Symbolic Plane Research Articles

MUSICAL INTONATION IN THE LINGUISTIC AND SYMBOLIC CONTEXT: FROM SCIENTIFIC REFLECTIONS TO DEFINITIONS

The article examines various aspects of the relationship between verbal and musical languages, in particular, in the symbolic plane. The study traces the historical evolution of scientific knowledge about these cultural phenomena, and also marks the milestones in the development of musicological thought from the point of view of the synthesis of “word” and “music”.

ТРЕВОЖНОСТЬ ЗРЕЛИЩА И ЖЕСТОКОСТЬ ОЩУЩЕНИЯ В КАРТИНЕ Ф. БЭКОНА «ПОРТРЕТ ПАПЫ ИННОКЕНТИЯ X» (ЭТЮД №7)

The article will consider the problem of the concept of physicality in the "spirit of the times". The time that will be discussed is commonly called modernity and post-modernity, a prominent representative of which is the artist Francis Bacon. Such a traditional problem of philosophical thought as the correlation of the human soul and body, in the interpretation of Francis Bacon, acquires a completely new discourse. Francis Bacon is an artist who thinks in philosophical categories in line with the problems of human existence as such. Human existence should arrive in an equilibrium correlation of categories: space, time and life, death. The narrative of the works of F. Bacon is the irony of human existence that breaks through pain and screaming. Through the observation of material signs - corporeality and their essence – the spiritual, Francis Bacon proposes to understand the question of the correlation of the corporeal and the spiritual, a discourse in the spirit of postmodernism. By means of the analysis of the painting "Portrait of Pope Innocent X" (etude No. 7), the concept of the corporeal as a structure is revealed, which should be perceived and understood in the context of the totality: the body as an individual, the body as an artificial construct and the body as a socio-cultural construct. Physicality as the sum of the three toposes of the body. The rejection of a stable, uniform understanding of the corporeal and the perception of its image as a stream that cannot be fixed in principle, allows us to identify the ideological program of the representative in its new senses. The ceremonial portrait of Pope Innocent X in the interpretation of Diego Velasquez is the essence of the bodily category, the portrait of Francis Bacon is the splitting of the bodily and the essence of the spiritual category. This is a discourse about a dichotomy, the basis of which is the splitting of subjectivity - the separation of the symbolic plane of corporeality from physical reality.

Adichie’s Americanah, Transnational Border and the Prospects for Identity Reformation

ABSTRACT The re-shaping of borders, triggered by globalization and many other trans-border historical events such as the fall of the Soviet Union, increase in connective technology, cyberspace interaction and global health challenges informed the growing multidisciplinary scholarship on borders that brought about the reassessment of the notion of border as more than physical demarcation. In the literary discipline, for instance, the re-imagining of border is called border poetics. Border poetics involves a critical analysis of the processes of bordering at the topographical, epistemological, symbolic, textual and temporal planes. It examines identity negotiation at the intersection of socially defined territories and foregrounds movements within and across territories in (and of) the literary text. Using the theoretical framework of border poetics, therefore, I examine Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah as a transnational and a border narrative. By tracing the trajectory of racial border crossing, dwelling, and return by the migrant characters, I argue that Americanah involves multiple forms of bordering and border crossing. I also contend that racism is a barrier, similar to the actual border, that both separates and calls the migrant into constant mutation and negotiation of spaces.

Musical Exphrasis in Ukrainian Organ Music (on the Example of “Sound of the Pinzel” by Bohdana Frolyak)

