On the Line of the Horizon: Anxiety in de Chirico’s Metaphysical Spaces

The horizon fascinates the eye, while imposing an ordeal on the mind. The line of the horizon augurs the beginning of eventuality, where the possibility is materialised as ineffability; but at the same time, it sends the eye “before,” back on itself, in the whiteness of its sleep, in destinations past and desires swallowed, creeping up Nietzschean bodies of Übermenschen and relentlessly battering their brain with the possibility of the end. It is on the very line of the horizon, line and non-line at the same time, where impossibility becomes materialised as the possibility of the end. Thus, beginning and finality palpitate on the solitude of the line separating the visible from the au-delà.