The hero’s journey and the appointment with death

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The hero’s journey and the appointment with death

Among the activities “on the net” to discover the rich archaeological and cultural heritage of museums and Calabria that always register an emotional participation, the appointments are confirmed very exciting in collaboration with the International Center for Writers of Calabria.

On Thursday, February 21st, at 5.30 pm, the philologist Paola Radici Colace, ordinary professor at the University of Messina and honorary president and director of Scientific Committee of the CIS, will hold the third meeting for the cycle “Life, death and travel in classical mythology: literature, iconography, music”, on the theme: “The journey of the hero and the appointment with death”.

Speakers: the director of MArRC, Carmelo Malacrino, and the president of CIS of Calabria, Loreley Rosita Borruto.

The journey in literature and in Greek myth is often a metaphor of human life and of the proofs of existence as a navigation between the waves of dangers and fortunes to reach a goal. In this context, a particular emphasis the theme of the hero’s return journey takes on, as the scholar explains. “Within the theme of travel in antiquity, by its components of risk and death, of dangers and anguishes, an attention is paid to the journey of the hero, whose departure is always imposed by necessities and the return is extremely problematic and uncertain», Radici Colace says. “In the literature of the nostoi (returns), which tells the journey home of the heroes from the Trojan war, the Odyssey is the only surviving poem, which testifies the” return “as full of extraordinary adventures, behind which the death is always lurking”.

“The journey par excellence is of the hero, as an individual experience with a well-defined mission – the philologist continues -. Amid the fear of the dangers and unimaginable trials of courage, he measures himself, defeating the monsters of the earth and the soul, to return gloriously to the homeland, rich of experiences that surround him by respect and admiration of the community”.