La corda pazza (sicilitudine)
© Ivan Cangelosi, 2015
170X130 cm
Ink on paper
Technique – Handwriting of the whole book of Leonardo Sciascia– Original language
Material – Pens and paper
Category– Essay
About the book – “La corda pazza” is an essay written by Leonardo Sciascia and published in 1970. It includes 28 textes about Sicily, Sicilians and their way of being and attitude towards life.
Description of the picture – Important writers and artists have written and discussed about Sicilians’relation to life and the future, their fatalism that ultimately provides them an itchwhen compared with something new (a sort of allergy to change) and the inevitable acceptance of the reality of things, because for a Sicilian reality appears to be immutable if not by divine intervention. One of the most important connoisseurs of theSicilian approach, of the “Sicilitude” (sicilitudine, in italian), as he would have said if he was still alive, was Leonardo Sciascia, an important Sicilian intellectual and writer of the 20th Century, who in an interview with the French journalist Marcelle Padovani (data, Sicily as a metaphor) said: “The greatest sin of Sicily is and has always been to not believe in ideas. Here, it has never been believed that ideas move the world … this is what has prevented Sicily to move on foward: the belief that the world could never be different from how it has been.”
In this painting I tried to depict some themes that can be extrapolated from the concept expressed by Sciascia and that can be linked to the Sicilian “existentialism”, that particular approach to reality and life. A man is sitting (immobility) looking down,
almost to himself (fatal acceptance of given reality and of his present condition / failureto look ahead into the future for the good of himself and his descendants), with hisarms outstretched and the palms of his hands turned towards the sky (passive waitingfor improvements of his conditions (godsend) / prayer to the Lord, to the mercy and willof which, he puts his life). Behind the man, the vegetation and colors have bright andvibrant tones. This represents a prosperous and glorious far past of the island. As youget closer to the man (we come to the present) and continue further (you go into thefuture), the vegetation and colors become more arid; this to indicate a pessimistic viewon the Sicilian present state.