The echo of Ulysses’ thirst for knowledge reaches us today via the Supreme Poet, who knew the story of the Homeric hero through Latin sources. Building on these, he almost entirely invents the final journey of an Odyssey driven by love of knowledge.
A trait he shares with Dante, who, despite his emotional involvement with this damned soul, does not hesitate to place him in the infernal circle of fraudulent counsellors – those who in life used words and wit with human weakness without being guided by divine virtue.
On the one hand, Alighieri condemns the inventor of the Trojan Horse for that extreme anxiety to pursue human things, which, while considered a positive trait in ancient tradition, represents for him the sin of subjecting the intellect to what is vain rather than to the true knowledge of the transcendent.
On the other hand, owing to his capacity to imbibe humanity, he gives voice to Ulysses with the words with which he would have persuaded his companions to sail beyond the impassable Pillars of Hercules.
He exhorts them, in one of the most famous tercets of the Divine Comedy, to consider their human origins, warning them that they were not born to live like animals, but to practise virtue and acquire knowledge. And he does so with words that have gone down in literary history: “You were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
That passion for discovery, learning and exploration, fuelled by a curiosity to go further, keeps the mind agile, exhilarates and fulfils it, keeps the spirit fresh, and brings vitality and emotions to the surface. One way to keep it alive is through the art of cinema.
The face of this edition, Tom Cruise, reminded us of this when he received the coveted statuette for a career devoted to cinema: the dark room, the beam of light that cuts through it and almost explodes onto the screen, the boundaries of the known world expanding beyond new cultures, lives and landscapes. This is his earliest memory of the big screen, when he was still a young boy.
“That beam of light opened a desire to open the world, and I have been following it ever since,” he said, speaking of the thirst for adventure kindled in him by the seventh art, a thirst for knowledge, for understanding humanity, for creating characters, for telling a story, for seeing the world.
He also paid tribute to cinema as a community of craftsmen and artists who pass on their knowledge from hand to hand, just as the chorus of voices that bring luxury to life and the hands that create the beauty and craftsmanship of this platinum edition’s pages do.
Article edited by Claudia Chiari
Editorial Director Celebre Magazine World