The relevance of the study is explained by the need to expand the understanding of the process of transmedial communication (and ekphrasis in particular), throw the prism of Ukrainian organ music. In this context, the problem of musical ekphrasis is considered on the example of the piece for organ and strings of the Ukrainian composer Bohdan Frolyak “Sound of Pinzel”.
 Main objective of the study is to identify ways to recode visual material into music in the piece “Sound of Pinzel” by Bohdana Frolyak. The theoretical basis of the article has certain researching sources by S. Bruhn and T. Tsaregradskaya, which explore the concept of musical ekphrasis, methods and principles of re-coding artistic information.
 The research methodology is based on a combination of the method of intermediate, holistic and contextual types of analysis, which allow through the analysis of visual material to approach the understanding of a musical work.
 Results / findings and conclusions. Musical ekphrasis means the translation of a work of visual art to the symbolic plane of music while preserving the compositional and / or syntactic qualities of the original source. Types of intersemiotic transmedialization are interpretation, recontextualization, game setting, association, and so on. It is noted that in the Ukrainian organ music the tendency of transmedial search is realized first of all through the appeal to ekphrasis. This thesis is confirmed by the analysis of the work of B. Frolyak, which was prompted by the sculptures of the Ukrainian baroque master Pinzel. It turns out that in addition to the «spiritual programmaticity» embedded in the plots of the sculptures, as part of the church ensemble, in the musical opus becomes obvious transmedial aspect, which acquires the features of musical ekphrasis. The piece “Sound of Pinzel” is based on the principle of spiritual association and the embodiment of structural and semantic parallels. It is pointed out that the sharp lines of the master's sculptures are conveyed in the music and the inner impulse and expression of movement is felt as a characteristic feature of the late Baroque style. Other features of ekphrasis are images in the outlines of themes (chapter II) of the sculptural plot or the use of allusion to the chorale (chapter VI) as a prayer symbol and so on. The conclusions emphasize the need to expand and detail the transmedia study of musical works, including the features of musical ekphrasis.

“The air we breathe, a forgotten colour”:

This essay revisits the years 1961-1963 through a selection of poems written by Rajat Neogy for Transition magazine. There is an inherent tension in Neogy’s surrealism between its imaginative exposé of symbolic planes of abstract existence, and the distressing reality of post-Independent Uganda for the Asian expatriates. Avant-garde and ambitious, Transition was founded by Neogy in 1961 as an intellectually autonomous forum for East African literary culture. The magazine’s cosmopolitan contributions reflected the cosmopolitan ambience of Kampala. Born in Kampala in 1938 to East Bengali immigrant parents, Neogy’s writings are influenced by and reflect the anxieties of the expatriate communities unsure about their identity and status in the post-Independent scheme of things.

Contemporary Icarus: Gustav von Aschenbach’s Journey towards the Sun

The point of departure for the reflections contained in this article is the motif of the sun in Tomasz Mann’s Death in Venice. Analysing the presence of the sun in the work turns out to be fruitful for distinguishing and connecting several symbolic planes, on which the issues of Death in Venice and the drama of the main character are depicted: the relationship between contemporary times and antiquity, the cultural North-South axis, the destructive power of beauty as well as the individual fate of the artist marked by decadence. The figure of the sun seems to provide material for the interpretation of the figure of Gustav von Aschenbach as an incarnation of contemporary Icarus and allows the reader to see the path which the protagonist of Death in Venice follows in a new light.

ТРІАДА ВІРА —НАДІЯ —ЛЮБОВЯК СИМВОЛУ ЛІРИЦІ ШІСТДЕСЯТНИКІВ Б. ОКУДЖАВИ ТА Є. СВЕРСТЮКА

The inquiry is focused on two poems of the Sixties Poets: “Three Sisters” by B. Okudzhava and “Faith — Hope — Love” by Ye. Sverstiuk. They are united by the symbolic image of a triad of Christian martyrs. The aim of the study is an interpretation of texts, associated with a common cultural tradition, as well as an indication of differences in the development of national cultures of the former USSR, that cause further divergence in the modern mentality of citizens in the country that had divided. The research adheres to comparative hermeneutic methodology. Problem Statement. Personalized images of Faith, Hope, Love in the poem by B. Okudzhava appear before the lyrical hero as the most important principle of his personal existence at the time of ordeal. They express the ethical foundations of life; their faithfulness justifies the poet, who feels indebted to life and his contemporaries. The poem by Ye. Sverstiuk “Faith — Hope — Love” reveals a profound social and historical connotation in the light of memoir evidence about the tragic fates of Ukrainian dissidents of the 60s. The motif of the tragic inevitability of choice on the Via Dolorosa is the main one in its figurative and semantic structure. The results of the study. In comparison with Okudzhava’s song, the symbolic parabolic plane in Ye. Sverstiuk’s verse is more tangible and more clearly connected with the religious tradition. Lyrical voice of the Ukrainian dissident is woven from echoes of no everyday cultural text in Soviet Ukraine — from hagiography, from the persecuted and the underground church life, from the insurgent poetry of World War II, from banned journalism fighters for national revival. Ukrainian dissidents saw their mission differently than their contemporaries in Russia, hence there is the deep meaning of the sacred images of martyrs of the triad, and prayerful spirit, and tragic pathos in the poems by Sverstiuk which are devoted to the dissidents.

