The City is full of traffic, of traffic jams, a chaos increased by the myriad of works in progress in anticipation of the 2025 Jubilee.
In this infinite marasmus navigate, contributing to increase it like great leviathans, the tourist buses and the City trembles and is reflected in their smoked glass as in a deforming mirror.
From the biblical Leviathan passing through Hobbes’ “Artfully this great leviathan called Republic or State is created, which is but an artificial man”, to the cruel and symbolic duel between Captain Ahab and the white whale, to the immense cruising leviathans looming over a small and defenceless Venice in Berengo Gardin’s images, Leviathan has been synonymous with malevolent power, mighty and indifferent to the fate of individuals.
But alas, we live in a decadent age, in a civilisation that is aged and cynical and infinitely less heroic, so even our Leviathans have had to downsize, they have become more modest and prosaic: the city is sloppy and unhinged, a wax museum, and our nightmares have been reduced to a pack of tour buses driven by demons who are either derisive or grumpy, tired or ridiculous.
Without, I fear, having lost the ability to make us end up like the Pequod anyway.
For a moment the enchanted crew of the lance stood motionless, then turned. – ‘The ship, great God, where is the ship? – Soon, through a hazy and confused medium, they saw its prone ghost vanishing, as in the vapours of the Fata Morgana, with only the masts out of the water.
(Herman Melville, Moby Dick, ed.Adelphi, Milano pag.586)
