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The mystery of the severed heads of Pisa

The University of Pisa was historically one of the first to have an anatomical school; consequently the Museum of Human Anatomy, established at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is very rich in both dry and wet preparations.

It also houses some archaeological collections, including Egyptian and pre-Columbian mummies, and a whole series of artifacts coming in particular from South America.

When I visited it last year, among the many amazing preparations, a cabinet display in particular caught my eye.
It contains eight perfectly mummified heads, which immediately seemed different to me from the rest of the collection. And in fact I was not wrong: even today a mystery surrounds them.

To understand a little bit of the history of these heads we must start from the date of their arrival in Pisa, that is 1869, a period of particular ferment.

Five years earlier, Darwin’s Origin of Species had been translated into Italian, causing quite a stir. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the theory of the evolution fueled the curiosity of researchers and laymen.
In an academic speech delivered in 1874, prof. Pietro Duranti said:

Everyone discusses it, people of all ages, of all sexes, of all conditions; and the desire to descend from the Orangutan or the Gorilla has become a fever. Aside from the exaggeration and the ridicule, the matter is serious; scholarly and distinguished men support it here and there; and Ethnology hopes to solve it.(1)P. Duranti, Discorso pronunziato dal Cav. Prof. Pietro Duranti nel giorno 17 novembre 1874. Tipografia Nistri, Pisa (1875)

To “solve” the question, that is, to understand how evolution works, it was necessary, however, to “gather the appropriate materials“.

Carlo Regnoli, a young Pisan physician and paleontologist, decided to make his contribution, traveling twice to South America (in 1869 and 1872) in search of mummies and pre-Columbian finds. As Duranti said in that same speech:

[Regnoli] crosses the ocean twice; he directs and extends his research to a large part of South America, from the tombs of Argentina to those of the beaches of the Strait of Magellan and of the anthropophagous Patagonia; from the burial grounds of Araucania, of Chile, to those of the very high mountains of Bolivia, to the hypogea of the great Titicaca lake, to the caves of Peru. And everywhere, rummaging and searching, he collects both the remains of the Spaniards, who brought Columbus there, and the remains of the very ancient and unknown aborigines; and he sends everything back to Europe, to his beloved Pisa.

Regnoli sent several crates to Pisa with the antiquities “which he earned at the price of money, inconvenience and dangers“, although not all of them reached their destination because some were lost during shipwrecks: “as soon as they were unearthed from the ground, they were buried again in the deep whirlpools of the ocean“.

However, the amount of material that survived, and which today is part of the Museum of Anatomy in Pisa, was truly remarkable. Among other things, there are various examples of pottery, funeral and votive objects, skulls, fardos — “cocoons” of cloth containing the remains of the deceased — as well as two natural Peruvian mummies, curled up in the classic fetal positioning.(2)G. Natale, A. Paparelli, F. Garbari, Una lettera di Giovanni Arcangeli su alcuni reperti botanici precolombiani della Collezione Regnoli (Museo di anatomia umana dell’Università di Pisa), in Atti della Società toscana di scienze naturali, Mem., Serie B, vol. 113 (2006)

Unfortunately, Carlo Regnoli died shortly after his return to Italy, at the age of 35 in 1873; consequently very little information accompanies the pre-Columbian finds, regarding the dates and places of their discovery.

In the inventory, the eight mummified heads are vaguely cataloged as “Chilean heads”. But who were these individuals, when and how did they die?

The first analyzes, conducted by a multidisciplinary study group(3)P. Barile, M. Longhena, R. Melli, S. Zampetti, P. Lenzi, G. Natale, D. Caramella, El estraño caso de las cabezas decapitadas, Revista DM MD – Ciencia y Cultura Médica, N. 26 (Giugno 2015), have already begun to shed some light on this enigma, even if many questions remain unsolved.

Five heads are male, one female, and two belong to children. The study of the teeth and sutures on the skulls of the two babies indicates that they were less than 16 months old.

The truly macabre detail, however, comes from the examination of the neck: all the heads show clean cuts at the level of the second and third cervical vertebrae; these eight individuals were executed by beheading.

Before being killed, the woman received a blow to the face so violent as to break her nose and swell one eye: there are in fact signs of a ptosis (lowering of the eyelid) of traumatic origin, and the nasal septum is deviated in the same direction where the right eyelid is folded.

Radiocarbon dating made it possible to establish with a high probability that these finds date back to an era between 1440 and 1690.

Right in the middle of this period of time, around 1546, began the longest conflict in history, the Arauco war, fought in Chile between the Mapuche of the Araucania region and the Spanish colonists. The bloody execution of these eight individuals could therefore be linked in some way to the war massacres, but in the absence of further information this remains speculation.

As for the identity of the eight individuals, there is a further element of interest. The anthropological characteristics of the heads of adult males (scalp, hair and beard, shape of the incisors, etc.) seem to suggest that they were Europeans of Caucasian ethnicity; the female, on the other hand, wears two long braids which have similarities with some pre-Columbian cultures and the shape of her teeth would also confirm her indigenous origin. For this reason, a plausible hypothesis is that this was a mixed family, made up of male settlers married to native women.

Was this family massacred in the course of some reprisal or pillage?

DNA analysis will be able to confirm or deny any degree of kinship, but anyways it seems difficult that we can ever trace the true, complete story of these tragically killed people; nor the exact circumstances in which Regnoli came into possession of the heads.

On this subject, it is worth making a final, brief clarification.

To modern eyes, the attitude of a European academic buying human remains or funeral objects belonging to different cultures may seem utterly colonial. And, let’s face it, it is.

Certainly at the time the scruples on the methods of archaeological “collection” were almost non-existent, especially for a discipline such as ethnology which was taking its first steps; but if today these methods seem questionable, it is interesting to remember that the intentions and implications of these studies were often, paradoxically, anti-colonial and anti-racist.

We have already mentioned, at the beginning of this article, the fuss raised by Darwin. From that debate two currents emerged, in many ways opposite to each other: on the one hand, social Spencerism, which was eager to use the evolution of the species and the survival of the fittest to motivate racism and class differences (an idea strongly opposed by Darwin himself); and on the other hand the ethno-anthropological evolutionism, which instead denied the existence of races, claiming that all societies proceeded on the same line of progress. For evolutionists, studying “savage” populations — who were not seen as inferior to the white man but merely situated at a more immature stage of progress — could provide clues as to how the ancestors of Europeans also lived.

