Ricerc@Sapienza

On the basis of his Italian translation entitled Il mio secolo of Aleksander Wat’s Mój wiek (Palermo 2013) and the idea of translation as “listening” and response/responsibility of identification with the Other, the author returns to Wat’s prison memories and linked thoughts on the subject of time. The prisoner’s isolation, on the one hand, demonstrates the inherent “otherness” of human time (inasmuch as it is a form of “being” – Heidegger’s Dasein – “with others”) making his perception of reality similar to that of a dying person.

On the grounds of crucial theoretical frameworks (provided by Christian Enzensberger, Francesco Orlando, Sigmund Freud, Mary Douglas and others) and by referring to a wide range of literary and artistic examples (Saint Francis, Dario Fo, Tommaso Stigliani, Pina Bausch, Tadeusz Kantor, Simone Cristicchi, Dante, the Comedy of Art, Alfred Jarry, Victor Hugo, Pasolini, Duchamp, Piero Manzoni, Thomas Mann, Sandro Penna and many others), the author argues that all great art is excrementitious and at the same time political: it articulates a satire of the ugliness of the world, a free song coming