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he somewhat disheveled gray hair of novelist, playwright, and journalist Alessandro Baricco gives him a slightly unkempt air, which offers a curious contrast with his way of expressing himself: precise, poetic, forceful, always dominating the stage, the tone, the diction, and what he wants to convey, without losing an ounce of depth. He gave a good sample of these attributes at the inaugural conference of the Clàssics Festival, a multidisciplinary festival dedicated to classical culture that has been devised by the Casa dels Clàssics, the entity continuing the Bernat Metge collection, within the Som group.
The festival, co-organized with the Focus group, aims to provoke new perspectives and reflections on the classical legacy. Hence, its kick-off is especially ambitious: a conference by Baricco on the concept of beauty that will serve as a source of inspiration for the artists invited next year to Clàssics. Theater director Àlex Rigola, actor and director Josep Maria Pou, illustrator Paula Bonet, poet and rhapsodist Josep Pedrals, singer-songwriter Roger Mas, the theater company Les Impuxibles, filmmaker Albert Moya, film critic Àlex Gorina, and some other names that will soon be added, will show their creations born from the reflections of the Italian writer, who has just published The game, an essay on the effects of the technological revolution.
"The Iliad is a monument to war, a song to the beauty of war, its splendor is seen everywhere," Baricco blurted out, after the reading, with a translator by his side, measuring and chewing each word of his speech, which he had not written but which produced a deep effect.The headquarters of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), a Poblenou warehouse with its former industrial rooftop still visible, was the chosen venue for his conference, as if to make clear, from the outset, the foundational will of the event to confront past and present. But the real contrast was established by the author of Silk and Novecento, by re-floating the concept of beauty that hides The Iliad, the Greek epic poem from the 8th century BC attributed to Homer. It is a poem he knows thoroughly. In 2004 he published a version, Homer, Iliad, which appeared here in Catalan (La Magrana) and in Spanish (Anagrama). It was a version intended to be read in public (it could be heard at the Grec Festival in 2006), with the different characters speaking in monologue form. At the conference, actors Clara de Ramon and Marc Rius read two fragments. In the first, Chryseis explains in the first person how she is the object of dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon. In the second, Antilochus narrates the death of Patroclus, who was wearing Achilles' armor, at the hands of the Trojans.
What do we seek when we seek another beauty? –Baricco asked himself. "To find and create an intensity, a force, a light that life does not always have.""The Iliad is a monument to war, a song to the beauty of war, its splendor is seen everywhere," Baricco blurted out, after the reading, with a translator by his side, measuring and chewing each word of his speech, which he had not written but which produced a profound effect. The message that filters through Homer's work "is very clear," he proclaimed. "The highest destiny one can hope for is to die in war, more than to win the war." And from there, little by little, quite naturally, he unraveled the thread, to turn towards where he wanted to go. This influence of the splendor of war still led his grandfather to the trenches, at 19 years old, in the First World War. "But we are not in such an obtusely macho world – he delivered the conference on November 25, the day against gender violence – and we have become capable of having another beauty, which is not that of war." But why are Homeric stories beautiful? "Because life vibrates there with exceptional intensity," he affirmed. And, therefore, what do we seek when we seek another beauty? – Baricco asked himself. "To find and create an intensity, a force, a light that life does not always have."
"For 2,800 years we have been trying to take off our helmet, we have almost made it; all of that we can call creating a new beauty" (...) that other beauty "built in small daily gestures, in details, in the desires we cultivate, in the simplest moments of life"The difference is that now, "instead of seeking it at the limits of death, we are going to seek it alongside peace." "Even recognizing that we must accept the memory of when we were beasts of combat," we seek "another destiny," he stated. If The Iliad is a monument to war, at the same time it is a story punctuated by another idea of beauty: always "there is someone who says that sooner or later we will find ourselves unable to live like this anymore." And these words – he added – Homer puts in the mouths of women. He exemplified this other idea of beauty with a scene he described in great detail, drawing parallels with the western and highlighting the sexist absurdities of many scenes. He is an artist creating complicity with the audience. Baricco made them travel to the moment when Hector, chief of the Trojans, understands that they will lose the war and returns to the city to make offerings to the gods: he meets his mother, his lover (Helen, "she's like Scarlett Johansson," he allowed himself to point out), his wife (Andromache) and his son. Andromache scolds him: "You're all crazy! Don't you realize what you're doing?" And Baricco added with sarcasm: "Remember when a warrior instinct comes over you, even if it's on a soccer field; what are you doing?"
Before returning to battle, Hector wants to pick up his son. But when the child sees him, he starts to cry. "And Hector makes a grand gesture, takes his helmet and removes it; the child looks at his father and stops crying." In this poetic way, Baricco crowned a way of explaining history, literature, and beauty with which he had won over the audience: "We take this gesture with us, for 2,800 years we have been trying to take off our helmets, we have almost arrived; all of that we can call creating a new beauty." Baricco thus defended that other beauty "built in small daily gestures, in details, in the desires we cultivate, in the simplest moments of life." "We try to finish a gesture that began so many, many years ago..."