Today even this kind of nineteenth-century anthropological evolutionism is outdated (following the decline of the positivist idea of a linear “progress” which, coincidentally, always saw Western societies as the most advanced ones); but it had the merit of countering the scientific claim of racist and colonial theories.

It seems a contradiction, but it’s one of those apparent incongruities history is full of: with the anthropological study of “primitive societies”, carried out by looting tombs and acquiring ethically questionable finds, the historical foundations were laid for the confutation of the existence of races, now proven also at the genetic level.

The eight heads remain silent on the shelf of the Museum, united by a tragic destiny: they are a complex symbol of the violence, oppression and cruelty of which the human being is capable. Their identity, the life they spent, the carnage in which they found their end and even their post-mortem history remain hidden secrets in the folds of time.

Here is the official site of the “Filippo Civinini” Museum of Human Anatomy in Pisa; it is also possible to make a 360 ° virtual visit.

Note

Note
↑1 P. Duranti, Discorso pronunziato dal Cav. Prof. Pietro Duranti nel giorno 17 novembre 1874. Tipografia Nistri, Pisa (1875)
↑2 G. Natale, A. Paparelli, F. Garbari, Una lettera di Giovanni Arcangeli su alcuni reperti botanici precolombiani della Collezione Regnoli (Museo di anatomia umana dell’Università di Pisa), in Atti della Società toscana di scienze naturali, Mem., Serie B, vol. 113 (2006)
↑3 P. Barile, M. Longhena, R. Melli, S. Zampetti, P. Lenzi, G. Natale, D. Caramella, El estraño caso de las cabezas decapitadas, Revista DM MD – Ciencia y Cultura Médica, N. 26 (Giugno 2015)

Macabre Masks

The Templo Mayor, built between 1337 and 1487, was the political and religious heart of Tenochtitlán, the city-state in Valley of Mexico that became the capital of the Aztec empire starting from the 15th Century.
Since its remains were accidentally discovered in 1978, during the excavations for Mexico City’s subway, archeologists have unearthed close to 80 ceremonial buildings and an extraordinary number of manufacts from the Aztec (Mexica) civilization.

Among the most peculiar findings, there are some masks created from human skulls.
These masks are quite elaborate: the back of the skull was removed, probably in order to wear them or apply them to a headgear; the masks were colored with dye; flint blades and other decorations were inserted into the eye sockets and nostrils.

In 2016 a team of anthropologists from the University of Montana conducted an experimental research on eight of these masks, comparing them with twenty non-modified skulls found on the same site, in order to learn their sex, age at death, possible diseases and life styles. The results showed that the skull masks belonged to male individuals, 30 to 45-years old, with particularly good teeth, indicating above-average health. From the denture’s shape the anthropologists even inferred that these men came from faraway locations: Toluca Valley, Western Mexico, the Gulf coast and other Aztec towns in the Valley of Mexico. Therefore the skulls very likely belonged to prisoners of noble origins, excellently nourished and lacking any pathologies.

Human sacrifices at the Templo Mayor, for which the Aztecs are sadly known, were a spectacle that could entail different procedures: sometimes the victims were executed by beheading, sometimes through the extraction of the heart, or burned, or challenged to deathly combats.
The masks were produced from the bodies of sacrified warriors; wearing them must have had a highly symbolic value.

If these items survived the ravages of time, it’s because they’re made of bones. But there existed other, more unsettling disguises that have been inevitably lost: the masks made from the flayed skin of a sacrified enemy’s face.

The conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo described these skin masks as tanned to look “like glove leather” and said that they were worn during celebrations of military victories. Other masks, made of human skin, were displayed as offerings on temple altars, just as a number of the skull masks, reanimated by shell and stone eyeballs, noses, and tongues, were buried in offerings at the Templo Mayor. Because a defeated enemy’s former powers were believed to be embedded in his skin and bones, masks made of his relics not only transferred his powers to the new owner but could serve as worthy offerings to the god as well.

(Cecelia F. Klein, Aztec Masks, in Mexicolore, September 2012)

During a month-long ceremony called Tlacaxiphualiztli, “the Flaying of Men”, the skin of sacrified prisoners was peeled off and worn for twenty days to celebrate the war god Xipe Totec. The iconography portrays this god clothed in human skin.

Such masks, wether made of bone or of skin, have a much deeper meaning than the ritual itself. They play an important role in establishing identity:

In Aztec society a warrior who killed his first captive was said to ‘assume another face.’ Regardless of whether this expression referred literally to a trophy mask or was simply a figure of speech, it implies that the youth’s new “face” represented a new social identity or status. Aztec masks therefore must be understood as revelations, or signs, of a person’s special status rather than as disguises […]. In Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs, the word for face, xayacatl, is the same word used to refer to something that covers the face.

(Cecelia F. Klein, Ibid.)

Here is the interesting point: there’s not a single culture in the whole world which hasn’t elaborated its own masks, and they very rarely are simple disguises.
Their purpose is “the development of personality […], or more accurately, the development of the person [which] is a question of magical prestige“: the masks “are actually used among primitives in in totem ceremonies, for instance, as a means of enhancing or changing the personality” (Carl Gustav Jung, The Ego and the Uncoscious, 1928, p. 155).

Much in the same way, the decorated skulls of Templo Mayor are not so “exotic” as we might like to imagine. These manufacts are but a different declination of ideas we are quite familiar with — ideas that are at the very core of our own society.

The relationship between the face (our identity and individuality) and the mask we wear, is a very ancient paradox. Just like for the Aztecs the term xayacatl could indicate both the mask and the face, for us too they are often indistinguishable.

The very word person comes from the Latin “per-sonare”, “to resound through”: it’s the voice of the actor behind his mask.
Greek tragedy was born between the 7th and 5th century BCE, a representation that essentialy a substitute for human sacrifices, as Réné Girard affirmed. One of the most recognized etimologies tells us that tragedy is actually the song of the scapgoat: an imitation of the ritual killing of the “internal stranger” on the altar, of the bloody spectacle with which society cleansed itself, and washed away its most impure, primiteve urges. Tragedy plays – which Athenians were obligated to attend by law, during Dionysus celebrations – substituted the ancestral violence of the sacrifice with its representation, and the scapegoat with the tragic hero.

Thus the theater, in the beginning, was conflict and catharsis. A duel between the Barbarian, who knows no language and acts through natural instinct, and the Citizen, the son of order and logos.
Theater, just like human sacrifice, created cultural identity; the Mask creates the person needed for the mise-en-scene of this identity, forming and regulating social interactions.

