Mocafico, Haeckel, Blaschka & The Juncture of Wonder

In this post I would like to address three different discoveries I made over the years, and their peculiar relationship.

∼ 2009 ∼

I had just started this blog. During my nightly researches, I remember being impressed by the work of an Italian photographer who specialized in still life pictures: Guido Mocafico.
I was particularly struck – for obvious reasons of personal taste – by his photographs inspired by Dutch vanitas paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries: the pictures showed an outstanding, refined use of light and composition (they almost looked like paintings), but that was not all there was.

In this superb series, Mocafico represented many classic motifs used to symbolize transience (the homo bulla, man being like a soap bubble, but also the hourglass, the burning candle, etc.) with irreproachable taste and philologic attention; the smallest details betrayed a rigorous and deep preparation, a meticulous study which underpinned each of his photographs.

I went on to archive these fascinating photographs, promising myself I would talk about them sooner or later. I never kept that promise, until now.

∼ 2017 ∼

Last year Taschen published a somptuous, giant-size edition of Ernst Haeckel‘s works.
The German scientist, who lived between late 19th century and early 20th century, was an exceptional figure: marine biologist, naturalist, philosopher, he was among the major popularizers of Darwin’s theory of evolution in Germany. He discovered and classified thousands of new species, but above all he depicted them in hundreds of colorful illustrations.

Taschen’s luxurious volume is a neverending wonder, page after page. An immersion into an unknown and alien world – our world, inhabited by microorganisms of breathtaking beauty, graceful jellyfish, living creatures of every shape and structure.

It is a double aesthetic experience: one one hand we are in awe at nature’s imaginative skills, on the other at the artist’s mastery.
I’ll confess that going through the book, I often willingly forget to check the taxonomic labels: after a while, human categories and names seem to lose their meaning, and it’s best to just get lost in sheer contemplation of those perfect, intricate, unusual, exuberant forms.

∼ 2018 ∼

London, Natural History Museum, a couple of weeks ago.
There I am, bewildered for half an hour, looking at the model of a radiolarian, a single-celled organism found in zooplankton. In the darkened room, the light coming from above emphasizes the model’s intricate craftsmanship. The level of detail, the fragility of its thin pseudopods and the rendering of the protozoa’s translucid texture are mind-blowing.

This object’s peculiarity is that it’s made of glass. It’s one of the models created by 19th-century master glassmakers Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka.
And this is just one among thousands and thousands of similar masterpieces created by the two artists from Dresden.

The Blaschkas were a Bohemian family of glass artisans, and when Leopold was born he inherited the genes of several generations of glassmakers. Being especially talented from an early age, he created decorations and glass eyes for many years, until in a short span of time he happened to lose his wife, his son and his father to cholera. Shattered by grief, he took sails towards America but the ship was stopped at sea for two week due to a lack of wind. During this forced arrest, in the darkest period of his life, Leopold was saved by wonder: one night he was looking at the dark ocean, when suddenly he noticed “a flashlike bundle of light beams, as if it is surrounded by thousands of sparks, that form true bundles of fire and of other bright lighting spots, and the seemingly mirrored stars”. He observed those sea creatures in awe, and took sketches of their structure. Since that night, the memory of the magical spectacle he had witnessed never left him.

Years later, back in Dresden and happily remarried, he began creating glass flowers, as a hobby; his orchids were so perfectly crafted that they caught the eye of prince Camille de Rohan first, and then of the director of the Natural History Museum. The latter commissioned twelve sea anemones models; and thus Leopold, remembering that night on the stranded ship, began to work on scientific models. Soon Blaschka’s sea animals – and glass flowers – became famous; Leopold, with the help of his son Rudolph, collaborated with all the most important museums. After his father’s death, Rudolph continued to work developing an even more refined technique, producing 4.400 plant models for Harvard University’s Herbarium.
Together, father and son crafted a total of around 10.000 glass models of sea creatures.

Their artistry attained such perfection that, after them, no glassmaker would ever be able replicate it. “Many people thinkLeopold wrote in 1889 – that we have some secret apparatus by which we can squeeze glass suddenly into these forms, but it is not so. We have tact. My son Rudolf has more than I have, because he is my son, and tact increases in every generation”.

∼ Convergence ∼

Some of our interests, at first glance independent from one another, sometimes turn out to be actually correlated. It is as if, on the map of our own passions, we suddenly discover a secret passage between two areas that we thought were distinct, a “B” spot connecting points “A” and “C”.