Home: The Sacred and the Profane in John McGahern’s Novel That They May Face the Rising Sun

The article seeks to answer the question what it is about the place which is called home in John McGahern’s novel That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002), i.e. what it is that substantiates it and being in it and a return to it. It argues that the homeplace in the narrative of the novel is defined by two symbolic planes: home is not only a physical and material and social place/ space within a certain geography in the novel, but also is of the ontological structure which is the meeting point of two trajectories that cross over: one of them is the vertical − the sacred, the other is the horizontal − the profane. The sacred puts into communication the three placial / spatial geographies in the narrative − heaven, earth and underworld; the profane marks the historical and the linear. It is within the homeplace in the narrative of the novel that existential being opens up through the tensions between the sacred and the profane. To build the argument, the paper draws on Mircea Eliade’s hermeneutics in The Sacred and the Profane (1959), Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (1954), and Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism (1961).

Communicative Nature of the Boris Lyatoshinsky Early Legacy

The semantic narrative of Boris Lyatoshinky’s 1910’s works has been analyzed in the article. Resulting from the communicative and information interrelation of musical and extra-musical senses of cultural space, this semantic narrative advances the expansion of the hypertext space of culture. I.e., it reconstructs the view of Lyatoshinky’s live and work as a determinant of development for the whole Ukrainian musical culture of the 20th century. Within this framework, communication and, consequently, communication and information processes form a matrix of sorts that urges us to study a musical text as an aggregate of communicative strategies, adapted to the boundaries set by musical culture and society. In this process it is important to take into account such communication lines as: space-time of the creative activity, physical and symbolic planes within which artist’s innovations are manifested; artist’s environment and environment of the researcher, who engages into interpretation; and, as it was stressed, the communicative space of semantic signs, including ideas, images, concepts, emotions, produced by the author’s creative consciousness and reconstructed by an interpreter, that are concentrated within those signs. Using the categorial approach to define the system of the artist’s musical legacy, we, striving to comprehend the immanence of the author’s concept, enrich the routine theoretical components parts of analysis of the musical text with the new areas of values and senses, with the conceptualized communicative interpretation of the text and of artist’s personality.

The Subject and the Real: Ethical Implications of A. Badiou’s Philosophy

Alain Badiou’s theory of ethics of the subject implies that the individual interpellation of the symbolic plane could be secondary to the truth process, which grounds the formation of the subject. We arrive at the hypothesis that the subject of the interpellation is already a subject of truth when the symbolic interpellation process starts.In the paper, two contemporary ethical orientations are emphasized: democratic materialism, which comprises the idealism created by market laws, and a materialist dialectic, which opens the possibility of the subject’s formation during the struggles. However, Badiou’s attempts to create an alternative symbolic plane – a historical plane – do not seem reassuring; therefore, one must look at the event-producing-history from the psychoanalytical perspective.The theory of drives opens the possibility to relate Badiou’s subject to the repressed real, to show him as immune to the desire, which may be derived from a symbolical plane, and able to ground his struggles with revolutionary jouissance while not allowing history to end too early.