The human sacrifices of the ancient Greeks and of the Aztec both met the same need: cultural identity is born (or at least reinforced) by contrast with the adversary, offered and killed on the altar.
Reducing the enemy to a skull — as the Aztecs did with the tzompantli, the terrible racks used to exhibit dozens, maybe hundreds of sacrifice victims skulls — is a way of depriving him of his mask/face, of annihilating his identity. Here are the enemies, all alike, just bleached bones under the sun, with no individual quality whatsoever.

But turning these skulls into masks, or wearing the enemy’s skin, implies a tough work, and therefore means performing an even more conscious magical act: it serves the purpose of acquiring his strength and power, but also of reasserting that the person (and, by extension, society) only exists because of the Stranger it was able to defeat.

Unearthing Gorini, The Petrifier

This post originally appeared on The Order of the Good Death

Many years ago, as I had just begun to explore the history of medicine and anatomical preparations, I became utterly fascinated with the so-called “petrifiers”: 19th and early 20th century anatomists who carried out obscure chemical procedures in order to give their specimens an almost stone-like, everlasting solidity.
Their purpose was to solve two problems at once: the constant shortage of corpses to dissect, and the issue of hygiene problems (yes, back in the time dissection was a messy deal).
Each petrifier perfected his own secret formula to achieve virtually incorruptible anatomical preparations: the art of petrifaction became an exquisitely Italian specialty, a branch of anatomy that flourished due to a series of cultural, scientific and political factors.

When I first encountered the figure of Paolo Gorini (1813-1881), I made the mistake of assuming his work was very similar to that of his fellow petrifiers.
But as soon as I stepped foot inside the wonderful Gorini Collection in Lodi, near Milan, I was surprised at how few scientifically-oriented preparations it contained: most specimens were actually whole, undissected human heads, feet, hands, infants, etc. It struck me that these were not meant as medical studies: they were attempts at preserving the body forever. Was Gorini looking for a way to have the deceased transformed into a genuine statue? Why?
I needed to know more.

A biographical research is a mighty strange experience: digging into the past in search of someone’s secret is always an enterprise doomed to failure. No matter how much you read about a person’s life, their deepest desires and dreams remain forever inaccessible.
And yet, the more I examined books, papers, documents about Paolo Gorini, the more I felt I could somehow relate to this man’s quest.
Yes, he was an eccentric genius. Yes, he lived alone in his ghoulish laboratory, surrounded by “the bodies of men and beasts, human limbs and organs, heads with their hair preserved […], items made from animal substances for use as chess or draughts pieces; petrified livers and brain tissue, hardened skin and hides, nerve tissue from oxen, etc.”. And yes, he somehow enjoyed incarnating the mad scientist character, especially among his bohemian friends – writers and intellectuals who venerated him. But there was more.

It was necessary to strip away the legend from the man. So, as one of Gorini’s greatest passions was geology, I approached him as if he was a planet: progressing deeper and deeper, through the different layers of crust that make up his stratified enigma.
The outer layer was the one produced by mythmaking folklore, nourished by whispered tales, by fleeting glimpses of horrific visions and by popular rumors. “The Magician”, they called him. The man who could turn bodies into stone, who could create mountains from molten lava (as he actually did in his “experimental geology” public demonstrations).
The layer immediately beneath that unveiled the image of an “anomalous” scientist who was, however, well rooted in the Zeitgeist of his times, its spirit and its disputes, with all the vices and virtues derived therefrom.
The most intimate layer – the man himself – will perhaps always be a matter of speculation. And yet certain anecdotes are so colorful that they allowed me to get a glimpse of his fears and hopes.

Still, I didn’t know why I felt so strangely close to Gorini.

His preparations sure look grotesque and macabre from our point of view. He had access to unclaimed bodies at the morgue, and could experiment on an inconceivable number of corpses (“For most of my life I have substituted – without much discomfort – the company of the dead for the company of the living…”), and many of the faces that we can see in the Museum are those of peasants and poor people. This is the reason why so many visitors might find the Collection in Lodi quite unsettling, as opposed to a more “classic” anatomical display.
And yet, here is what looks like a macroscopic incongruity: near the end of his life, Gorini patented the first really efficient crematory. His model was so good it was implemented all over the world, from London to India. One could wonder why this man, who had devoted his entire life to making corpses eternal, suddenly sought to destroy them through fire.
Evidently, Gorini wasn’t fighting death; his crusade was against putrefaction.

When Paolo was only 12 years old, he saw his own father die in a horrific carriage accident. He later wrote: “That day was the black point of my life that marked the separation between light and darkness, the end of all joy, the beginning of an unending procession of disasters. From that day onwards I felt myself to be a stranger in this world…”
The thought of his beloved father’s body, rotting inside the grave, probably haunted him ever since. “To realize what happens to the corpse once it has been closed inside its underground prison is a truly horrific thing. If we were somehow able to look down and see inside it, any other way of treating the dead would be judged as less cruel, and the practice of burial would be irreversibly condemned”.

That’s when it hit me.


This was exactly what made his work so relevant: all Gorini was really trying to do was elaborate a new way of dealing with the “scandal” of dead bodies.
He was tirelessly seeking a more suitable relationship with the remains of missing loved ones. For a time, he truly believed petrifaction could be the answer. Who would ever resort to a portrait – he thought – when a loved one could be directly immortalized for all eternity?
Gorini even suggested that his petrified heads be used to adorn the gravestones of Lodi’s cemetery – an unfortunate but candid proposal, made with the most genuine conviction and a personal sense of pietas. (Needless to say this idea was not received with much enthusiasm).

Gorini was surely eccentric and weird but, far from being a madman, he was also cherished by his fellow citizens in Lodi, on the account of his incredible kindness and generosity. He was a well-loved teacher and a passionate patriot, always worried that his inventions might be useful to the community.
Therefore, as soon as he realized that petrifaction might well have its advantages in the scientific field, but it was neither a practical nor a welcome way of dealing with the deceased, he turned to cremation.

Redefining the way we as a society interact with the departed, bringing attention to the way we treat bodies, focusing on new technologies in the death field – all these modern concerns were already at the core of his research.
He was a man of his time, but also far ahead of it. Gorini the scientist and engineer, devoted to the destiny of the dead, would paradoxically encounter more fertile conditions today than in the 20th century. It’s not hard to imagine him enthusiastically experimenting with alkaline hydrolysis or other futuristic techniques of treating human remains. And even if some of his solutions, such as his petrifaction procedures, are now inevitably dated and detached from contemporary attitudes, they do seem to have been the beginning of a still pertinent urge and of a research that continues today.