In this case, for me the “A” point was Guido Mocafico, the author of the evocative series of photographs entitled Vanités; whom I discovered years ago, and guiltily forgotten.
Haeckel was, in retrospect, my “C” point.
And I never would have thought of linking one to the other, before a “B” point, Blaschka’s glass models, appeared on my mind map

Because, here is the thing: to build their incredible glass invertebrates, Leopold and his son Rudolph were inspired, among other things, by Haeckel’s illustrations.
And you can imagine my surprise when I found out that all the best photographs of the Blaschka models, those you can see in this very article, were taken by… Guido Mocafico.
Unbeknownst to me, during the years I had lost sight of him, the photographer dedicated some amazing series of pictures to the Blaschka models, as you can see on his official website.

I always felt there was a tight connection between Haeckel’s fantastic microorganisms and my beloved vanitas. Their intimate bond, perhaps, was sensed by Mocafico too, in his aesthetic research.
A wonder for the creatures of the world is also the astonishment in regard to their impermanence.
At heart, we – human beings, animals, plants, ecosystems, maybe even reality itself – are but immensely beautiful, yet very fragile, glass masterpieces.

Links, curiosities & mixed wonders – 8

Here we are for a new edition of LC&MW, the perfect column to dawdle and amaze yourself at the beach!
(It is also perfect for me to relax a bit while writing the new book for the BB Collection.) (Speaking of which, until Septembre 15 you can get 20% discount if you buy all 4 books in one bundle — just insert the coupon BUNDLE4 at check out. Comes with a free Bizzarro Bazar Shopper.) (Oh, I almost forgot, the above chameleon is a hand, painted by great Guido Daniele, whose job is to… well, paint hands.)
Alright, let’s begin!

  • In Mexico City, at the Templo Mayor, archeologists finally found one of the legendary Aztech “towers of skulls” that once terrorized the Spanish conquistadores. These racks (called tzompantli) were used to exhibit the remains of warriors who valliantly died in battle, or enemies and war prisoners: they were descibed in many codices and travel diearies. The newly-discovered “tower” could well be the famed Huey Tzompantli, the biggest of them all, an impressing rack that could hold up to 60.000 heads, according to calculations (just imagine the nightmarish view).
    On this new site 650 skulls have been found, but the number is bound to increase as the excavation proceeds. But there’s a mystery: the experts expected to find the remains, as we’ve said, of oung warriors. Until now, they have encountered an unexplicable high rate of women and children — something that left everyone a bit confused. Maybe we have yet to fully understand the true function of the tzompantli?
  • One more archeological mystery: in Peru, some 200km away from the more famous Nazca lines, there is this sort of candelabra carved into the mountain rock. The geoglyph is 181 meters high, can be seen from the water, and nobody knows exactly what it is.

  • During the night on August 21, 1986, in a valley in the north-west province of Cameroon, more than 1700 people and 3500 cattle animals suddenly died in their sleep. What happened?
    Nearby lake Nyos, which the locals believed was haunted by spirits, was responsible for the disaster.
    On the bottom of lake Nyos, active volcanic magma naturally forms a layer of water with a very high CO2 concentration. Recent rainfalls had facilitated the so-called “lake overturn” (or limnic eruption): the lower layer had abruptly shifted to the surface, freeing an immense, invisible carbon dioxide cloud, as big as 80 million cubic meters, which in a few minutes suffocated almost all living beings in the valley. [Discovered via Oddly Historical]

If you find yourself nearby, don’t be afraid to breathe. Today siphons bring water from the bottom to the surface of the lake, so as to free the CO2 gradually and constantly.

  • Ok — what the heck is a swimsuit ad (by Italian firm Tezenis) doing on Bizzarro Bazar?
    Look again. That neck, folks.
    Photoshopping going wrong? Maybe, but I like to think that this pretty girl is actually the successor of great Martin Joe Laurello, star of the freakshow with Ringlin Bros, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Barnum & Bailey and other travelling shows.
    Here you can see him in action, together with fellow performer Bendyman.

