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Abstract
The multiplication of the island-ego in a chain of visual and sound resonances expands each episode remembered by Arturo in a mythicizing, over-temporal memorial projection, weaving a fabulous web around everything, even the most concrete details. The vision of this slender thread reverberates in the game of mirrors of the Morantian self, binding itself many times to the tissue of the starry sky. By entrusting all the weight of the narrative to the “memoirs of a child”, Elsa Morante recovers, in the heart of the twentieth century, the “famous thread of the story” which, if Arturo is lying down with his head thrown back towards the celestial vault, manifests as a long astral thread, a cosmic web. If the boy-star weaves his mythical destiny, if he knots destinies, stars and everyday things, it is because he has the pages of books around him, the first circle of his transfiguring power. It is Morante herself who protects her “passionate boy”, falling him asleep in her story-telling, exotic and familiar plot, which freezes the natural movement of the Bildungsroman. Arturo, right in the first pages, gives us the clue to keep tight to get out of limbo: “I read lying down”, he tells us, lying down like the Guttuso’s Boy asleep on boat, chosen for the cover, lying down like when we contemplate the stars.