgenstern’s early Nietzscheism and his fervent hope for a Renaissance of ancient, Germanic myths. Though, it is even more interesting to point out the fact that “Nietzsche as Educator” is not as serious as it pretends to be. On the contrary, Morgenstern’s Cento is another way of expressing his (most distressing) talent for Grotesque.

Webportal Polyphonie: Mehrsprachigkeit_Kreativität_Schreiben, 2022

The Ukrainian-Jewish writer Katja Petrowskaja titled her work Maybe Esther (2014). Written in Ger... more The Ukrainian-Jewish writer Katja Petrowskaja titled her work Maybe Esther (2014). Written in German, the novels give voice to the narrator’s/author’s family histories, whose common ground is the Second World War and the Holocaust. Thanks to West- and East European archives, digital repositories and memorials the narrator/author travels through the past century and delivers her own, “liturgy” of the Past. In the context of the transcultural theory and of the methodological premises of Deleuze and Guattari’s geophilosophy, the paper analyses the relation of the novels’ multilingualism with its spatiality and the concept of “work”.

CH-Studien, 2021

This essay analyses Elisabeth Meylan’s short poem, Landschaftsgedicht [‘landscape poetry’]. While... more This essay analyses Elisabeth Meylan’s short poem, Landschaftsgedicht [‘landscape poetry’]. While the poem’s title might lead the reader to expect a poem about a (natural) landscape, Meylan’s writing rather explores her difficulties in writing about the (natural) landscape. The poet finds no inspiration in the landscapes she sees, rather visualising a polluted abandoned industrial area as a subject for her work. The essay explores the poet’s conceptualisation of landscape through Timothy Morton’s concept of ‘hyperobject’. Morton suggests that large-scale phenomena such as global warming constitute a new kind of ontological object, calling for new understandings of human-‘thing’ relationships and for a revisiting of the topos of the landscape (e.g. the ‘Zero Landscape). In this context, the paper also evokes Jane Bennet’s New Materialism, recognizing that Meylan’s description of the waste of the industrial landscape aligns closely to Bennett’s idea of “assemblage”: a powerful collective of human and non-human actants. Perhaps the natural landscape is in its final hours – on the brink of becoming a thing among things.

Heimat und Fremde, 2021

Il romanzo "La parete" è uno dei testi di maggiore successo di Marlen Haushofer... more Il romanzo "La parete" è uno dei testi di maggiore successo di Marlen Haushofer. Il paper si propone di analizzarne la rappresentazione del paesaggio in relazione alla questione della "Heimat" nel contesto della critica al patriarcato e degli echi del secondo dopoguerra.

Die dritte Ausgabe der Zeitschrift denkste: puppe / just a bit of: doll (de:do), ein multi-diszip... more Die dritte Ausgabe der Zeitschrift denkste: puppe / just a bit of: doll (de:do), ein multi-disziplinäres Online-Journal für Mensch-Puppen-Diskurse, erscheint als Doppelheft, dessen gemeinsamer Themenschwerpunkt lautet: puppen/dolls like mensch – puppen als künstliche meschen. Mit diesem Fokus wird ein Thema aufgegriffen, das Menschen seit der Antike berührt und bis heute ihren Verstand und ihre Imagination, ihre Bedürfnisse und ihre Gefühle in Unruhe versetzt. In Mythologien, literarischen Fiktionen und Narrativen für Erwachsene und Kinder, in Werken der bildenden Künste, im Film, in mechanisch-technischen Anwendungen und Utopien, in den performativen Künsten, in der (Spiel-)Pädagogik und in den verschiedenen Bereichen der Popkultur wirft das Motiv der Puppe mit seinen unterschiedlichsten Ausdrucksformen immer auch existenzielle Fragen auf: Wer und was ist der Mensch? Die Puppe als künstlicher Mensch ist in gewisser Weise wie mensch, ohne Mensch zu sein. Als von Menschen geschaffene...

L’anello che manca. E quello che non torna in Nathans Tod di Georg Tabori propose a modern reread... more L’anello che manca. E quello che non torna in Nathans Tod di Georg Tabori propose a modern rereading of Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise ( Nathan der Weise ): Georg Tabori’s Nathans Death ( Nathans Tod) . The paper aims for a comparative analysis of the famous ring parable. Asked by the Sultan to decide which of the three religions owns the truth, Nathan narrates the fable of a magic ring that has been passed from generation to generation and finally lost, when a father with three sons makes two copies of the original one. The ring symbolises the tyranny of a unique truth that has to be overcome, in order to achieve tolerance. My interest focuses on two moments of Tabori’s rewriting of this fable. On the one hand, I analyse the way in which Tabori glosses over the ring parable in the dialogue between Nathan and Saladin thanks to Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightement ( Dialektik der Aufklarung ) and to Arendt’s Man in Dark Times ( Von der Menschlichkeit in finsteren Zeite...

Sign System Studies, 2021

The intertwining of landscape and face belongs to human spatial epistemology: as suggested by Mat... more The intertwining of landscape and face belongs to human spatial epistemology: as suggested by Matteo Meschiari, primitive humans used to orientate themselves in landscape through recognition of facial patterns. By reflecting upon Marlen Haushofer's novel The Wall (Die Wand), the article aims to question the semantic of the "face of the landscape" in the wake of an imagined nuclear apocalypse that leaves behind a cat, a cow, a dog, a woman and a wall. The wall transcends the boundaries between human and other-than-human: in terms of Roberto Marchesini, it creates a somato-landscape-a hybridization of inner and outer landscapes typical of post-human awareness. Finally, such a landscape culminates in the dismissal of the pre-apocalyptic culture of the face: faces no longer function as a means of recognition.