  • The latest issue of Godfrey’s Almanack (an installation by the creator of the wonderful Thinker’s Garden) is devoted to the sea, to ancient navigation, to sea monsters. And it is delightful.
  • Say what you wish about Catherine The Great, but she surely had a certain taste for furniture.
  • Meanwhile in Kenya there’s a lawyer who (for the second time!) is trying to sue Israel and us Italians for killing Jesus Christ. That should teach us a lesson. You can murder, plunder and destroy undisturbed for centuries, but never mess with somebody who has connections at the top.
    P.S. An advise for Greek friends: you may be next, start hiding all traces of hemlock.
  • On this website (click on the first picture) you can take a 360° tour through the crytpt of Saint Casimir, Krakow, among open caskets and exposed mummies.

  • The above pic shows one of the casts of Pompeii victims, and it has recently gone viral after a user speculated ironically that the man might have died in the midst of an act of onanism. You can figure out the rest: users making trivial jokes, others deploring the lack of respect for the dead… Now, now, children.
  • If you’re on vacation in Souht East Asia, and you’re thinking about purchasing a bottle of snake wine… well, think again. The practice is quite cruel to begin with, and secondly, there have been reports of snakes waking up after spending months in alcohol, and sending whoever opened the bottle to the hospital or to the grave.

  • From July 21 to 24 I will be at the University of Winchester for the conference organised by Death & The Maiden, a beautiful blog exploring the relationship between women and death, to which I had the pleasure of contributing once or twice. The event looks awesome: panels aside, there will be seminars and workshops (from shroud embroidery to Victorian hairwork techniques), guided tours to local cemeteries, concerts, art performances and film screenings.
    I am bringing my talk Saints, Mothers & Aphrodites, which I hope I will be able to take on tour throughout Italy in autumn.

That’s all for now, see you next time!

Ischia’s creative graves

Art, construction and redemption

Post and pictures by our guestblogger Mario Trani

The island of Ischia, pearl of the Neapolitan Gulf, holds a secret.
It’s a sort of exaltation, a deviant behavior caused by the very limited living space or maybe by an instinctive desire of marking the territory: it’s the plague of frauca — the unauthorized construction, in infringement of all local building regulations.

The Ischian resident, in order to be (or to think of himself as) respected, has to build, construct, erect.
It might be just a screed, a dry stone wall, a second floor or a small living quarter for his son who’s about to get married. All rigorously unauthorized, these supplements to the house are built in disregard of those strict and suffocating rules he feels are killing his creativity; and which often force him to demolish what he so patiently constructed.

No family is without an expert in this field, and often more than one member is mastro fraucatore or mezza cucchiara (nicknames for a master builder).
But the free zone, the real no man’s land where all the islanders’ construction dreams come true is the graveyard.

To walk through the avenues of the Ischia Municipal Cemetery means to discover surprising tombs the relatives of the deceased decorated with materials found around the island: lava stones from the volcanic Mount Epomeo, polished rocks from the many beaches, sea shells and scallops; stones from the Olmitello creek or pizzi bianchi of carsic origin.

conchiglie della mandra

tronco d'albero tagliato nella sua sede originale come verticale della croce

pietre levigate del bagnasciuga

pietre bianche dei pizzi bianchi

conchiglie e pietre levigate del bagnasciuga

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pietre levigate del torrente olmitello

Other tombs incorporate remainings and leftovers from unauthorized constructions, such as unused bricks or decorated floor tiles.

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No grave is similar to another, in this array of different materials and colors. But there is a specific niche of funeral art, reserved to those who worked as fishermen.
To honor the deceased who, during their lifetime, bravely defied the sea for the catch of the day, granting the survival and well-being of their family, a peculiar grave is built in the shape of a gozzo, the typical Ischian fishing boat.

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This is a touching way of saying a last goodbye, and looking at these hand-crafted graves one cannot help but appreciate the genuine creativity of these artisans. But the tombs seem to be the ultimate, ironic redemption of the heirs of Typhon: a payback for that building urge, that longing for cement and concrete which was constantly repressed during their lifetime.

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The island that wasn’t there

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Umberto Eco writes in his Book of Legendary Lands (2013):

There have been lands that were dreamed, described, searched for, registered on maps, and which then disappeared from maps and now everybody knows they never existed. And yet these lands had for the development of civilization the same utopic function of the reign of Prester John, to find which Europeans explored both Asia and Africa, of course finding other things.

And then there are imaginary lands which crossed the threshold of fantasy and stepped right into our world, as improbable as it seems, bursting into shared reality – even if for a brief time.

