Furio Jesi

Archaeologist, Germanist, philologist, literary critic, poet, translator and, above all, mythologist: Furio Jesi’s intellectual profile escapes any attempt of classification. Despite his premature death, Jesi left a vast production, which stands out both for the radicalism of its thought and for its variety. We find references to literary documentation, and especially to mythology, since his early studies on archaeology - see, for instance, his 1958 article devoted to ‘archetypal connections’.
Later writings show a growing interest for the influence of mythology on modern literature (Letteratura e mito, 1968). In his essays on Novalis, E. Pound, Rilke and Pavese (among others), Jesi identifies the themes that reveal the spiritual orientation of each writer, such as, for instance, death, sacrifice, rites and magic. In other analyses, he aims at retracing the dominant ethical and political mythologies of a cultural context, as in the volume Germania segreta. Miti nella cultura tedesca del Novecento (1979).
His relentless creativity led Jesi to engage in other genres, such as poetry and narrative (the novel L'ultima notte dates 1970, while the lyrical poems collection L’esilio was published in 1972), as well as in ‘dialogues’ with the philosophers (he devoted monographic volumes to Rousseau, Pascal, Kierkegaard) and the writers (Rilke, Brecht, Mann) who influenced his cast of mind and his literary taste.
The notions of ‘technicalized myth’ and of ‘mythologycal machine’ are at the core of Jesi’s reflections. Calling into question and reworking some concepts introduced by his master – the mythologist and historian of religions K. Kerényi –, the scholar investigates the mythological devices from a perspective that is both epistemological and political, and shows how they have managed to survive and how they function in the present age.
Jesi also devotes a peculiar attention to right-wing culture (Cultura di destra, 1979), whose communication modalities he defines – borrowing an expression by Oswald Spengler – “the language of ideas without words”. The exaltation of the ultimate sacrifice, the cult of death, the funerary symbolism and the attraction to the esoteric and the occult are, according to Jesi, its dominant themes.
Given that the relationship between culture and power and the manipulation of the collective memory by media are still present-day issues, Jesi’s analytic approach may represent a useful tool to understand the evolution of our society and of its cultural consciousness. In fact, the dynamics of technicization of myths are still at work both in developing countries and in advanced Western democracies, as bears witness the disquieting spreading of political parties whose claims are based on self-styled, long-lost traditions, and whose arguments flourish with catchphrases and propagandist symbolism.
On the basis of such premises, this monographic section is open to contributions studying modern and contemporary literary texts that can provide further insights on the evolutionary framework of the mythological machine theorized by Furio Jesi. Papers may focus also on literary works published prior to Jesi’s studies, in order to widen the research scope.