One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away: Anthropological Analysis of the Music Fountain on Slavija Square

The paper tries to determine what exactly means when the city and the state (indirectly) authorities call some object “the new symbol of Belgrade.” This scientific problem is considered on the case of a musical fountain on Slavija Square. What kind of symbol is that and on what basis it is attributed to this status? What should a musical fountain represent, as the “new” symbol of the capital? On these and other questions, I will try to answer with anthropological analysis to mise-en-scène and symbolic of the fountain. Under the mise-enscène I mean everything that lies around the fountain, which can be implicitly or explicitly brought it to a spatial connection. The symbolic plane of the fountain includes, inter alia, its musical content, which will also be considered in the text.

Theater and Nation in Contemporary Malaysia: The Work of the Five Arts Centre

How does theater interrogate a nation that preaches racial harmony, on the one hand, yet practices racial inequality, on the other? Focusing on the work of the Five Arts Centre, an artistic company in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this paper finds that this interrogation takes place on the symbolic plane of words, images, movement, and sound, all of which cohere in performances that offer middle-class audiences alternative scenarios of a pluralistic Malaysia. Its intent is to destabilize the state’s policies on racial privileging and political suppression, to create a space for free discourse, and to advocate a pluralistic Malaysia. To do so, however, requires a social movement organization to espouse a frame of action that fuses performance and commentary, and to support this work by building and mobilizing resources, among them networks, financial resources, and political leverage. But the Five Arts Centre’s focus, since its founding in 1983, largely remains with the Malaysian middle class. To reach out to economically disadvantaged groups, if deemed necessary, will challenge the collective’s creativity as it continues to construct a more inclusive Malaysia.

De la ecología de medios a la ecología profunda de medios: esclarecer la metáfora y visibilizar su impacto medioambiental

Media ecology has given rise to an important reflection about the technology- society dyad. However, despite coining a concept related to the environment, different authors have questioned the fact that this multidisciplinary field did not result in any significant contribution to the environmental context. Regarding media ecology, technologies have had a significant impact on the planet. However, recent trends in research in communication deem that this change transcends the symbolic plane to the material plane, leading to serious consequences for ecosystems, living beings and the sustainability of the planet. Based on the approach of Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, this paper aims to contribute to remedying the outstanding debt of media ecology towards the environment. In order to encourage this reflection, we expand the metaphor of media ecology to that of deep media ecology, looking to analyze the relationship between technologies and devices associated with the media and their connection with society.

The Theological Intentions of Mark's Literary Devices: Markan Intercalations, Frames, Allusionary Repetitions, Narrative Surprises, and Three Types of Mirroring by Dean B. Deppe