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In 1968, Rose Island stood some 7 miles from the coast of Rimini, bordering international waters.
It wasn’t a proper island, but rather a man-made platform, which had taken ten years of work and sacrifices to build. Why did it took so long to erect it? Because Rose Island had something different from other marine platforms: it was constructed bypassing or ignoring laws and permits, in a constant fight against bureaucracy. It wasn’t just an extreme case of unauthorized development, it was a true libertarian project. Rose Island declared itself to be an independent Republic.

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This micronation‘s President was Giorgio Rosa, born in 1925, who had been an engineer since 1950. In 1958 he began to shape his dream, his life’s accomplishment. Among economic and technical difficulties, in the following ten years he succeded to plant nine pylons out in the sea, on which he then had the platform’s structure built: 4,300 squared feet of reinforced concrete, suspended at 26 feet above the water level. Rosa and his accomplices even found a freshwater aquifer under the sea bed, which proved useful for the island’s supplies and to create a protected space for docking (which they called “Green Harbor”).

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The idea Giorgio Rosa had was somewhat anarchic and pacific at the same time: “my initial project was to build something that could be free from any constraint, and wouldn’t require a lot of money. On dry land, bureaucracy had become suffocating. […] We wanted to open a bar and a restaurant. Just eat, drink and watch the ships from Trieste passing close by, sometimes even too close. My fondest memory is that of the first night, on the island under construction. Along came a storm, and it looked like it would tear everything apart. But in the morning the sun was shining, everything seemed beautiful and possible. Then trouble began“, he recalls.

Yes, because bureaucracy started fighting back, in a war to chase the rebels who attempted to live over the waves, without paying the government its due.
As the second floor of the platform was finished, Rose Island gained notoriey, while ships and motorboats called there, driven by curiosity. Worried by the growing traffic, port authorities, Italian finance police and government were already on guard.

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That’s how, in the (desperate) attempt to free himself from Italy and its prohibitions once and for all, Rosa unilaterally declared his Island independent on May 1, 1968. Even if he was quite distant from hippies and countercultures, his move was in tune with the fighting spirit of the times: a couple of days later, to the cries of “Banning is banned“, the rebellious civil unrest of May 1968 would begin to take place in Paris.
The newly-born “nation” adopted esperanto as the official language. It began printing its own stamps, and was about to coin its own currency.

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But suddenly things took a bad turn. Points of order were put forward in Parliament both by right and left wing, for once united against the transgressors; Secret Services were sure that the platform actually concealed a base for soviet submarines; others thought the whole thing was an obscure Albanian maneuver.
Once the media event broke out, authorities responded ruthlessly.

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On February 11, 1969, all the concrete parts were demolished, the steel poles and joints were cut, and 165 lb of explosive were detonated on each pylon. On the impact, Rose Island tilted, bended over… but refused to collapse.

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Then, two days later, artificers applied 264 lb of charge to each pillar – a total of more than a ton of explosive. Yet once again, the Island resisted, tilting forward a bit more. Like a dream stubbornly refusing to surrender to the blows of a tangible reality.
It was not to the military that Rose Island eventually decided to give up, but to a violent storm, sinking into the Adriatic Sea on February 26, 1969.

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Today, after 40 years of oblivion, the Insulo de la Rozoj – the esperanto name of this micronation – is the object of renewed attention, through documentaries, novels, theatre plays, shows and museum exhibits, Facebook pages and blogs devoted to it. There are those who doubt the idealistic nature of the project, suspecting that the entire operation was nothing more than an attempt to build a tax haven (Rosa never denied the commercial and turistic purpose of the Island); those who, like the curators of the Museum of Vancouver, find connections with Thomas More‘s writings; and even those who think that Rosa’s feat prefigured the collapse of faith in representative democracy through a mix of political activism, architecture and technology.

Giorgio Rosa is now 90-years-old, and seems amused by his adventure’s revival. After losing his war (“the only one Italy was ever able to win“, he sarcastically stresses out) and having paid for the cost of demolition, he went on with his engineering career. “Don’t even bother to ask me, I’ll tell you: no more islands!

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But if the interest for his experiment is well alive and kicking, it means that we still find that dream of freedom, escape and independence seducing. We could ascribe its modern appeal to our impatience towards the ever more suffocating bureaucracy, to the alluring idea of escaping the economic crisis, to our disillusionment towards institutions, to fear of authorities interfering with our privacy; but maybe the truth is that Rose Island was the realization of one of humanity’s most ancient dreams, Utopia. Which is both a “perfect place” (eu-topia), away from the misery and malfunctions of society, and “non-place” (ou-topia), unreal.

