Since there have been
masks
, inevitably, there has also been an obsession with discovering what's behind them.
It is the very nature of the object and the reason for which it was born that generates that question.
What it hides also pushes us to seek revelation, unveiling.
One of the oldest expressions linked to the word is not by chance
'I know you mask'
and it already says everything about the symbolic paraphernalia that comes into play with the word: despite appearances, we do not let ourselves be fooled.
But it is not always said that a mask just hides.
Rather.
Listen to "Word of the week: mask (by Massimo Sebastiani)" on Spreaker.
We have never talked about masks, in the diminutive version of
masks
, as in this period. We have been desperately looking for them, the need to wear them has been the subject of controversy even at the highest levels, and those who wear them every day for work,
doctors and nurses
, have become the very metaphor of the superhero of our days. The ambivalence and fascination of the word mask reside in its very origin.
Its
etymology
is in fact rather uncertain: it could derive from masca, a regional expression that in Piedmont and Liguria indicates the witch and which is found in the late Latin of the
edict of Rotari
, the collection of Lombard laws that takes its name from the king, promulgated in 643. The edict mentions the expression to establish that giving such a name to a woman is an insult punishable by law. This meaning of the term brings it closer to that of
ghost
and
spirit
which is one of the possible slips of the expression mask, an object that was worn and worn in some traditional cultures to abandon one's identity and become a spirit. But there are those who trace the word back to the Arabic expression mashara or masharat which means
antics
,
prank
or even to the Spanish and Catalan Portuguese and French mascarel which means black spot on the face and from which obviously
the mascara of women
descends
.
The reasons for the misrepresentation and masking can therefore be very different: the mask can
hide
and therefore protect (this is the case of
the theater mask
that was worn by the guard to judge, while maintaining his anonymity, that the distribution of seats was respected; or the
gas
mask
) but also to give a
perhaps collective
identity
, as in the case of the spirit of ancient cultures or even in more recent phenomena such as that of the mask of
Guy Fawkes
, leader of the dust conspiracy, which was inherited from the film
'V per revenge '
and endorsed by the activism of
Anonymous
and then of other movements such as
Occupy Wall Street
, up to the one inspired by the face of
Salvador Dalì
of the members of the gang of the TV series
La casa di carta
. In short, anonymity and identity are intertwined in the idea of the mask. As constriction (the iron mask in the
Viscount of Bragelonne
of
Dumas
or the containment worn by
Hannibal Lecter
in Thomas Harris novels and films that were learned) or liberation (the mask
carnival
that originally allowed to do things that in everyday life it was not permissible to do or the one worn by the protagonists of the orgy in
Stanley Kubrick's
Eyes Wide Shut
).
On the other hand,
Gustav Jung
, one of the founders of modern psychoanalysis, spoke of four masks to indicate the stages of individual development: the Person (which in Latin means precisely mask), then the Shadow, our dark side, the Soul , something akin to the deep, and finally the Wise Old Man.
The wealth of references is such that the taste of the aphorism with the word mask in the center is overwhelming: tracing hundreds of quotes with the expression mask is very easy: 'You will learn at your expense that in the long journey of life you will meet many masks and few faces '. (
Luigi Pirandello
), 'The liar who withdraws his mask feels the same indignation as if they had disfigured him' (
Jean Rostand
) up to the famous 'Every man lies but give him a mask and he will be sincere' by
Oscar Wilde
.
Even a silent and subtle writer like
Mauro Covacich
has noticed this,
who in a beautiful speech in the Corriere della sera wrote: 'The masks have a strange revealing effect on their faces, it is as if by hiding the features they betrayed the concern, the anguish that is inside the heads. It seems paradoxical but the uncovered face has more chances to pretend '. Behind the mask, on the other hand, you can even control a whole world, as
Michael Jackson
sings
in Behind the Mask.
