Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
Tu call them if you want emotions… 25 years after the death of Lucio Battisti, what better way to celebrate the songs that have accompanied the sentimental imagination of many generations than to talk about emotions again?
Forgive the flight of fancy but I am pleased to compare those considered “songs” to the thoughts of one of the most profound connoisseurs of moods and feelings of the 20th century, the psychiatrist Eugenio Borgna. The scholar, born in 1930, is in the bookshop with Giving voice to the heart (Einaudi), a small essay that analyzes the beneficial power of emotions and all their nuances, including nostalgiawrongly considered the bearer of sadness and melancholy.
On the other hand, if we retrace Borgna’s work we discover that sadness and melancholy are also important feelings to recover and re-evaluate, as he explains to us in his numerous popular books which are many small lights ready to illuminate our tiring path in existence . Over time the psychiatrist spoke to us about meekness, friendship, loneliness and fragility, helping us to face the upheavals of our soulreconciling ourselves with the harshness of the difficult path that has befallen us, without ever losing hope.
«Giacomo Leopardi in Zibaldone defines hope as the passion for the possible, but, I would like to say, couldn’t it be the passion for the impossible?». Cultivating it helps us face the present and open a window towards the word that scares us most these days, namely the future.
We are often afraid of our emotions and tend to hide them in the recesses of our hearts and instead we must learn to “find the right words to give them voice” and not suffocate them with claims of “rationality” which are often just excuses for not looking inside. Being alone with ourselves is perhaps the thing that terrifies us more and we use all the palliatives offered by the modern era to avoid this solitary dialogue with our soul.
“Giving voice to the heart” by Eugenio Borgna (Einaudi)
Yet it is essential to recover it because «we can only care for others by having the courage of solitude, which allows us to recover the values of listening, solidarity and ethical commitment”. Solitude is therefore political but has nothing to do with isolation which is instead a source of aridity and selfishness.
I consider this little essay as those supplements necessary to face the change of seasonstrengthens and enhances the resources that we already have within us but have done everything to hide.
All articles by Serena Dandini.
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