Reviewed by: The Theological Intentions of Mark's Literary Devices: Markan Intercalations, Frames, Allusionary Repetitions, Narrative Surprises, and Three Types of Mirroring by Dean B. Deppe Adam Z. Wright dean b. deppe, The Theological Intentions of Mark's Literary Devices: Markan Intercalations, Frames, Allusionary Repetitions, Narrative Surprises, and Three Types of Mirroring ( Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015). Pp. xvi + 567. Paper $64. As the title suggests, this book is an attempt to elucidate various literary devices found in Mark's Gospel. The book is neatly divided into nine chapters that each cover a different device: two-level interpretations of Mark's Gospel, intercalations, Marcan framework, allusionary repetition, narrative surprises, temporal mirroring, geographical mirroring, ritual mirroring, and symbolic use of miracle stories. Each chapter is forty to fifty pages in length and is divided into subsections that are easy to follow. Deppe opens his first chapter with a discussion about the difficulties surrounding the interpretation of Mark's Gospel, especially what he calls the Marcan "irregularities" (p. 9), that will underlie the methodology of the book. D. posits that these irregularities can be explained when one considers how symbolism works in Mark's Gospel and that such symbolism can be explained only when one considers the literary devices outlined above. Such symbolism also allows Mark to communicate on what D. calls two layers: the historical layer and the Jesus-tradition layer––the former affirming the historicity of the Gospel and the latter reflecting the ideological positioning of the Marcan community (p. 16). With regard to the Marcan community, D. argues that Mark's content largely reflects the struggles of the earliest church, and he details four major struggles: the resistance of Jewish communities to belief in a crucified Messiah; enduring suffering as discipleship; the acceptance of gentiles into the church; and differences of interpretation between Jewish and gentile Christians with regard to ceremonial regulations (pp. 26-28). Each of these struggles addresses the ways in which the earliest Christians ought to respond to Jewish Scripture and ceremony in the light of their new beliefs. Mark's symbolism also places his Gospel into a category similar to that of John's Gospel, which aims to explain a more "profound symbolic plane" (p. 19). The parables in both Gospels are allegorical in nature, which allows the crowds (and reader) to ponder the things Jesus says both literally and symbolically, something that extends into themes such as blindness, bread, fig trees, and the temple. This establishes a two-level reading of Mark and John that can be interpreted only when one considers how the narrative devices operate. This book offers an interesting examination of various literary devices present in Mark's Gospel. I appreciate D.'s desire to explain a number of the apparent anomalies in this Gospel that have confused Marcan scholars for a long time. In particular, I enjoyed the ways that D. promotes a two-level reading that can elucidate the struggle of early Jewish Christians to establish their beliefs in light of their long-standing relationship with Judaism. This is clearly portrayed in D.'s discussion of Jewish purity laws and Jesus' attitude and actions in regard to them. In addition, this method makes clear the struggles of establishing and promoting Christian beliefs in a time when the temple institution was under duress, especially after the temple was destroyed in 70 c.e. Despite the book's many positive aspects, there are some potential issues with D.'s method. He claims that his method does not undermine the historical authenticity of the Gospel (p. 17), but one cannot be sure at which point history ends and Marcan redaction begins. This creates a problem for his two-level interpretation. Although D.'s exegesis is [End Page 520] quite convincing in places, the issue of Marcan redaction may create problems for those readers who accept the Gospels as a historical account of Jesus' life and ministry. In addition, I find D.'s explanation of certain aspects of Marcan elements lacking. For example, he outlines the challenges that a suffering Messiah posed to a Jewish community (p. 28). I expected a much larger discussion of the Son of Man sayings that relate to...

Knowledge Geometry

This paper aims to present what we call knowledge geometry, an alternative theory for spatial representation of features related to information processing, information management, and knowledge management. It is a unique geometric approach for representing intuition, reification, interpretation, and deduction processes, as well as their relations. We employ the concept of cultural filter and use what we call real, conceptual, and symbolic planes in order to support transformations which occur along the perception of a phenomenon. After that, we discuss the use of evaluation systems to judge concepts and also the use of semantic systems as a communication language. Finally, a framework of the knowledge acquisition process in the field of the proposed theory is offered, proving the feasibility of its automation.

Mothers and Marimbas in “The Bight”: Bishop’s Danse Macabre

The impact of Elizabeth Bishop’s maternal loss on the symbolic order of her poems is well-established, but the ways in which Bishop draws on literary tradition in exploring that loss have received less attention. This essay offers a close reading of “The Bight” that demonstrates how the poem unites the key elements of danse macabre—skeletal imagery, musical procession, grisly humor—with apprehensions of the absent mother, an approach founded upon but aesthetically distinct from original symboliste works such as Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, or the work of American symbolists such as Wallace Stevens. The essay argues that, in contrast to the imitative earlier poems “Florida” and “Current Dreams,” “The Bight” constitutes an intimate, modern reinvigoration of the danse macabre tradition, representative of both a post-Freudian sensibility alert to psychological submergence and repression, and of Bishop’s characteristically subtle deployment of symbolic planes in her apparently realist work.