The Petrifier is the fifth volume of the Bizzarro Bazar Collection. Text (both in Italian and English) by Ivan Cenzi, photographs by Carlo Vannini.

 

“Savage” heads

shrunken_heads

Enclosed in their display cases, unperturbed behind the glass, the heads attract yet another group of visitors.
They are watched, scrutinized, inspected in every smallest detail by a multitude of wide-open eyes. The children are in the front row, as usual, their noses pressed against the glass, their small faces suspended between a grimace of disgust and an excited, amazed look.
As for the adults, their wonder is somehow tarnished by judgment or, better, prejudice. “You have to understad that for these indigenous people it was a sacred practice”, sentences a nice gentleman, eager to prove his broad cultural views. “Still, it’s a horrible thing”, replies his wife, a little disgusted.
The scene repeats itself each and every day, for the heads sitting under the glass.
And few of the visitors understand they’re not actually looking at real objects from an ancient, distant culture. They are admiring a fantasy, the idea of that culture that Westerners have created and built.

Mokomokai14

The two basic kinds of heads presented in anthropological sections of museums all around the world are tsantsas and mokomokai.

The most famous tsantsas are the ones hailing from South America and created by the Jivaro peoples; among these tribes, the most prolific in fabricating such trophies were undoubtedly the Shuar and the Achuar, who lived between Ecuador and Peru.

Shrunken-head-pr

The Shuar technique for shrinking heads was complex: an incision was made from the nape to the top of the head; once completely skinned, after paying specific attention as to keep all the hair intact, the skull was discarded. The facial skin was then boiled. Any trace of soft tissue had to be eliminated by rolling red-hot pebbles inside the skin, which was then further scraped with hot sand, roasted on flat stones, and so on. It was a delicate and meticulous procedure, until eventually the head was reduced to one fourth of the original size.

What was the purpose of such dedication?
The tsantsas were part of solemn celebrations which lasted several years, and were meant to capture the extraordinary power of the victim’s soul. They were not actually war trophies, in spite of what you can sometimes read, because the Shuar and Achuar usually lived quite peacefully: the occasional raids organized by the various tribes to hunt for tsantsas were a form of socially accepted violence, as there was no purpose in it other than obtaining these very powerful objects.
Great feasts welcomed the return of the headhunters, and these celebrations were the most important in the whole year. The intrinsic power the tsantsas was transferred to the women, assuring wealth and plenty of food to the families. After seven years of rituals, the shrunken heads lost their force. For the Shuar, at this point, the tsantsas had no pratical value: some kept the heads as a keepsake, but others got rid of them without giving it a second thought. The focus was not the material object in itself, but its spiritual power.

That was not at all the case with Western merchants. To them, a shrunken head perfectly summarized the idea of a “savage culture”. These indigenous people, in the collective imaginary of the Nineteenth Century, were still depicted as brutal and animal-like: there was a will to think them as “stuck in time”, as if they had been lingering in a prehistoric underdeveloped stage, without ever undergoing evolutions or social transformations.
Therefore, what object could be a clearer symbol of these tribes’ barbarity than a macabre and grotesque souvenir like tsantsas?

If at the beginning of European settlements, in the Andes region and the Amazon River basin, the colonists had traded various tipes of goods with the indigenous people, as time went by they became ever more autonomous. As they did not need the pig or deer meat any more, which until then the Shuar had bartered with clothes, knives and guns, the settlers began to request only two things in exchange for the precious firearms: the indios’ labor force, and their infamous shrunken heads.
Soon enough, the only way a Shuar could get hold of a rifle was to sell a head.

That’s when the situation got worse, along with the exponential growth of Western fascination with tsantsas. The shrunken heads became a must-have curiosity for collectors and museums alike. The need for arms pushed the Shuar people to hunt heads for purposes which were not ritual any more, but rather exclusively commercial, in an attempt to satisfy the European request. A tsantsa for a gun, was the usual bargain: that gun would then be used to hunt more heads, exchanged for new arms… the vicious cycle ended up in a massacre, carried out to comply with foreigners’ tastes in exoticism.
As Frances Larson writes, “when visitors come to see the shrunken heads at the Pitt Rivers Museum, what they are really seeing is a story of the white man’s gun“.

The tsantsas lost their spiritual value, which had always been connected with the circulation of power inside the tribe, and became a tool for accumulating riches. Ironically, the settlers contributed to the creation of those cruel and unscrupulous headhunters they always expected to find.

The Shuar by then were killing indiscriminately, and without any ritual support, just to obtain new heads. They began making fake tsantsas, using the remains of women, children, even Westerners – confident that someone would surely fall for the scam.
In the second half of the ‘800, the commerce of tsantsas flourished so much that even peoples who had nothing to do with Jivaros and their traditions, began fabricating their own shrunken heads: in Colombia and Panama unclaimed bodies were stolen from the morgue, their heads given to helpful taxidermists. In other cases the heads of monkeys or sloths, and other animal skins, were used to produce convincing fakes.
Today nearly 80% of the tsantsas held in museums worldwide is estimated to be fake.

The history of New Zealand’s mokomokai followed an almost identical script.
Unlike tsantsas, for the Maori people these heads were actually war trophies, captured during inter-tribal battles. The heads were not shrunk, but preserved with their skull still inside. Brain, eyes and tongue were gouged, nostrils and orifices sealed with fibers and gum; then the heads were buried in hot stones, in order to steam-cook them and dry them out. The mokomokai were meant to be exposed around the chief’s house.

In the second half of ‘700, naturalist Joseph Banks, sailing with James Cook, was the first European to acquire a similar head, after convincing an elderly man at a village to part from it – thanks to his eloquence, and to a musket pointed at the old man’s face. In all the following trips, Cook’s company spotted only a pair of mokomokai, a clue suggesting that these objects were in fact pretty uncommon.

Yet, after just fifty years, the commerce of heads in New Zealand had reached such intensity that many believed the Maori would be totally annihilated. Here too, the heads were traded for guns, in a spiral of violence that seriously threatened the indigenous population, particularly during the so-called Musket Wars.

