Le farfalle di Inger Christensen, 1991, e di Francesco Pennisi, 2000: su fiori di parole, su fiori di colori; a Brajcino nell'aria meridiana, a Fleri prima dell'eclisse

«Poetry must be music» (Umberto Saba): «fictio rhetorica in musica posita» (Dante). Cesare Brandi tells about the musical constitution of logos (discourse); and I tell about the logical constitution of music. Inger Christensen (1935-2009), Danish poetess, and Francesco Pennisi (1934-2000), Sicilian composer of the same age, dedicate their last works to butterflies. Systemic poetry, strictly bound, and free, rhapsodic music. Visible butterflies and sound butterflies: described in words, translated in music. Butterfly wings, sonorous colours, light filigrees, diaphanous bright watercolours are all Pennisi’s creatures. Timbre is their privileged sound dimension. Last works, in limine mortis (on the threshold of death). What does death have to do with butterflies? Gotthold Ephraim Lessing explains that in his book Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet (1769) – How the Ancients Portrayed Death: as an overturned torch that dies down; and the soul is a butterfly that flies up from the deceased body. Angels too are butterflies: «… we are worms / born to form the angelic butterfly» (Dante). In 2008 Eben Alexander, an american brain surgeon, had a near-death-experience; in 2012 he told it in a book: after falling “into the dark… he found himself in a new world… surrounded by millions of butterflies”.