Incontri., 2021

Il paper esamina la descrizione del giardino di Albert Julius nel primo romanzo dell'utopia schna... more Il paper esamina la descrizione del giardino di Albert Julius nel primo romanzo dell'utopia schnabeliana "FATA"

Multidisziplinäre Online-Zeitschrift für Mensch-Puppen-Diskurse, 2020

Eine Analyse des parodistischen Entwurfs "Aus der Tageszeitung aus dem Jahr 2407"

The paper aims to analyse the metaphoric use of the water in the humoristic and 'serious' poetry ... more The paper aims to analyse the metaphoric use of the water in the humoristic and 'serious' poetry Christian Morgenstern's

Als Christian Morgenstern um 1894 nach Berlin umzieht, verfügt er über geringes Geldmittel. Tagsü... more Als Christian Morgenstern um 1894 nach Berlin umzieht, verfügt er über geringes Geldmittel. Tagsüber schreibt er Artikel für die verschiedensten Zeitschriften, nachts träumt er über waghalsige Fluchten aus der Stadt. Aus solch einem Traum stimmt 1895 das Erstlingswerk „In Phanta´s Schloß“, eine Kopie dessen er an Rainer Maria Rilke zuschickt. Darauf schreibt ihm Rilke ein Gedicht entzückender Naivität und bemerkt: „Du Glückskind, wetten will ich fast, / Daß Du die Taschen voller Sterne, / Die Seele voller Jubel hast“. Die Wette nimmt Morgenstern im Oktober an, als er sich seine Westentaschen im Gelegenheitsgedicht „Antwort auf ein Briefgedicht Rainer Maria Rilkes“ durchsucht. Weder Sterne noch Geld sind zu finden…aber die Finger des „wunderbare[n] Märchenprinz[en]“ stoßen auf die unmissverständlichen Indizien eines Bohemien-Lebens.
Unter dem Zeichnen der Boheme, zu der sich Morgenstern 1894-1895 mit Leib und Seele hingibt, gilt die „Antwort“ als Porträt des Künstlers als junger Mann. So komponiert der grüne Künstler, der Friedrich Nietzsche liest und sich von dem Friedrichshagener Kreis angezogen lässt, eine arcimboldische Phantasie: die gelisteten Alltagsobjekte sind denn als bunte Steine eines Mosaiks zu betrachten, dessen Muster die Gesichtszüge des modernen Künstlers sind. Sein Porträtierens stammt von zwei verschiedenen Händen, weil Morgenstern die Skizze Rilkes übermalt. Während aber Rilke das nächtliche Abenteuer von Phanta und ihr Schöpferin in eine dichterische Himmelfahrt transponierte, zieht Morgenstern als Szenerie seines Gedichts einen bürgerlichen Mikrokosmos vor. Der Dichter wird jäh aus seinem Höhenflug gerissen (und seinen Sturz inszeniert die Ironie).

Im Rahmen der Morgenstern-Mauthner-Relation untersuche ich den Fritzmauthner-Tag als sprachkritis... more Im Rahmen der Morgenstern-Mauthner-Relation untersuche ich den Fritzmauthner-Tag als sprachkritische Inszenierung des Selbstmordes der Sprache, den Mauthner in den Beiträgen zu einer Kritik der Sprache darstellt. Diagnostiziert der Philosoph das makabre Scheinleben einer erodierten Kultursprache und die Notwendigkeit ihres freiwilligen Untergangs, so spielt der Dichter ein letztes Mal Würfel mit den Knochen der Sprache - ihr Martyrium wird zum Jahrmarkt-Spektakel...

Thanks to unpublished documents from the Rudolf-Steiner Archiv in Dornach the paper aims to descr... more Thanks to unpublished documents from the Rudolf-Steiner Archiv in Dornach the paper aims to describe the intellectual relationship between Christian Morgenstern and Rudolf Steiner

Books by Emanuela Ferragamo

Königshausen und Neumann, 2021

Bekannt für seinen Galgenhumor, war Christian Morgenstern ein polyedrischer Dichter der Jahrhunde... more Bekannt für seinen Galgenhumor, war Christian Morgenstern ein polyedrischer Dichter der Jahrhundertwende. Neben Gedichten schrieb er an dramatischen Entwürfen und kulturkritischen Essays und stellte sich sogar als Erfinder und Designer vor. War er aber auch - Parodist? Die Frage ist kaum eindeutig zu antworten...

Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914) è stato un poeta tedesco. Ha pubblicato svariate antologie liri... more Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914) è stato un poeta tedesco. Ha pubblicato svariate antologie liriche, delle quali la più nota è Die Galgenlieder (I canti patibolari, 1905).
Nel contesto speculativo della Fine del Secolo tedesca questi studi esaminano due momenti della sua poetica: quello della creazione giovanile di Auf vielen Wegen (Su molte strade, 1897) e dell’ultima fase umoristica di Palmström (Palmström, 1910). Nelle vesti ora di un pastore insonne (Hirt Ahasver), ora di una sciaguratissima donna di servizio (Zäzilie) il poeta interroga in questi testi le radici dell’ ispirazione artistica, il ruolo dell’oggetto, la caducità dell’esistere, il significato dell’arte.
I due studi raccolti in questo volume sono rivolti agli amanti della letteratura e ai conoscitori della poesia tedesca, cui intendono offrire uno sguardo inedito alla produzione lirica di un poeta che ha attraversato la fine di un secolo – e ha indicato con un tocco lieve le sue ferite più scoperte: il volto bifronte della merce (il feticcio), il singhiozzo di una lingua che ripete l’ovvio...o ammutolisce davanti al suo stesso silenzio.