And it’s always pleasant to cherish an impossible, unattainable idea – even though, or provided that, it remains a fantasy.

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Giorgio Rosa’s quotes are taken from here and here. (Thanks Daniele!)

La nave nel buio

Trascorse il logorìo di giorni e giorni.
Ogni gola riarsa e vitreo ogni occhio.
Il logorìo di giorni e giorni!
(S.T. Coleridge, La ballata del vecchio marinaio)

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Talvolta la storia supera qualsiasi racconto folkloristico per macabra fantasia e inaudite coincidenze.

Le Rodeur partì dal golfo del Biafra nell’aprile del 1819, diretto all’isola di Guadalupa. Era una nave schiavista francese, e ospitava a bordo 22 uomini dell’equipaggio e 162 schiavi.
Stipati nel buio della stiva in condizioni igieniche orribili, gli schiavi venivano nutriti poco e male: cibo scarso e spesso avariato, e mezzo bicchiere d’acqua al giorno.

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Dopo 15 giorni di viaggio, alcuni degli schiavi cominciarono a diventare ciechi. All’inizio non venne data molta importanza alla cosa, ma la malattia degli occhi era evidentemente infettiva e l’epidemia cominciò a dilagare fra i prigionieri. Il medico di bordo, convinto che la causa fosse l’aria insalubre e impura che si respirava nella stiva, ordinò che agli schiavi fosse di tanto in tanto permesso di prendere una boccata d’aria. Ma, di fronte agli attoniti marinai, una volta portati sul ponte, molti fra questi schiavi si abbracciavano e si gettavano fuori bordo stretti l’uno fra le braccia dell’altro, impedendosi vicendevolmente di nuotare così da annegare più velocemente. Saltavano davvero “nella speranza, che prevale così universalmente tra di loro, che [i loro spiriti] sarebbero stati velocemente trasportati indietro alle loro case in Africa” – come sosteneva un anno dopo M. Benjamin Constant nel suo discorso alla Camera dei Deputati di Francia? Probabile, ma possiamo anche immaginare che per un uomo catturato, incatenato, chiuso al buio in condizioni terrificanti e i cui occhi avevano smesso di vedere la luce, le onde del mare sembrassero un destino preferibile a quello  che lo attendeva sul Rodeur.

Quale che fosse la motivazione, al capitano della nave non piaceva affatto perdere il suo prezioso carico in quel modo. Così ordinò che gli schiavi che venivano fermati mentre tentavano il suicidio, fossero poi fucilati o impiccati di fronte ai loro compagni.

Ma l’epidemia non si fermava: in breve tutti i prigionieri persero la vista, e allora fu lo stesso capitano a cominciare a gettare gli schiavi fuori bordo, nel tentativo di arginare l’avanzare della malattia (e di risparmiare sui costi di mantenimento per una “merce” ormai invendibile); 36 uomini persero la vita così, buttati alle onde.

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A poco a poco anche l’equipaggio cominciò ad essere inesorabilmente infettato dall’oftalmia, finché rimase soltanto un uomo ancora capace di vedere. L’unico in grado di stare al timone, e di cercare di riportare il Rodeur verso la salvezza – e forse anche la sua vista aveva le ore contate.

A tentoni, nelle tenebre della cecità, i marinai si diedero il cambio per giorni alle corde, senza speranza. E poi, un mattino, successe quello che il giornalista John Randolph Spears definì “uno degli incidenti più rimarchevoli della storia del commercio marino”. Mentre cercava disperatamente di recuperare la rotta, il solitario timoniere del Rodeur avvistò una nave che avanzava a vele spiegate: era la goletta schiavista spagnola Leon. La gioia esplose fra la ciurma: la fortuna aveva portato dei soccorsi proprio verso di loro!

Mentre la nave spagnola si avvicinava, però, gli occhi affaticati del timoniere si accorsero che essa sembrava andare alla deriva – le gomene erano lente e sfatte, e il ponte completamente deserto. Pareva un relitto galleggiante, abbandonato al mare, che si prendeva gioco delle loro speranze di salvataggio. Ma il Leon non era completamente deserto: arrivati a una distanza sufficiente da poter essere sentiti, i marinai francesi si misero a gridare verso la nave e finalmente degli uomini cominciarono ad apparire. Ma i passeggeri della nave straniera erano allucinati e terrorizzati tanto quanto i marinai del Rodeur: aggrappandosi alla balaustra, gli spagnoli risposero urlando che tutto il loro equipaggio era divenuto cieco a causa di una malattia sviluppatasi fra gli schiavi. In un attimo la speranza si trasformò in orrore, perché proprio dalla nave che avrebbe dovuto portare il Rodeur fuori dall’incubo, arrivava ora una preghiera di salvezza.