Collectors were mainly attracted by the intricate tā moko (carved tattoos) which adorned the chiefs’ faces with elegant and sinuous spirals. So, Maori chiefs began tattooing their slaves just before beheading them – in some cases giving the Western buyer the option to choose a favorite head, while the unlucky owner was still alive; they tattoed heads that had already been cut, just to raise their price. The tā moko, a decorative art form of ancient origin, ended up been emptied of all meaning related to courage, honor or social status.
In New Zealand, even Europeans began to get killed, to have their heads tattoed and sold to their unsuspecting fellow countrymen: a fraud not devoid of a certain amount of  black humor.

Trading mokomokai was outlawed in 1831; the import of tsantas from South America was only banned from 1940.

So, in displays of ethnic artifacts in museums around the globe, in those darkened exotic heads, one is able to contemplate not only an ancient ritual object, packed with symbols and meanings: it is almost possible to glimpse at the very moment in which those meanings and symbols vanished forever.

Mokomokai4

Tsantsas and mokomokai are difficult, controversial, problematic objects.
Among the visitors, it is easy to find someone who feels outraged by an indigenous practice which by today’s standards seems cruel; after reading this article, maybe some reader will be disgusted by the hypocrisy of Westerners, who were condemning the savage headhunters while coveting the heads, and looking forward to put them on display in their homes.
Either way, one feels indignant: as if this peculiar fascination did not really affect us… as if our entire western culture did not come from a very long tradition of heads cut off and exposed on poles, on city walls and in public places.
But the beheadings never stopped existing, just as the human head never ceased to be a very powerful and magnetic symbol, both shocking and irresistibly hypnotizing.

Most of the information in this article, as well as the inspiration for it, comes from the brilliant Severed by Frances Larson, a book on the cultural and antrhopological significance of severed heads.

Il boia maldestro

Londra, durante i circa trent’anni della Restaurazione (1660-1688), era una città in preda alla violenza, immersa in un clima di paranoia e terrore. Oltre ai “classici” crimini come furti, rapine, omicidi e via dicendo, si rischiava anche di venire denunciati come cattolici, o peggio ancora nemici della corona: i processi, religiosi e politici, colpivano chi non era devotamente aderente all’ortodossia anglicana, così come chi aveva avversato il ritorno di Re Carlo II. E la pena capitale era inflitta con inquietante leggerezza, soprattutto durante le famigerate “assise sanguinose” nel 1685, presiedute dal temibile giudice Jeffreys che mandò al patibolo quasi 300 uomini senza battere ciglio.

Dal 1666 al 1678, il più celebre fra i boia era certamente Jack Ketch. Forse di origini irlandesi, la sua data di nascita non si conosce, né si sa quale mestiere svolgesse prima di diventare carnefice della corona. Molto spesso gli aguzzini avevano una carriera di macellaio alle spalle, e in effetti Ketch mostrava una certa dimestichezza nello squartare i cadaveri dei condannati.


All’epoca, infatti, la pena più severa fra tutte era riservata agli accusati di alto tradimento, e veniva denominata hanged, drawn and quartered: il condannato veniva legato a un’asse e trascinato da un cavallo fino alla pubblica piazza; qui, veniva completamente denudato e legato ad una scala in legno. (Per legge, le donne accusate del medesimo crimine andavano a questo punto arse vive – perché denudarle pubblicamente avrebbe offeso il comune pudore…).
Il collo veniva assicurato ad uno dei pioli della scala con una corda stretta a nodo corto, in modo da soffocare il suppliziato ma senza ucciderlo. Gli venivano tagliati pene e testicoli, e gettati in un braciere; ancora vivo, il condannato veniva poi sbudellato, e le sue viscere erano estratte dal boia che le bruciava di fronte ai suoi occhi. Infine si procedeva a decapitare il condannato, e a squartarne il corpo in quattro parti.


Ma non era finita qui: i resti del giustiziato dovevano essere esposti in vari punti strategici di Londra, come ad esempio lungo il London Bridge o a Temple Bar, affinché servissero da monito. Ecco che Ketch procedeva quindi, nelle segrete della prigione di Newgate, chiamate appropriatamente Jack Ketch’s Kitchen, a bollire i “quarti” dei condannati. Nel 1661 un visitatore di nome Ellwood descrisse quanto vide, come in una scena di un moderno film horror: “teste venivano portate per essere bollite, dentro a sporchi cesti di vimini, e i boia compiaciuti e beffardi le canzonavano”. Le teste venivano gettate nelle pentole e bollite nella canfora per prevenire la putrefazione, prima di essere esposte nei luoghi di maggior passaggio.


Ketch dovette occuparsi di diversi condannati a questo tipo di supplizio, perché quando Carlo II cominciò la restaurazione vennero mandati a morte tutti i regicidi (responsabili di aver firmato la condanna di Carlo I) che erano ancora in vita. Ma la maggior parte dei suoi servigi riguardavano le “semplici” impiccagioni, nelle quali eccelleva.

Purtroppo per lui, un punto debole Ketch ce l’aveva. Per quanto fosse a suo agio con cappi e coltelli, non sapeva proprio maneggiare l’ascia. A sua discolpa, c’è da dire che le decapitazioni erano relativamente rare e riservate ai nobili; fino a pochi anni prima, si faceva addirittura arrivare un boia dal Continente, esperto nell’utilizzo dell’ascia. Fatto sta che Ketch (a causa di tagli nel budget giudiziario?) si prese carico anche di quest’arte in cui non aveva alcuna esperienza, e che avrebbe macchiato per sempre il suo buon nome.

Il primo grosso scandalo che riguardò il boia fu l’esecuzione di Lord Russell nel 1683. Secondo la legge, il nobiluomo andava decapitato con un solo fendente, e una volta sul patibolo Lord Russell pagò, com’era d’uso a quel tempo, una bella somma a Ketch affinché svolgesse il suo lavoro in maniera decisa e pulita.
Mai soldi furono spesi peggio.

Secondo alcuni, il boia esagerava spesso con l’alcol – abitudine che, come si sa, non aiuta la mira. Fatto sta che Ketch sollevò la mannaia, ma il colpo che si abbattè sul condannato ferì il collo senza staccare la testa; la seconda stoccata ancora una volta non bastò. Lord Russell era ancora vivo, fra spruzzi di sangue e urla disumane. Un altro paio di colpi, e finalmente la lama fece rotolare via la testa di Lord Russell. Quell’infinita agonia fu talmente straziante da impressionare perfino le folle abituate al sangue, che seguivano avidamente e con regolarità le esecuzioni. Ketch fu costretto a pubblicare un opuscolo intitolato Apologie, in cui si scusava per la barbarie dello spettacolo, adducendo come attenuante il fatto che Lord Russell aveva sbagliato a “posizionarsi nel modo corretto” sui ceppi.

