ASTRATTA COMMEDIA

PROLOUGE

Just above, or else below, that is an infinitesimal step either on this side, beyond reality to which thought and life and the world correspond, there is nothing. (Pause. The voice softens) Not that empty and frightful nothing, which everybody is bound to come across sooner or later; (in a bright limpid voice as if it were going to welcome a newly born) there is a kind of nothing, which has just been discovered, e newly generated being, an uncreated universe, which is neither urged to become concrete nor to exist, (Pause). It is a universe which will never be the way we have imagined ……(with a suspension).
It is not a thing, neither its loss. It does neither hoard nor fill; it lives and dies - it neither lives nor dies (a mystery). Never fixed, it establishes nothing beforehand. It does not require to exist, it does not need to be thought of. (Pause). It is the place of a fulfilled nothing, a "good infinite" greater than any other infinite. (Taking a deep breathe. And then rushing the speech). Here there is neither land, nor sea, nor light, nor shadow, nor sky, nor stars. (Pause). No humans, no plants, no animals: here dying of the concrete thing has ceased. There is neither being, nor having; there is neither envy, nor possession, nor hate and not even unconscious love. (Pause).
(With a deep voice). Here is detachment, the largest void beyond grief. It is the word beyond itself, (stressing the intonation) the speech beyond the imprinting it leaves, beyond its own meaning. (Pause). Where dying ceases, the Other becomes true. Absence originates and disappears as well, rich in spirits and mercy. Brimming with itself, its saying and contradicting, differently from the body-brain. (With a different tone of the voice and hurrying up the speech towards its end). Grief and matter without the power of assertion, the imprint of prevarication. The species Homo has finished outside itself in the end, fascinated by the masterly game of absent void, of a free and discerning questioning.

OFF-STAGE VOICE OF ALILANTI IN METI, IN A-LOGO.
You blessed ones…

SECOND OFF-STAGE VOICE (The same as before, now open to humour, light-hearted, lively and cheerful, with a hint of melancholy at the bottom. Like a nursery rhyme.)

It's a nothing
We rejoice in,
Sober, alert, saddened at times,
Yet happy and proud we are,
And by no means frightened,
often lively and happy,
outside the same old embellishments.