La Lance qui saigne: Métatextes et hypertextes du ‘Conte du Graal’ de Chrétien de Troyes by Laurent Guyénot (review)

Reviewed by: La Lance qui saigne: Métatextes et hypertextes du ‘Conte du Graal’ de Chrétien de Troyes by Laurent Guyénot Ann McCullough Laurent Guyénot, La Lance qui saigne: Métatextes et hypertextes du ‘Conte du Graal’ de Chrétien de Troyes. ssais sur le Moyen Âge 44. Paris: Champion, 2010. Pp. 343. ISBN: 978–2–7453–1944–9. $70. In this work, Laurent Guyénot endeavors to elucidate the cultural references that likely allowed Chrétien de Troyes’ public to comprehend and appreciate his texts. Taking into account the potential pitfalls of interpreting an era so far removed from our own, Guyénot challenges the modern notion that Chrétien and his contemporaries may have had little awareness of the meanings of the myths they were exploiting. Guyénot counters, for example, the contentions of Eugène Vinaver and C.S. Lewis that the romanciers borrowed arbitrarily from folklore with little sense of original meanings. Guyénot also disputes the ‘thèses celtisantes’ developed by Alfred Nutt and Roger Sherman Loomis, among others, who observe that the Arthurian romance emanates from distorted Celtic mythology. Guyénot argues that these conclusions are based on outdated conceptions inherited from the nineteenth century. The author posits, rather, that the Arthurian romanciers, and specifically Chrétien, fully shared conceptions of the otherworldly that oral tradition provided. Engaging with Chrétien’s work requires a consideration both of its underlying folklore (although Guyénot recognizes the problems posed by use of this term in a medieval context) and of popularized theology. The author identifies these sources, the folkloric and the Christological, as meta-texts of Le Conte du Graal. In analyzing the connection that Chrétien makes between orphic and Christic (a link that, according to the author, Chrétien’s reader would have clearly recognized), Guyénot underscores the inherently modern quality of Chrétien’s oeuvre. [End Page 70] Guyénot devotes the first two of ten chapters to a discussion of the two symbolic planes (orphic and Christic) present in Chrétien’s earlier work, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, postulating that this ‘double métatexte’ prepared Chrétien’s reader to interpret an even more nuanced composite of sources in Le Conte du Graal. Guyénot offers a well-organized appraisal of the plot elements in the Charrette—the abduction and liberation of Guinevere and her people—that frame the central theme, stressing its mythic and Christic provenances. The author stresses the connection between these traditions, a juxtaposition that, according to the author, demonstrates the modernism of Chrétien’s work. Guyénot also provides a detailed examination of textual elements that, in addition to their explicit significance, carry implicit references to source texts and alternate versions. In addition to an appraisal of the grail, the sword, the Fisher King as father figure, and Gauvain, Guyénot devotes particular focus to the lance. He asserts that the object of his title, the lance with the bleeding tip, is presented as a symbol of vengeance while paradoxically serving as a critique of the violence espoused by knightly culture. According to Guyénot, Chrétien subtly reformulated the notion of vengeance into a question more directly relevant to ‘la religiosité laïque’ of the Middle Ages, that is, how to die ‘une bonne mort.’ In addition, Guyénot devotes considerable attention to the Fisher King, a figure that embodies the concept of demise brought on by sin and redeemed through conversion. In the eighth chapter, the author examines the oft-overlooked narrative of Gauvain within Le Conte du Graal in order to underscore the polarities of chivalric life. Guyénot makes mention of the otherworldly nature of Gauvain’s adventures, emphasizing the subversion of the concept of Christian paradise and the possible influence of Muslim tradition within this imagery. This point of inquiry, however, remains largely undeveloped. In his ninth chapter, Guyénot examines the Continuations of Perceval, examining them through the lens of vengeance, and provides a detailed account of the metamorphosis of the lance. He traces, for example, the evolution from Chrétien’s lance with its dual meaning (as both a symbol of the Passion and...

Verbal Charms Against Authorities and Judges in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Russia

In the 17-18th century Russian manuscript tradition there were no fewer than nine collections (sborniki) consisting of verbal charms that are exclusively or primarily addressed to social issues, and meant to have an effect on judges, military commanders, landowners, bureaucrats, and, not least, on the tsar himself and members of the royal family. The magical purpose of these verbal charms was to have an influence on authorities and judges, to alter the way they felt and their will, their mood and spiritual condition. The tradition of incantations if seen as a whole did not force a person to take this or that specific attitude toward the authorities, but rather offered the possibility of choice either to consider the object of the charm as an implacable foe, deserving of annihilation (if only symbolic), or as someone more positive, from whom love is coaxed. The first type led to the use of “bestial” imagery that was of pagan origin; these charms allowed for the sublimation of aggression and the feeling of social inferiority, channeling these into the creation of fantasy images. The second type makes use of Christian subjects and symbols. Turning to folkloric and then in turn to Christian images, a person would not necessarily contradict himself or play the hypocrite, but rather attempt to resolve on a symbolic plane those practical conflicts that occupied him in real life.

