living print: a world, in short, that is eminently symbolic and heraldic.
Kept always in this state of bewilderment, the native suffers a constant tension, which the headmen allow him to release only during collective feasts,
when the whole population crams into immense constructions, ellipsoid in shape, from which an unin
terrupted and frightful din is heard.
We tried, without success, to gain admission to one of these constructions; but with primitive yet shrewd diplomacy, the natives kept us out, demand
ing that we produce certain symbolic messages, which we learned were on sale. The sum we were asked, however, was such an exorbitant number of dog’s teeth that, had we paid, we would have then had to
curtail our research. Forced in this way to follow the ceremony from outside, we formed, on the basis of the loud and hysterical cries, a first hypothesis: that orgiastic rites were in progress. But as time went ,on, the horrible truth became clear. In these enclosures
the natives devote themselves, with the chiefs’ assent, to cannibalism, devouring human beings acquired from other tribes. The news of such gastronomic purchases is in fact circulated in the usual morning messages, where one can read daily a chronicle of them. From this chronicle it emerges that foreigners
of darker skin colors are most highly prized, but also those from certain Nordic tribes. and, in greatest quantity, Hispano-Americans. From what we could piece together, the victims are devoured in enormous
collective courses according to complicated formulas publicly heralded in the streets, in which there are recommended recipes not unlike certain alchemistic numbers: «3 to 2,» for example, or «4 to O,» or «2 to 1.» Cannibalism, however, is not merely a religious practice but a widespread vice to which the whole population is addicted, as is demonstrated by the huge sums the natives seem prepare.cl to spend on the purchase of human flesh.
Nevertheless, in some more affluent groups these Sunday banquets apparently inspire genuine horror, so that while the larger part of the population heads for the collective refectories, the dissidents flee desperately along all the roads leading out of the village, jostling one another in disorder, crushing one another
with their vehicles, losing their lives in bloody brawls. As if, in the grip of a kind of maenadism, they viewed the path to the sea as their only escape, because the
word most repeated during this sanguinary exodus is the local term for boat.
The low intellectual level of the natives is demonstrated by the fact that they are clearly unaware that Milan is not on tpe sea; and their mnemonic capacity is so scant that every Sunday morning they endure the same precipitous flight only to reenter the city that same evening in alarmeq throngs, seeking refuge in their hovels, ready to forget, the following day, their blind adventure.
For that matter, virtually from birth, the young native is so trained that bewilderment and uncertainty inform his every act. In this respect the «rites of
passage» are indicative. These take place underground, in chambers where the young are initiated
into a sexual life characterized by an inhibitive taboo. Their tribal dancing is particularly instructive in this context. The young man and young woman stand face-to-face, shaking their hips, stepping first forward then backward, their arms bent at right angles, and they take care that their bodies never touch at any point. In these dances both participants demonstrate a total lack of interest in each other, and they move in reciprocal detachment. In fact, when one of the dancers bends to assume the usual position of the sexual act and imitates its rhythmic phases, the other draws back in apparent fear, bending at times, to elude the partner, all the way to the ground. When one dancer finally reaches the other and union can take place, the partner suddenly moves away, reestablishing the distance. The clear absence of sexual content in the dance (an authentic initiatory rite based on ideals of total abstinence) is complicated, how
ever, by certain obscene details. Rather than display normally his naked member and swing it in a circle while the onlookers cheer (as one of our youths would do, in a ritual on the island of Manus or elsewhere), the male dancer keeps his scrupulously covered (I leave to the reader’s imagination how repulsive this practice is even to the most sophisticated observer). Similarly, the female dancer never allows her breasts to be glimpsed, by their concealment thus stimulating desires that can only produce the profoundest frustration.
But frustration is an ideological component of the educational relationship which seems to operate in the assemblies of the elders, held in another confined space, where a kind of return to elementary naturalmoral values is celebrated: a female dancer appears,
lewdly covered with garments, and gradually removes them, exposing her limbs, so that the observer is led to believe that a cathartic resolution is in progress. Ideally it should conclude when the dancer is suitably naked. In reality-under precise orders of the headmen, as we have discovered-she retains certain fundamental garments at the end, or else pretends to remove them as she disappears in that same moment into the sudden darkness that fills the cavern. Thus the natives emerge from these places still in the grip of their lust.