Due anni dopo, venne il turno di James Scott, primo Duca di Monmouth, anch’egli condannato alla decapitazione. Il Duca rifiutò il cappuccio o qualsiasi altro trattamento di favore, e una volta sul patibolo allungò la solita, profumata mancia a Ketch. Le sue ultime parole furono: “Non servitemi come avete fatto con Lord Russell. Ho sentito che l’avete colpito tre o quattro volte…”


Questa volta, se possibile, andò ancora peggio. Il primo fendente colpì addirittura la spalla del povero Duca; il secondo e il terzo non fecero che aprire nuove ferite non fatali. Fra i fischi della folla, Ketch depose l’ascia, deciso a lasciar perdere: lo fecero risalire sul patibolo a completare il lavoro. Ci vollero dai cinque agli otto colpi prima che il condannato finisse di soffrire. La gente era talmente inferocita che, se non ci fossero state le guardie a proteggerlo mentre si allontanava, Ketch sarebbe stato linciato sul posto.


Un anno dopo, nel 1686, Ketch fu incarcerato per resistenza ad un ufficiale; il suo assistente, Paskah Rose, prese il suo posto ma venne arrestato dopo appena quattro mesi, per rapina. Una volta uscito di prigione, Ketch riprese la sua carica, e ricominciò proprio dall’impiccagione del suo assistente a Tyburn. Verso la fine dello stesso anno, Jack Ketch morì.


A quanto si dice, Ketch fu un personaggio davvero spiacevole, costantemente ubriaco, ossessivamente avido di denaro, sempre pronto a lamentarsi del proprio compenso e a rivendere i vestiti dei condannati più nobili. Eppure, a causa delle sue ultime, maldestre performance, la figura di Ketch si guadagnò inaspettatamente un posto di rilievo nell’immaginario popolare: protagonista di ballate, poemi, pamphlet, citato da scrittori del calibro di Dickens, divenne il classico spauracchio per minacciare i bambini indisciplinati. E, grazie al tipico black humor inglese, entrò a far parte dei teatri di burattini della tradizione di Punch & Judy: in questi spettacoli, spesso il “boia pasticcione” viene ingannato e finisce immancabilmente per impiccarsi da solo.

Bizzarro Bazar a New York – I

New York, Novembre 2011. È notte. Il vento gelido frusta le guance, s’intrufola fra i grattacieli e scende sulle strade in complicati vortici, senza che si possa prevedere da che parte arriverà la prossima sferzata. Anche le correnti d’aria sono folli ed esagerate, qui a Times Square, dove il tramonto non esiste, perché i maxischermi e le insegne brillanti degli spettacoli on-Broadway non lasciano posto alle ombre. Le basse temperature e il forte vento non fermano però il vostro esploratore del bizzarro, che con la scusa di una settimana nella Grande Mela, ha deciso di accompagnarvi alla scoperta di alcuni dei negozi e dei musei più stravaganti di New York.

Partiamo proprio da qui, da Times Square, dove un’insegna luminosa attira lo sguardo del curioso, promettendo meraviglie: si tratta del museo Ripley’s – Believe It Or Not!, una delle più celebri istituzioni mondiali del weird, che conta decine di sedi in tutto il mondo. Proudly freakin’ out families for 90 years! (“Spaventiamo le famiglie, orgogliosamente, da 90 anni”), declama uno dei cartelloni animati.

L’idea di base del Ripley’s sta proprio in quel “credici, oppure no”: si tratta di un museo interamente dedicato allo strano, al deviante, al macabro e all’incredibile. Ad ogni nuovo pezzo in esposizione sembra quasi che il museo ci sfidi a comprendere se sia tutto vero o se si tratti una bufala. Se volete sapere la risposta, beh, la maggior parte delle sorprendenti e incredibili storie raccontate durante la visita sono assolutamente vere. Scopriamo quindi le reali dimensioni dei nani e dei giganti più celebri, vediamo vitelli siamesi e giraffe albine impagliate, fotografie e storie di freak celebri.

Ma il tono ironico e fieramente “exploitation” di questa prima parte di museo lascia ben presto il posto ad una serie di reperti ben più seri e spettacolari; le sezioni antropologiche diventano via via più impressionanti, alternando vetrine con armi arcaiche a pezzi decisamente più macabri, come quelli che adornano le sale dedicate alle shrunken heads (le teste umane rimpicciolite dai cacciatori tribali del Sud America), o ai meravigliosi kapala tibetani.

Tutto ciò che può suscitare stupore trova posto nelle vetrine del museo: dalla maschera funeraria di Napoleone Bonaparte, alla pistola minuscola ma letale che si indossa come un anello, alle microsculture sulle punte di spillo.

Talvolta è la commistione di buffoneria carnevalesca e di inaspettata serietà a colpire lo spettatore. Ad esempio, in una pacchiana sala medievaleggiante, che propone alcuni strumenti di tortura in “azione” su ridicoli manichini, troviamo però una sedia elettrica d’epoca (vera? ricostruita?) e perfino una testa umana sezionata (questa indiscutibilmente vera). Il tutto per il giubilo dei bambini, che al Ripley’s accorrono a frotte, e per la perplessità dei genitori che, interdetti, non sanno più se hanno fatto davvero bene a portarsi dietro la prole.

Insomma, quello che resta maggiormente impresso del Ripley’s – Believe It Or Not è proprio questa furba commistione di ciarlataneria e scrupolo museale, che mira a confondere e strabiliare lo spettatore, lasciandolo frastornato e meravigliato.

Per tornare unpo’ con i piedi per terra, eccoci quindi a un museo più “serio” e “ufficiale”, ma di certo non più sobrio. Si tratta del celeberrimo American Museum of Natural History, uno dei musei di storia naturale più grandi del mondo – quello, per intenderci, in cui passava una notte movimentata Ben Stiller in una delle sue commedie di maggior successo.

Una giornata intera basta appena per visitare tutte le sale e per soffermarsi velocemente sulle varie sezioni scientifiche che meriterebbero ben più attenzione.

