This issue 2 (in reality the journal’s third) shows a slight departure from the previous ones: alongside the articles of, so to speak, normal size, that is rather short, as is almost obligatory for a web magazine, pieces running from three to five or six pages, this time we are hosting a few decidedly more substantial essays.
It seemed to us worth it all the same, because, even if it is unlikely that a web surfer will sit down to read ten or fifteen pages on screen, the fact remains that the pieces we publish are all in .pdf, downloadable, and so if you see something that interests you, and naturally we hope this will be the case, you print it out and read it at your leisure. We open with Raul Gabriel, an Italian-Argentine artist working in the field of site-specific art, who has been commissioned to restore the church of Santa Maria di Colle in Perugia. In a precise, image-rich essay, Gabriel sets out his project and the conceptual premises that inspired it. Giancarlo Baronti, an anthropologist, tells us of the ambivalence of holiness, or better still of the metamorphosis of Saint Anthony: from a wan ascetic, founder of Eastern monasticism, to the protector of domestic animals, and in particular (and for Umbria this is no small matter) of the pig. Angelo Di Carlo, a psychiatrist and lecturer, in a richly articulated essay on the construction of identity, shows how this process, when pursued along a “healthy” line, is intimately bound up with the maturing of a tolerant personality, something essential, now more than ever, to living decently in a society such as ours, which is increasingly multiracial and multicultural. Gisella Speranza, an editor of Studi Umbri, and Alessandro Frigeri, a geologist, in a well-documented piece, set out the differences between free software and “captive” software, a question essential for all those who do research, but by now not to be overlooked by any user of computing tools. Angela Margaritelli, in her “praise of walking”, offers practical suggestions to anyone who wants to see a different Umbria, and perhaps to see it in a way other than the motorized one we are used to. Alberto Massarelli, a psychotherapist, with the tools of his discipline and the passion of a classicist, explores the mythical figure of Empousa. Marco Pucciarini, a scholar of the history of religions, in a concise yet thorough article, illustrates some perhaps little-known aspects of the famous “Guerin Meschino”. Cristina Potenza, a primary-school English teacher, drawing on her experience of working abroad, expands on the importance, present today but destined to grow in the future, of the study of foreign languages. Our appointment with “The End” continues, Daniele Dottorini’s “endless” reflection on the death, real or supposed, of cinema. Finally, we offer you a passage, the last few pages, of a novel, À rebours, by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Published towards the end of the nineteenth century, it strikes us as a good example of how, all due differences allowed, ages of decadence share many features, and of how it often happens that all the evil, the horror, that one would wish to write about one’s own time has already been written, often far better than we shall ever be capable of doing. But, in the end, of how from all this it seems no one ever learns anything.
Enjoy your reading.