ABSTRACT
Aracoeli begins with the nostalgic recollection of a period of unspeakable happiness. Politics, in Aracoeli, is not simply what Gragnolati Manuele opposes but also, in a stronger sense, what defines him: it is the very condition of his existence and of his desires. The grandiosity of Manuele's end-of-the-world fantasies — his insistence on a complete breakdown of the self–world relationship — recalls S. Freud's idea of the profound connection between narcissism and paranoia. Paranoia and the belief in invisible interconnectedness provoke horror, but they are also a source of narcissistic gratification and, paradoxically, of some reassurance. Manuele's puerile fantasy of heroic transgression does not capture the true horror of Aracoeli's suffering — its contingency, its arbitrariness. In Manuele's deliberately idiosyncratic catalogue, suffering and pain appear as unavoidable pressures of nature, inexplicable but not particularly daunting.