But the basic question for the researcher is this: Are bewilderment and frustration truly programmed intentionally, by decision, or are these states also in part created by something deeper, which influenced that decision of the chiefs and priests, something
which lies in the very nature of the Milanese habitat? A vexing question, because in the latter case we confront the profound wellspring of magic mentality that dominates the natives, we come up against the obscure Mothers who are at the origin of the dark night of the soul in this primitive horde.
- The Paradox of Porta Ludovica
(An Essay on a Topological Phenomenon)
To explain the bewilderment, passivity, and. resistance to enculturation also characteristic of these natives, other scientists have espoused the hypothesis originally proposed at the ethnological level by Professor Poa Kilipak. She formulated it in these terms: the Milanese native is in a condition of bewilderment because he lives in a «magic space» where the directions front, back, left, and right are not valid and consequently all orientation is impossible. There can therefore be no endeavor with a defined goal-he.Q.ce the atrophy of various cerebral functions in the native, and a by-now-ancestral state of passivity. According to the native’s understanding (or, actually, according to the scientists who favor positive acknowledgment of magic categories), the space where Milan stands is unstable, preventing any directional calctJ.lation and placing the individual in the .center of coordinates that vary continually. It is therefore a topological space, like that of a microbe that chooses as its dwelling place a wad of chewing gum for the
period of time (a «historical period» for the microbe, a geological era) in which the gum is chewed by a
being of macroscopic aimensions.
«Milanese space» is excellently described by Professor Moa in his Paradox of Porta Ludovica (A Study of Ambiguous Triangulation). All individuals, whether civilized inhabitants of the Marquis Islands or European savages, Moa asserts, move in space according to «orientative programs» carried out through triangulations. These triangulations are based on the assumption of a Euclidean plane geometry, taking as parametric models the forms of the square, the triangle, or the circle. For example, a savage of New York, accustomed to reaching the Hotel Plaza along a straight line from Washington Square, following Fifth Avenue to a point X, knows that by proper triangulation he can reach the same point via «a detour in the form of a square.» In other words, he
can follow the sides of the square West Eighth StreetAvenue of the Americas-Central’ Park South (a ninetydegree angle) -Grand Army Plaza-point X (the main entrance to the Plaza Hotel).
Similarly, a native of Paris who has followed the route Etoile — Place de la Bastille knows that he has
touched two points of a circumference, covering one chord of it, but he could also reach l’Etoile from Place de la Bastille by following the circumference itself in the arc Bvd. Richard Lenoir -Place de la
Republique — Boulevards Saint Martin — Saint DenisBonne Nouvelle — de la Poissoniere-Montmartre Haussmann and finally Avenue Friedland to the Etoile.
The Porta Ludovica paradox is another matter altogether. Here is Profesor Moa on the subject:
We will posit a Milanese native who has achieved an intelligence level capable of grasping abstractions. He formulates the simplest hypothesis concerning his habitat: namely, that Milan has a circular, spiral structure. Of course, no Milanese native could attain
such a level of operative intelligence, precisely because the topological space in which he lives prevents
him from conceiving any stable pattern. Rather, our hypothetical Milanese (as we have posited him) imagines Milan more or less as the surface of a painting by Jackson Pollock. Assume then that the subject in the past has had the following experience (also assuming that, having had the experience, he can remember it and extrapolate a pattern from it): he has
learned that he can reach Porta Ludovica from Piazza Duomo along the straight line Via Mazzini — Corso
Italia. Then he has learned that he can reach Piazza
General Cantore (Porta Genova) from Piazza Duomo along the straight line Via Torino-Carrobbio-Via Correnti- Corso di Porta Genova. Concluding that the two straight lines represent radii of a circumference of which Piazza Duomo is the hub, he ventures to take the Piazza Generale Cantore-Porta Ludovica connection along the