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Colpite dallo stesso morbo e incapaci di darsi aiuto, le due navi si separarono.
Il 21 Giugno il Rodeur raggiunse Guadalupa; secondo la Bibliothèque Ophthalmologique, l’unico uomo che era scampato all’oftalmia divenne cieco tre giorni dopo essere riuscito a ricondurre in porto la nave.
Il Leon invece si perse nell’Atlantico, e non se ne seppe più nulla.

Tristan da Cunha

Aprite un atlante e guardate bene l’Oceano Atlantico, sotto l’equatore. Notate nulla?

Al centro dell’oceano, praticamente a metà strada fra l’Africa e l’America del Sud, potete scorgere un puntino. Completamente perduta nell’infinita distesa d’acqua, ecco Tristan da Cunha, l’ultimo sogno di ogni romantico: l’isola abitata più inaccessibile del mondo.

L’isola, di origine vulcanica, venne avvistata per la prima volta nel 1506; le sue coste vennero esplorate nel 1767, ma fu soltanto nel 1810 che un singolo uomo, Jonathan Lambert, vi si rifugiò, dichiarandola di sua proprietà. Lambert, però, morì due anni dopo, e Tristan venne annessa dalla Gran Bretagna (per evitare che qualcuno potesse usarla come base per tentare la liberazione di Napoleone, esiliato nel frattempo a Sant’Elena). Tristan da Cunha divenne per lungo tempo scalo per le baleniere dei mari del Sud, e per le navi che circumnavigavano l’Africa per giungere in Oriente. Poi, quando venne aperto il Canale di Suez, l’isolamento dell’arcipelago diventò pressoché assoluto.

Le correnti burrascose si infrangevano con violenza sulle rocce di fronte all’unico centro abitato dell’isola, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, chiamato dai pochi isolani The Settlement. Chi sbarcava a Tristan, o lo faceva a causa di un naufragio oppure nel disperato tentativo di evitarlo. Fra i naufraghi e i primi coloni, c’erano anche alcuni navigatori italiani.

Nel 1892, infatti, due marinai di Camogli naufraghi del Brigantino Italia infrantosi sulle scogliere dell’Isola decisero, per amore di due isolane, di stabilirsi a Tristan da Cunha; essi diedero vita a due nuove famiglie (che ancor oggi portano il loro nome, Lavarello e Repetto) che si aggiunsero alle cinque già esistenti sull’isola, completando in questo modo il quadro delle parentele che esiste uguale ancor oggi a più di un secolo di distanza. Dopo i due italiani, nessun altro si fermerà a Tristan da Cunha originando nuove stirpi.

Passarono i decenni, ma la vita sull’isola rimase improntata alla semplicità rurale. Fra i tranquilli campi di patate e le basse case di pietra giunsero lontani racconti di una Grande Guerra, poi di un’altra. Tristan rimase pacifica, protetta dal suo deserto d’acqua, una terra emersa inaccessibile che nemmeno il progresso industriale poteva guastare.

Poi, nel 1961, il vulcano al centro dell’isola si risvegliò, e gli abitanti vennero evacuati. Sfollati in Sud Africa, rimasero disgustati dall’apartheid che vi regnava, così distante dai principi solidaristici della loro primitiva e utopica comunità. Ottennero così di essere trasferiti in Gran Bretagna, e lì scoprirono un mondo radicalmente diverso: un Occidente in pieno boom economico, che si apprestava a conquistare ogni risorsa, perfino a spedire uomini sulla Luna.

Dopo due anni, gli isolani ne avevano abbastanza della rumorosa modernità. Ottennero il permesso di tornare a Tristan, e nel ’63 sbarcarono nuovamente sulla loro terra, e tornarono ad occuparsi delle loro fattorie.