Oltre alle molte sale dedicate all’antropologia paleoamericana (ricostruzioni accurate degli utensili e dei costumi dei nativi, ecc.), il museo offre mostre stagionali in continuo rinnovo, una sala IMAX per la proiezione di filmati di interesse scientifico, un’impressionante sezione astronomica, diverse sale dedicate alla paleontologia e all’evoluzione dell’uomo, e infine la celebre sezione dedicata ai dinosauri (una delle più complete al mondo, amata alla follia dai bambini).

Ma forse i veri gioielli del museo sono due in particolare: il primo è costituito dall’ampio uso di splendidi diorami, in cui gli animali impagliati vengono inseriti all’interno di microambienti ricreati ad arte. Che si tratti di mammiferi africani, asiatici o americani, oppure ancora di animali marini, questi tableaux sono accurati fin nel minimo dettaglio per dare un’idea di spontanea vitalità, e da una vetrina all’altra ci si immerge in luoghi distanti, come se fossimo all’interno di un attimo raggelato, di fronte ad alcuni degli esemplari tassidermici più belli del mondo per precisione e naturalezza.

L’altra sezione davvero mozzafiato è quella dei minerali. Strano a dirsi, perché pensiamo ai minerali come materia fissa, inerte, e che poche emozioni può regalare – fatte salve le pietre preziose, che tanto piacciono alle signore e ai ladri cinematografici. Eppure, appena entriamo nelle immense sale dedicate alle pietre, si spalanca di fronte a noi un mondo pieno di forme e colori alieni. Non soltanto siamo stati testimoni, nel resto del museo, della spettacolare biodiversità delle diverse specie animali, o dei misteri del cosmo e delle galassie: ecco, qui, addirittura le pietre nascoste nelle pieghe della terra che calpestiamo sembrano fatte apposta per lasciarci a bocca aperta.

Teniamo a sottolineare che nessuna foto può rendere giustizia ai colori, ai riflessi e alle mille forme incredibili dei minerali esposti e catalogati nelle vetrine di questa sezione.

Alla fine della visita è normale sentirsi leggermente spossati: il Museo nel suo complesso non è certo una passeggiata rilassante, anzi, è una continua ginnastica della meraviglia, che richiede curiosità e attenzione per i dettagli. Eppure la sensazione che si ha, una volta usciti, è di aver soltanto graffiato la superficie: ogni aspetto di questo mondo nasconde, ora ne siamo certi, infinite sorprese.

(continua…)

Il mercato dei feticci

Lomé, capitale del Togo, ospita uno dei mercati più particolari al mondo: si chiama Akodessewa, ed è conosciuto anche come “il mercato dei feticci”.

Il mercato è una specie di “farmacia” tradizionale, dove i guaritori e gli sciamani del luogo possono trovare tutto quello che serve per le loro pozioni voodoo. Stiamo parlando del voodoo originario, sviluppatosi nell’Africa occidentale ben prima che gli schiavi lo trapiantassero anche in America.

Mentre vi aggirate per i banchetti, vedrete in esposizione decine e decine di teste essiccate di coccodrilli, cani, gatti, scimmie… ma anche camaleonti, cobra, pesci palla… civette, avvoltoi, pappagalli e altri uccelli, corna di antilope o cervo, e addirittura qualche rarissimo “pezzo” di elefante o leopardo.

Secondo la ricetta tradizionale, le teste vengono macinate assieme alle erbe medicinali e poste sul fuoco finché il tutto non si riduce a una polvere nera. Dopo aver tagliato per tre volte il petto o la schiena della persona malata, il guaritore sparge la polvere curativa sulla pelle e la spinge all’interno delle ferite.

Ci sono rimedi per tutti i tipi di problemi: coppie che non riescono ad avere un figlio, vecchi con problemi alle articolazioni, donne possedute dai demoni, sportivi e atleti che cercano una “marcia in più”. Triturando insieme una mano di scimpanzé e una di gorilla, ad esempio, si ottiene una polvere che garantisce ai portieri di calcio una presa di ferro. Se si vuole correre una maratona, invece, è consigliabile utilizzare testa, cuore e gambe di un cavallo: la sua potenza, resistenza e velocità passeranno, per mezzo di uno scrupoloso rituale, al corpo dell’atleta. Le ossa più grandi, invece, sono perfette per difendere la propria casa dai demoni e dalla cattiva sorte. Ogni anno gli sciamani girano di villaggio in villaggio preparando questi feticci di protezione.

La medicina tradizionale non si impara da un giorno all’altro. È una conoscenza che si tramanda di padre in figlio, e ci vogliono dagli 8 ai 10 anni di studio ed esperienza per poter dominare tutti i segreti di questa arte.

Quello di Akodessewa è forse il mercato di feticci più grande del mondo. Le parti di animali provengono da tutta l’Africa occidentale, Ghana, Costa d’Avorio, Burkina Faso e Nigeria. A sentire i venditori, il governo del Togo ne è perfettamente a conoscenza e controlla accuratamente questo macabro commercio. “Non uccidiamo nessun animale con le nostre mani, è tutto regolare”, si premurano di far sapere, anche se più di qualche dubbio resta.

Questa strana farmacia voodoo, ormai famosa, attira non soltanto africani di tutte le regioni, ma anche turisti. “Ai turisti vendiamo quelle piccole statuine là”, dicono con un bel sorriso i commercianti, semisepolti fra teste in decomposizione, code appese che sventolano e ossa impolverate. In fondo, sono lì soltanto per aiutare chiunque abbia bisogno di loro.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlinRaK4j10]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvjXBzPtWcs&feature=related]

Tutte le splendide fotografie presenti nell’articolo sono state realizzate da Grete Howard, che ci ha gentilmente concesso in esclusiva l’autorizzazione a pubblicarle.

Deformazioni craniche artificiali

Abbiamo già parlato (in questo articolo) dell’antica usanza cinese di deformare i piedi femminili tramite fasciature per motivi estetici. Altri tipi di deformazioni artificiali possono ancora oggi avvenire per motivi di sostentamento economico: pensiamo in particolare ad alcune terribili pratiche di deformazione del bambino nei paesi del Terzo Mondo (e non solo) che rendono i piccoli invalidi a vita – e quindi più adatti a suscitare pietà ed elemosine. Un tempo c’erano poi i famigerati Comprachicos (“compratori di bambini”), immortalati da Victor Hugo nel suo romanzo L’Uomo che ride, che sfiguravano i bambini per assicurare un buon tornaconto nelle fiere e nelle esibizioni di stranezze umane. Altro esempio letterario sul tema è la splendida novella di Maupassant La madre dei mostri, nel quale una diabolica donna porta busti strettissimi durante la gravidanza per ottenere figli deformi da vendere al circo.

