(English version)

Gabriele Pulli

La fantasia d’amore

Liguori editore, Naples, May 2025

                                                       If the idealisation of the object of love is a dream, …

                                                       in the fantasy of love, it is what makes us dream     58

Gabriele Pulli’s book is yet another example of a philosophical interpretation of the masterpieces that have come down to us through the ages. What we call art lends itself to intellectual analysis: the initial premise is that the aim is to resolve a hermeneutic problem present in Ovid’s “Metamorphoseon” and the – complementary – one in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

This is no small matter: ‘the imagination creeps into the affairs of love, determining their fate: unhappy in the first case, happy in the second. But on what does one possibility or the other depend?’ 3

The book is structured simply, comprising a preface, two chapters and a conclusion. The bibliography is, in turn, concise yet comprehensive and significant.

The two parts of the book are divided – I suppose partly to facilitate reading – into short sections (numbered with Roman numerals), and each section breaks down the argument into points (numbered with Arabic numerals).

In the first part, entitled ‘The Reflection of Narcissus’, the book considers the fate—sealed by the gods—of Narcissus—to whom Tiresias, himself a victim of Jupiter’s retribution, had said he would live until he came to know himself—and Narcissus will die whilst gazing at his own reflection in the water: seeing one’s own face is an image of seeing oneself? And it also describes the fate of the beautiful nymph Echo, already restricted in speech (by Juno) to repeating only the final syllables of what she hears, but who, having fallen in love with Narcissus—who wishes to see her—is turned to stone upon his rejection, once she reveals herself to him: does the pain of abandonment, then, in a certain sense, ‘petrify’? Of course, this may simply be our way of speaking and feeling.

But the inquiry is quite different and begins with Ovid’s words, which define the image of himself, as seen by Narcissus, as ‘imaginis umbra’ (italics in the text), translated as ‘shadow of an image’ 9 or ‘In any case: reflection of a reflection’. Why? 9. For the author – and for others – this is a problem of interpretation that has never been resolved: ‘The answer to this question has never been given’. 10

The answer is presented, but the point is that, whilst Ovid is dealing here with the problem of the ‘perfect correspondence of love’, it is just as impossible to achieve this as it is to resign oneself to its failure, to the extent that the situation becomes ‘fatal’¹⁷.

I shall confine myself to saying that, for the author, the key lies not in Narcissus’s ‘narcissism’ as commonly understood but, since we are dealing with images (imaginis umbra), in something to do with the act of imagining. Indeed: Narcissus is, in fact, captivated by the voice, but in his imagination the voice corresponds to something that in reality can never correspond to it; what emits the sound exists, ‘but there is no visible counterpart to that sound’ 32. The reference is to the research the author’s previous writings on the importance of the voice, in the prenatal experience, in the development of an imagination without (as yet) images, and in the (correct) intuition that such images must, however, in fact exist. In the same way, but symmetrically, Narcissus is captivated by the image in the pool of water, but when he realises that it corresponds to himself, he is utterly disappointed, because it is precisely that ‘other’ which he would like the image to correspond to that is missing. Indeed, ‘because the imaginary is of a different nature from the real’ 25. The tragedy of Narcissus – and of Echo – is that the indefinite does not present itself to them as the definite. 32

In the second part, ‘The Transparency of Helen’, ‘another possible relationship between love and imagination’ is explored. 33 Six young people, three couples, through the magical events of the forest – which are nonetheless significant – ultimately reach marriage, each with their beloved. Thus, what was not possible for Ovid, Shakespeare brings to the stage. How is this possible? After critically examining previous interpretations, Pulli goes on to seek his own. The author’s insight stands out here, as he finds clues in the details.

The point, however, is that all the young people, ‘before the events in the forest’ in which the situations will be resolved happily, ‘can only imagine the life of love they desire’ and therefore ‘all their loves are loves of the imagination’ 49; and it has been said, with regard to Echo and Narcissus, that in such a case they will be ‘exposed to the risk of vanishing along with their own fulfilment’ 49. How can we ensure that ‘the art of making passion survive its fulfilment’ – 50 that is, the fact that it is realised in union – is achieved?

Here too, the detail provides the solution – and gives its title to the second part of the book: the object of love is defined as ‘transparent’; in this instance, as in every instance, ‘Elena is loved because she is transparent; and she is transparent because she is loved’ 53–4. Here too, common sense goes out the window, as the author is well aware, for he points out that the lover ‘might rather complain of appearing transparent in the eyes of the beloved’ 54. But thought, like poetry, need not follow common sense. For, if one considers the word ‘transparent’ carefully, one may understand that from Elena, as ‘from every object of love’, through her – but only through her – to those who love her, ‘an imaginary world’ is offered 55; and so what is considered tactless according to common sense becomes an unrivalled eulogy, and fantasy love—which, as idealisation, is inappropriate—has become ‘a fantasy of love’ 55: the dangers of the imaginary in fantasy love have been discussed by both Freud and Heidegger, and are well known; the object, the ‘other’ as an idea, always reaches a point where the reality of the world may not add up, and so one asks to be loved for who one is. This occurs in the fantasy of love, in which reality prevails ‘without the need for any elevation’ 57 and the imagination, without being excluded as a result, is ‘evoked by the beloved’ 57, the true one, or the real one.

Thus, ‘Shakespeare’s text appears as the necessary fulfilment of Ovid’s’ because it appears as ‘a definition of the possibility of that perfect correspondence of love which Ovid’s text … had held out as both necessary and impossible’.

(Reading note by Carlo Di Legge)