Beyond its religious connotation, there is more general meaning in the word
pilgrimage. It is a journey towards your sources, your identity. Your roots, individual and collective - family, ethnicity, country, faith, culture, civilization. An attempt to understand where you come from, who you are, what is your purpose. Looking for your sources, finding them, meditating, experimenting, living them again.
You can make the journey in your young years, or you can make it later in life. At any age, after you made it, you are no more the same. For any age, it's an apprenticeship, a rite of passage. Think at
Byron's
poem: you start the journey a
Childe, you end it a
Knight. It remains in you, and later you will come again to it, in your memory this time, meditating, filtering, enriching its treasure. The journey can take place physically, it can be also imaginary. The essential is to make it in total openness, to accept the magic, to live the awe.
For
Liszt, the pilgrimage was developed in three stages. It was firstly
the journey to Switzerland, where, as he put it later,
a real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication was established with the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights. It was followed by the journey to Italy, in search of his European cultural roots. A search that was developed twofold. An exploration of the universe of
Renaissance: visual arts and literature, having
Raphael,
Michelangelo,
Petrarque and
Dante as guides; and an exploration of the Italian musical world. I would speak about the third stage of
Listzt's pilgrimage later, it deserves a separate discussion.
These stages of pilgrimage were later sublimated by
Liszt in music: the three piano suites
Années de pèlerinage, a remembrance of his journeys, meditating them again, exploring all their potentialities, living them again. Like in a religious experience, it is not about repetition: the time disappears, you are again there, in that moment, past becomes present, the moment is eternal.
And we, listeners of
Liszt's music, are called to make our own journey: into the world of sounds, and through it toward the paradigms of Renaissance, and ultimately toward the simple and great paradigms of Universe.
Goethe's
Wilhelm Meister comes to mind: meditating the masterworks is also a rite of passage.
Grato m’è il sonno, e più l’esser di sasso.
Mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura.
Non veder, non sentir m’è gran ventura
Però non mi destar, deh’—parla basso!
[Sleep, nay, being made of rock,
makes me happy whilst harm and shame endure.
It is a great adventure neither to see nor to hear.
However, disturb me not, pray—lower your voice!]
Quand Michel-Ange veut exprimer la méditation, la mélancolie, et nous en offrir les caractères universels et dominants, il est obligé de modérer le geste, d’atténuer le mouvement, de peur de représenter non plus le Penseroso, mais un certain homme et une certaine femme, de restreindre la portée de son œuvre en la particularisant.
[
When Michelangelo wants to express the meditation, melancholy, and offer us the universal characters and dominant, he was forced to moderate the gesture, to mitigate the movement for fear nor represent the Penseroso, but a certain man and a certain woman, to restrict the scope of its work in the particularisant.]
image from
Opera nova amorosa, vol. 1
Strambotti, sonetti, capitoli, epistole et una disperata
Author: Nocturno Napolitano
no copyright infringement intended
(Liszt)
(Raphael)
(Michelangelo)
(the Bononcini's)
(Salvator Rosa)
(Petrarca)
(Dante)Labels: Bononcini, Dante, Liszt, Michelangelo, Petrarca, Raphael, Salvator Rosa
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