E anche oggi, Tristan resta un’isola mitica e remota: è raggiungibile unicamente via mare, e se ottenete il necessario permesso per sbarcare, neanche così è molto semplice. Non c’è infatti un porto sull’isola, che deve essere raggiunta mediante piccole imbarcazioni che sfidano le violente onde dell’oceano.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgIg4TdvBjQ]

Gli abitanti, oggi poco più di 260, pur fieri ed orgogliosi della loro solitudine, si stanno lentamente aprendo alle nuove tecnologie (per molto tempo l’unico accesso a internet è rimasto all’interno dell’ufficio dell’Amministratore dell’isola). Vivono in armonia e serenità, senza alcuna traccia di criminalità. La proprietà privata è stata introdotta soltanto nel 1999. Le navi da crociera che fanno scalo a Tristan sono pochissime (meno di una decina in tutto l’anno), e le uniche imbarcazioni che vi si recano regolarmente sono quelle dei pescatori di aragoste del Sud Africa.

Anna Lajolo e Giulio Lombardi hanno passato tre mesi sull’isola, intessendo rapporti di amicizia con gli islanders, e sono ritornati in Italia regalandoci un documentario, e diversi testi fondamentali per comprendere le difficoltà e le delizie della vita in questo paradiso dimenticato dal mondo, e lo spirito concreto e generoso degli abitanti: L’isola in capo al mondo, 1994; Tristan de Cuña: i confini dell’asma, 1996; Tristan de Cuña l’isola leggendaria, 1999; Le lettere di Tristan, 2006.

Ecco il sito governativo dell’isola.

Metà animale, metà pianta

Abbiamo già parlato dell’agnello vegetale, fantasioso ibrido di pianta e mammifero. Ma se l’agnello vegetale è una leggenda fantastica, la Elysia chlorotica è realtà.

Questo mollusco marino, studiato per vent’anni da Sidney Pierce, biologo all’Università della Florida del Sud a Tampa, ha lasciato molti scienziati di stucco: la sua evoluzione l’ha portato infatti ad “appropriarsi” di un procedimento di nutrizione finora riscontrato esclusivamente nelle piante – la fotosintesi clorofilliana.

Non soltanto questa specie di lumaca dei fondali marini riesce a trasformare la luce del sole in energia (cosa che soltanto le piante sono in grado di fare), ma sembra che assuma questa facoltà dalle alghe che ingerisce.

Originari delle paludi salate del New England e del Canada, questi animali si sono appropriati dei geni responsabili della produzione di clorofilla presenti nelle alghe che costituiscono la loro dieta, assieme ad alcune parti di cellule chiamate cloroplasti. I progenitori hanno quindi passato questo patrimonio genetico alle nuove generazioni, in modo che basta a un nuovo nato un unico pasto di alghe per rubare i cloroplasti ed acquisire così questi incredibili “superpoteri”.

Raccolte e tenute in un acquario per mesi, le lumachine sono in grado di sopravvivere senza cibo, finché una luce assicura loro il giusto apporto energetico. Così, in mare, possono sopportare lunghe “carestie” di alghe semplicemente cibandosi dei raggi del sole. Che l’evoluzione fosse creativa e sorprendente si sapeva. Ma un animale che produce clorofilla e si comporta da pianta supera di gran lunga le aspettative degli scienziati più fantasiosi.

Ecco un articolo (in inglese) sulle stupefacenti proprietà dell’elysia chlorotica.

Una crociera agitata

Una tranquilla crociera nell’Oceano Pacifico si trasforma in pochi attimi in un disaster movie. Le telecamere di sicurezza della Pacific Sun Cruise, nave australiana, mostrano il caos scatenato all’interno dell’imbarcazione da una tempesta con onde alte diversi metri. Il bilancio: 42 feriti sui 2403 passeggeri a bordo.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-WZU1X–IM]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1kWjmDy85w]

Il vostro prossimo cucciolo – VI

Nessun acquario è completo senza uno splendido blobfish dallo sguardo malizioso e intelligente. Il fatto che questi pesci siano stati raramente visti dal vivo non dovrà scoraggiarvi. Armatevi di coraggio e pazienza, partite per gli oceani che circondano Australia e Tasmania, e non tornate a casa senza il vostro nuovo cucciolino!

Il vostro blobfish non vi impegnerà molto: passa il suo tempo a fluttuare, senza fare granché, aspettando che qualche detrito o pezzo di cibo finisca nelle sue vicinanze per mangiare. Il suo corpo meno denso dell’acqua gli permette di vivere così, cincischiando, senza il bisogno di avere una muscolatura comparabile a quella degli altri pesci. Molto zen.