Michele De Lucchi @micheledelucchi - Twitter Profile

over 1 year ago

Free on https://t.co/9JrkagDmG2 The Dispute: ‘On each and every feast day of the year, or at least once a week at the pleasure of the Rector, in the order established by the Table which shall be observed in the round, each ascribed member of the College shall set forth in public the axioms and problems of the discipline and science to which he shall be attached, or of the subject which is treated in ordinary scholastic explanations; and a little before or a little after the evening, in the meeting of the other members of the Collegium, who are called by the ringing of the bell, he shall, according to the strength of his intellect and diligence, as subtly as he can, argue and defend them. With those who will descend to the dispute, such an order of argumentation should be maintained that the one who is accepted last into the College should be the first to argue, and so the others thereafter in the same order. [...]’ This text in ancient Italian, taken from the Constitution of the College of Cardinal Federico Borromeo of Pavia, recounts a practice of ‘disputatio’ that took place between students five hundred years ago and in which I too participated, five hundred years later. The confrontation was with Mariangela Guarneri, a great representative of the noble art of poetry. The poster was posted on the door of the college and on the prearranged evening, in the large and sumptuous hall frescoed for the purpose with scenes from the life of St. Charles Borromeo, Federico's uncle, as the rule required, the rector rang the bell and the dispute began. I felt I was in the ring, in front of an attentive and emotionally involved audience, to defend my discipline, Architecture, against Poetry, represented by Mariangela, a wonderful poetess from Cesena. The stakes were high because the rules provide for severe penalties. Lunch on bread and water for the loser and in the event of a knockout even expulsion from the College. ‘Whoever does not put these certain axioms into play on the established days according to the prescription of the table, nor defends himself according to custom by public argument, if he fails once in this duty he shall lunch only on bread and water. If he is again negligent in this respect, he is to be subjected to a double punishment; if he finally persists in his obstinacy, the administrator is to be warned; he is to be punished more severely at his own discretion, even to the point of removal from the College....’. I willingly submitted to the game because this didactic exercise is really beautiful and deserves to be re-proposed even today, in schools, universities, academies, but also in public life because it helps to use words correctly, and dialogue with depth, to highlight the values and qualities of the individual disciplines. It is not a question of discussing to offend or to create animosity and violence, but of discussing to learn. Mariangela was wonderful and drew me to remember my teachers and talk about them, about my ‘eternal adolescence’, which is such for all those who still live on the deepening of early experiences. We talked about contemporary issues and how these intervene to define the role of our mutual disciplines. We spoke in prose I and in verse she, chasing each other in memories and reflections, letting each other inspire us. In the end we clearly recognised the importance of poetry in architecture and vice versa, because poetry is also a construction where instead of bricks there are words. It was a beautiful evening, useful for everyone. Intense and full as few are, also because there was no initial agreement or preparation. Everything happened authentically and spontaneously, and this is a fundamental condition for engaging and convincing in a ‘disputatio’. It is as necessary as ever to bring together positions, cultures, knowledge, and human experience because the importance of communication and cooperation will never diminish in humanity. Although we have at our disposal the largest information network that has ever existed, a very powerful digital processing capacity and artificial intelligence, we are still easy to offend and unable to avoid violent disputes, wars, rages, resentments. Mariangela and I, Poetry and Architecture, the contenders of an evening that will last a lifetime in memory, wordlessly bid each other farewell with a sincere emotional smile.