Vita e Pensiero

Among several references to Prometheus which can be found in Western civilization between late Middle-Ages and Renaissance, the works of Giovanni Boccaccio (as a mythographer), Piero di Cosimo (as a painter), and Francis Bacon (as a philosopher), far from being simply summaries of traditional themes, offer original versions of the Promethean symbol...

This paper focuses on the two most significant works that the young Goethe dedicated to the figure of Prometheus: a poem and a dramatic fragment. Both of them are very important and significant documents of the Sturm und Drang rebellion against the cultural, artistic and religious traditions that characterized the context in which Goethe grew up and in which he became aware of his identity as an artist...

Beethoven’s encounter with Aeschylus’ poetry is characterised by the culture of his time in its Enlightenment aspects and in some ‘anticipations’ typical of the first Romanticism. Prometheus character fascinates the musician because of his philanthropic merits and his heroic temperament as opposed to the ‘tyrant’ Zeus...

Elizabeth Barrett translated Aeschylus’ Prometheus twice: the first version was published in 1833 (Prometheus Bound and Miscellaneous Poems), whereas the second in 1850 (Poems). This paper analyzes the preface which Elizabeth Barrett wrote for the 1833 edition and which is a very interesting essay, both erudite and poetical...

The paper focuses on Prometheus’ iconography, that had great spread in European art from the 1860’s and the first decades of the 20th century. The topic has been so far poorly deepened in a specific manner. After Baroque, that used to emphasize on gruesome and macabre aspects of Prometheus’ myth, the figure of the Titan partially went back to the top during Romanticism; but it is mainly in the Symbolist age that the myth was taken up with increasing frequency and intensity by the artists, often in the framework of its esoteric-theosophical (sometimes gnostic) interpretation...

Among the characters belonging to classical mythology Prometheus is a significant point of reference that accompanied Nietzsche’s philological studies and philosophical reflection since the years of his early adolescence to the full maturity. The reception of the Promethean myth follows two parallel and complementary directions: the theoretical and philosophical one, as an object of analysis in order to find some specific symbolic meanings, and the artistic and mythopoietical one, as an inspiration for the composition of dramatic works...

Elisabeth Barret Browning and, many years later, Simone Weil intepreted line 250 of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (tufla;" ejn aujtoi'" ejlpivda" katwvikisa) as «I set blind Hopes to inhabit in their house», or (Weil) «aveugles espérances». Both linked «blind hopes» to the hope of immortality. This passage, and Hesiod’s ejlpiv" in Pandora’s episode, should be interpreted assuming the standard meaning of ejlpiv" in Greek, i.e. «expectation»...

Fascicolo doppio 2012-2013