Le Ferrovie e la costruzione dell'Italia Unita

The making of the Italian unification is strictly connected to the history of railways. Some lines were born few years after the invention of the train, starting with the Napoli-Portici line (1839). There were short and separated sections built independently by each State. Milano- Venezia was the first big railway built in the peninsula, within the Lombard-Veneto Reign belonging to the Austrian Empire. The improvements of railways in Europe were an indicator of rapid advance of land ways of communication but, at the same time, they enhanced the backwardness of the Italian situation. However, the idea of unification of the peninsula, at least territorial, to be accomplished by a network of railways, was borning for the most far-seeing minds: the matter of railways during the Risorgimento dealt with the creation of the national conscience. The project for a national network of railways started after the overcoming of the divisions in different states that led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. From 1861 to 1865 the constructive effort was considerable. The important line Bologna-Ancona-Foggia, the Roma-Napoli via Cassino, the Roma-Orte-Ancona and the “Porrettana” from Bologna to Firenze were led to the end. Especially important was the period between 1865 and 1885. In 1865 was promulgated the law for the administrative unification of the Kingdom to give an order to railways and, in the same year, the network was divided between four big societies. After the creation of the spine of the country, was the turn of Alps. The first big tunnel was realized in that period: the Cenisio tunnel (finished in 1871). In 1884 the Gottardo tunnel was created, while the Sempione tunnel would have become effective in 1906. Meanwhile the creation of more than 6000 km of secondary railways was financed. The government reorganized in 1885 the Italian railways: the lines were concentrated in two networks disposed lengthwise in the peninsula. The Conventions had a sixty years long duration divided into three periods of twenty years: the cancellation of contracts was possible at the end of each period. In 1905, the first deadline, the management of railways was adopted by a single State company. Further interesting things as events concerning steam locomotives, carriages and train stations are connected with the development of the infrastructure. Small and medium-sized train stations laid down in an unique model in the whole nation created a common visual language. Big cities stations designed as architectonic projects that started to be part of urban scenography, intensified on the symbolic plane the role of unification and develop accomplished by railways.

Actualité psychiatrique sur les vampires. Vampire : un mythe contemporain ?

This article concerns the mythical dimension of vampires. Vampires have made an impressive comeback through literature (Anne Rice), cinema ( Dracula, Interview With the Vampire, Blade, Vampires, Queen of the Damned, Underworld, Twilight…), role-playing games ( Vampire: The Masquerade), music and fashion (the gothic style). The authors's works on the evolution of family models help understanding this contemporary fascination towards vampires. It is surprising to see how much the features lent to these legendary creatures echo the contemporary psychopathological characteristics that the authors have already described and related to the evolution of society as well as of family values: individualism and “auto-reference”, hedonism and symmetrical relations, narcissistic fragility, difficult relations with others, phantasms of all-power and “auto-begetting”, etc. According to the authors, the vampire has become a myth constituting a reservoir of symbolic representations and allowing teenagers to better elaborate their maturing stages. Contemporary society is not capable of proposing effective rites of passages on the symbolic plane anymore and teenagers have to find their own rites and references. The vampire then takes all its importance as it has several characteristics of adolescence: a body which changes and which it is necessary to learn how to master, a new rapport with the others, the dangers of relations, the impression of immortality, etc.). Narcissistic perversion, the clinical entity defined by Racamier, is also the object of a parallel with the vampire, showing the symbolic relevance of this myth both on the social and cultural planes, but also on the psychological and psychiatric ones.