Ma nella maggior parte dei casi, proprio come avveniva per il loto d’oro in Cina, la modificazione del corpo in tenera età era estremamente importante soprattutto a livello sociale, perché poteva denotare lo status e la provenienza del bambino. Ed ecco che arriviamo all’argomento centrale di questo articolo: la deformazione del cranio.

Quello che i cinesi facevano ai piedi delle donne, molti altri facevano alle teste dei loro bambini.

Nelle culture primitive, e non soltanto, la modificazione corporale è intimamente connessa con l’appartenenza a una determinata società. Così la fasciatura della testa divenne per un certo periodo una pratica fondamentale per garantire al proprio figlio una posizione sociale influente.

La casistica di queste deformazioni si compone normalmente di teste allungate, teste schiacciate, teste coniche o sferiche. Il comune denominatore è la restrizione della normale crescita delle ossa del cranio durante le primissime fasi della formazione, quando le ossa sono ancora soffici, tramite diversi strumenti: ad esempio, per ottenere un figlio dalla testa allungata occorreva farlo crescere con due pezzi di legno saldamente legati ai lati del capo, in modo che il cranio si sviluppasse verso l’alto. Per avere una testa completamente rotonda occorreva stringerla in forti giri di stoffa.

I primi a utilizzare questo tipo di pratiche di modificazione corporale permanente sembra fossero gli antichi Egizi (infatti Tutankhamen e Nefertiti avevano la testa oblunga), ma alcuni studi indicano che forse anche gli uomini di Neanderthal, vissuti 45.000 anni prima di Cristo, potrebbero averne fatto uso. Nel 400 a.C. Ippocrate scrisse di abitudini simili riferendosi a una tribù che aveva denominato “i Macrocefali”. Congo, Borneo, Tahiti, Samoa, Hawaii, aborigeni australiani, Inca e Maya, nativi Americani, Unni, Ostrogoti,  tribù Melanesiane: ai quattro angoli del globo le tecniche differivano ma l’obiettivo era lo stesso – assicurare al bambino un futuro migliore. Le persone con una testa allungata, infatti, venivano ritenute più intelligenti e più vicine agli spiriti; non soltanto, erano immediatamente riconoscibili come appartenenti ad un determinato gruppo o tribù. Così, più o meno a un mese dalla nascita, i bambini cominciavano a venire fasciati fino circa all’età di sei mesi, ma talvolta oltre l’anno di età.

Non è escluso che queste pratiche avessero altri tipi di valenze – magiche, mediche, ecc. Lascia interdetti scoprire che in Francia la fasciatura della testa durò addirittura fino al 1800: nell’area di Deux-Sevres, si bendavano le teste dei bambini dai due ai quattro mesi; poi si continuava sostituendo il bendaggio con una sorta di cesto di vimini posto sulla testa del bambino, e rinforzato con filo di metallo mano a mano che il ragazzo cresceva.

Il Povero Edward

Edward Mordake (o Mordrake) è uno dei più celebri freaks di sempre, e questo anche se la sua effettiva esistenza non è mai stata provata.

La sua vicenda, infatti, si colloca in pieno ‘800, agli albori della storia clinica, ed è stata tramandata attraverso racconti popolari e folkloristici, ma mai documentata nei testi medici. Ancora oggi la sua triste vita ispira artisti e cantautori, perché ci parla del corpo come prigione, come inferno personale.

Edward, racconta la leggenda, nacque ereditiero di una delle più nobili stirpi inglesi. Era un giovane sereno, solare e grazioso, eccellente studioso e musicista delicato. Ma Edward aveva un pesante fardello da portare: sul retro della sua testa, sulla nuca, aveva una seconda faccia.

Questo suo gemello non completamente formato poteva ridere e piangere, e seguiva con lo sguardo le persone che entravano nella stanza. Le sue labbra continuavano incessantemente a muoversi, come se la faccia bisbigliasse qualcosa, anche se nessuno udiva la sua voce.

Ma pochi sapevano quale fosse la terribile verità: quando calava la notte, e tutti se ne andavano, Edward rimaneva da solo con il suo “fratello”, e cominciavano i tormenti. La seconda faccia era infatti crudele e malvagia, come un gemello demoniaco. Di notte, si dice, sussurrava ad Edward parole “che stanno soltanto all’Inferno”. Rideva quando Edward singhiozzava per la disperazione.

La storia si conclude invariabilmente in modo drammatico: a 23 anni, Edward si uccide, reso folle dall’incessante e sadico bisbigliare della sua seconda faccia. Alcuni dicono che si avvelenò, altri che si impiccò, altri ancora che si sparò in testa (dritto fra gli occhi del malefico “gemello”). Alcune varianti della storia specificano che lasciò scritto come desiderio che la seconda faccia venisse distrutta prima della sua inumazione, “perché non continui i suoi osceni bisbigli anche nella mia tomba”.

La versione più popolare della storia è raccontata nel testo del 1896, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medecine, ed è per molto tempo stata considerata inattendibile, per via dell’arricchimento dovuto ai decenni di passaparola. Alcune versioni della storia sostengono addirittura che la seconda faccia di Edward fosse quella di una bellissima e maligna ragazza – cosa ovviamente impossibile perché tutti i gemelli parassiti sono dello stesso sesso. Quindi Edward Mordake è davvero soltanto una leggenda?

Questo è Chang Tzu Ping. Scoperto tra la fine degli anni ’70 e l’inizio degli ’80 da un gruppo di militari americani; aveva una seconda faccia consistente di una bocca, una lingua rudimentale, qualche dente, un pezzo di scalpo, e le vestigia di occhi, naso e orecchie. Fu portato negli Stati Uniti dove la sua seconda faccia venne asportata chirurgicamente. Una volta ritornato al suo paese natale, in Cina, “Chang dalle due facce” finalmente potè vivere serenamente con gli altri abitanti del villaggio, non più terrorizzati, e non si seppe più nulla di lui.

Casi come questi ci fanno dedurre che forse un briciolo di realtà, esagerata poi dalla sensibilità popolare, fosse presente anche nella storia del Povero Edward.

Concludiamo con la ballata dedicata a Mordake dal nostro beniamino, Tom Waits.