Franco Battiato and the philosopher Manlio Sgalambro "met for many reasons, but perhaps it would have been better not for the artistic part".
Massimo Cacciari tells ANSA that he was a friend of the philosopher Sgalambro and who really likes the music of Battiato, who died today at the age of 76.
"Sgalambro was a Schopenhauerian, he was Schopenhauer. I don't think he did this critical and substantially pessimistic vein very well in Battiato who has somewhat lost that vein of desecration, the paradoxical, ironic, sometimes even absolutely light-hearted charge he had in his affairs as 'White Flag' "explains Cacciari who prefers the first Battiato, 1960s-1970s. "That's what I like best, it can also be a nostalgia for when I was a few years younger too" he says, but he doesn't want to go into the musical analysis. "It's not my field. Battiato is essentially a musician and must be judged as such. He had studied music seriously. His first things were experimental, avant-garde, difficult,of that music that nobody listens to substantially yet. And his lyrics are certainly not trivial, they are not Sanremo. I've always loved it. He has had extraordinary experiences, "says Cacciari.
"They met with Sgalambro because they had many points in common, but I don't see this great influence of the philosopher on Battiato who developed a research perspective that was already his. It was a meeting between two quite exceptional personalities in both fields, that musical and philosophical. In Battiato certain oriental echoes were accentuated, but the Sufi world has nothing to do with Sgalambro. They mixed together a bit. They were both Sicilians and there is this aspect, this fantastic land in which they jump out of these personalities always paradoxical and always with this fund of fetishism, sophistication, it is a culture that maintains its identity, the Sicilian one, enough.
Sgalambro with the texts he gave has messed up a lot, these elements between the Sufi and the Oriental, and Battiato has lost his paradoxical charge "claims Cacciari. (ANSA).