What could be more firm, closed, perimeter and apparently limiting than a room? Yet, as Gino Paoli already sang, followed, imitated, honored and quoted by many up to the present day (from Jovanotti to Negramaro to Francesco Gabbani ), the rooms may not have walls, be transfigured, contain a whole world and perhaps even more . The etymology of the word speaks clearly and seems to nail us: stăntia in Latin means dwelling and derives from the present participle of the verb stare, stans-stantis. The room is the place where you are , the place of someone who stops (being stationed, being sedentary) and where we are now forced to stay, for most of our time and for an indefinite period.
Listen to "The word of the week: room (by Massimo Sebastiani)" on Spreaker.
But to produce the effect sung by Paoli is imagination, a word to which we will certainly have to return, and a faculty that we also use 'outdoors' and in daily life much more often than we believe but which, forced by four walls , is enhanced and amplified. Art and literature, in addition to music, know something about it: the famous Van Gogh room in Arles, painted a year before his death, beyond the technical aspects that contribute to the final effect (colors squeezed directly from the tube and then adjusted with your hands), it is an emotional representation of the artist's world.
Irregular perspective (according to some, the deformed space creates emotional complicity), pure colors and certainly not corresponding to the real ones but above all a universe very rich in little space and with few, indispensable objects: which suddenly, thus framed, stand out in their need and in their presence. It is as if being in a limited space sharpens the view and not only that. Van Gogh is the prince of the rich representation of the simple, of the much that can be seen in the little that is apparently seen. Just think of another of his works, which the textbook categories of art history would call as 'still life', which is an example of vitality and exceptional story : it is 'A pair of shoes' from 1886. One of the greatest philosophers of the 1900s, Martin Heidegger , wrote an entire essay but it is not a work of art criticism, obviously, it is a reflection on how an object can reveal a world, indeed perhaps the true meaning of the world. Van Gogh is not the only one to have used art in this way: from Egon Schiele to Matisse , twentieth century painting is full of 'emotional' rooms, so to speak.
And on the other hand the room is also the part, certainly fixed and with a precise scheme, of a composition, a verse, as happens also in a song: Dante defined it as "capable abode and receptacle of all art". But speaking of the rooms that contain trees and universes, Franz Kafka , one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, who made closed spaces places of unimaginable fantasy and monstrosities (from the Process to the Castle to the Metamorphosis ), had written a book in his youth, America , dedicated to the New World without ever having been and without leaving home. As is known, he had confessed to Felice Bauer , a Berlin girlfriend "with uncommon qualities", that his ideal of life would be to live closed in a room.
And among the many and sometimes useful solicitations received in these days of quarantine via social there was one, by Fabio Sartorelli , professor of music history at the conservatory of Milan, who brought attention to a book much less known than those of Kafka: I travel around my room of Xavier de Maistre , younger brother and obviously reckless of the best known Joseph de Maestre , ultra-Catholic conservative, magistrate and Savoyard jurist who was ambassador of Vittorio Emanuele I. Xavier, a young soldier, 230 years ago in Turin, argues with an officer and takes 42 days of house arrest: he decides to write a book of one chapter a day. Forced into his room, De Maistre rediscovers, explains Sartorelli , not only himself but also objects that now, in the new situation, literally enchant him. It looks like a process very similar to that described by Heidegger for the farmer's shoes.
It is no coincidence that among the commendable initiatives of these days there has been one, certainly in Rome but perhaps also in other cities, of an association that deals with youth discomfort, the One two three star , which has thought of overturning the prospect is to make hikikomori, that is, self-reclusive adolescents, teachers of loneliness and survival in a room: the new pupils are, of course, all those kids used to socializing and seeing each other often and who now have to reinvent themselves for a while . It is no secret that hikikomori , who are themselves bearers of an important and complex discomfort, do not lack imagination. The same, perhaps, of the mother of the film Room , who tells the story of how a woman, victim of an abduction, manages for five years to make her son Jack's life seem normal and comfortable in the closed of a room from which they cannot escape.
