Eva Colombo, Water’s and ink’s women, eighth chapter: Death’s water, life’s
water
As the goat – fish, water is paradoxical: water vivifies and kills. Violante (
female protagonist of Le vergini delle rocce [ The Maidens of the Rocks ] novel
written By Gabriele D’Annunzio in 1895 ) and Ghisola ( female protagonist of Con
gli occhi chiusi [ With closed eyes ] novel written by Federigo Tozzi in 1919 )
are two basins filled with water gushed from a double – faced fountain: from a
fountain’s face gushes life’s water that irrigates their luxuriant sensuality,
from the other gushes death’s water that imbues them with libido mortis. It is a
water of life and death that has moulded Violante and Ghisola giving them their
paradoxical physiognomy of vital bringer of death and deadly bringer of life.
Even their beauty bears traces of this duplicity: Claudio and Pietro are at the
same time attracted and repulsed by them because they subliminally perceive that
not only life but even death would result from the embrace of those not only
human girls. Violante’s aristocratic marble profile is beautiful but not vital,
her beauty is perfect as that of a statue but this immortal statuary beauty
covers a human mortal body for a short lapse of time: when this time is past,
immortal beauty transmigrates to incarnate its breath of eternity in another
mortal body. Violante doesn’t want to survive the transmigration of immortal
beauty from her body, she doesn’t want to accept the imperfect motion of life,
she prefers the perfect stillness of death. Ghisola’s beauty too has a sort of
“not human something”: it seems that her beauty acts as a supernatural body
armour which lends a peculiar power to the poor country – girl. Domenico,
Pietro’s surly father, doesn’t like Ghisola; Ghisola fights Domenico’s
malevolence with her sharp eyes and her eyelids that seem to cut as a blade of
grass. She is a mine – field: to walk at her side means to totter along the
border of hereafter. Her bony hands send Pietro away while her black eyes seize
him dragging him in the kingdom of darkness where she is a queen. Country – girl
Ghisola is a darkness queen: her long black hair seems death’s scythe, her hard
fingers seem devil’s pitchfork. Scythe and pitchfork are connected with death
because they removed something that has to die in order to leave a space for
something that has to be born: so they are connected with life too. The hands of
Violante and Ghisola weave death and life in an inextricable way. Violante
usually squeezes the violets that adorn her garland - sash to scent her hands
with their essence leaving them exhausted on the ground: since scents are the
whole life of Violante this violet - sacrifice means a real vital nourishment
for her. Ghisola brings at home a nest with five young sparrows, she fills their
mouths with crumbs, she kills them squeezing their heads with her fingers, she
cooks them into frying – pan to eat them. First she feeds the sparrows with her
hands, then with her hands she kills the sparrows to transform them in food for
her: Ghisola’s hands weave a life – death – life garland. |
