Page 112 - Costellazioni 5

ALBERTO CASADEI, Poetry and Fiction: A Necessary, Historically Verifiable, Combination

15
faculties. The first artistic products, on the other hand, show us evi-
dence of the use of either individual abilities (mimetic, rhythmic etc.),
or individual sense nuclei, and therefore of events or micro-stories,
conveyed in various ways, but still in themselves well-defined. If one
a empts to read the characteristics of poetry as specialized biological-
cognitive propensities, one can clearly see that in the magical-reli-
gious-mythological stage the sense nuclei are highlighted by giving
them an exceptional character: this is especially true on a thematic
level, since the action of the gods and heroes (in all their possible the-
riomorphic combinations) is characterized by incomparability in
strength, courage, or any other type of animal or human ability. 16
In these types of finalization, it is the hyperbole to be especially at-
tractive, perhaps in combination with emphatic reiteration: for example,
we can mention the hyperbolic and countless massacres of enemies, the
dreaded continuous and uncontrollable natural phenomena, such as
the flood caused by incessant rains for days and days (which perhaps
refers to an actual disaster that took place around 5600 BC). This em-
phasis is constantly sought after also at the level of ‘literary’ images,
whether in metonymies or metaphors, often based on simple funda-
mental concepts, such as comparisons between the natural sphere and
the human sphere, and which invariably highlight the exceptionality
of a fight, for example, or an enterprise. From this perspective, the ‘com-

15 For a just indicative bibliography, see Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers,
“The Extended Mind,” Analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7-19; Richard Menary, ed.,
The Extended Mind (Cambridge Massachuse s: MIT Press, 2010); Andy Clark,
Supersizing the Mind. Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Oxford-New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Particularly on poetry, see Raoul Schro
and Arthur Jacobs, Gehirn und Gedicht (München: C. Hanser, 2001); on narra-
tive, Monika Fludernik and Jan Alber, eds., Postclassical Narratology (Colum-
bus: Ohio State Univerity Press, 2010); and Anthony J. Sanford and Catherine
Emmo , Mind, Brain and Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012).
16 We can remember, by way of example, an archaeological find of the Sargon
II palace in Khorsabad (now at the Louvre): the hero Gilgamesh is so high
that it is about three times bigger than the lion holding tight under one arm.
For other examples, see Casadei, Biologia, especially 56-60.

111