Twenty-third edition of Spoletoscienza, the original scientific workshop designed and organized by the Fondazione Sigma-Tau within the Festival dei Due Mondi di Spoleto.
THEATER READINGS
Saturday 2 and Saturday 9 July 2011
SALA FRAU AT 11.00
Céline′s Journey to the End
Theater readings by Francesco E. Negro
with Massimo Popolizio
Why Céline? First of all, because this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of his death, which occurred in 1961.
Secondly, Céline at the XXIII Spoletoscienza organized by the Fondazione Sigma-Tau, because more than anyone he represents the dual role of medical doctor and patient. The grey area and its identification. Soul and light. It is from his activity as doctor to the poor, unable to pay him, that Céline realizes that poverty itself is a terrible disease without a cure. Continuing his practise without being paid, he himself will eventually contract that same disease.
The performance "Céline′s Journey to the End" based on a book by Francesco E. Negro, is meant to be ambiguous just like Celine is. Or rather, double, or better still- that double within each of us. Doctor and patient. Dr. Céline, the stylist who would like to cure a language which, according to him, is ill. An illness that spreads, affecting the whole of society. Can this also be cured with style? Subject and object, doctor and medicine are identified by exchanging roles or at least, one causes the other.
He goes against the world that is obsessed by progress and power. The world which has become a chronic disease. With his "stylistic medicine" he prescribes a shock therapy that is violent and literary, using speech suspended between delirium and the spoken word. The delirium is a possible substitute for a "death on the installment plan". Writing is anti-literature, it exorcizes the end. We can glimpse the hope of healing. This can be achieved only if Man manages to leave the "gang" and become an "individual" once again, capable of escaping the oblivion where society has driven him.
These theater readings with the presence of actor Massimo Popolizio on stage, are an invitation to help comprehend - perfectly in line with "Geographies of health". As usual, this means trying to understand ourselves, to look into the abyss where we can sink and lose.
Francesco Eugenio Negro (Rome, 1944), physician and journalist, author of several texts on medicine, including The Patient, the Doctor and Homeopathy (Palombi, 1989); Man between Health and Disease (Borla, 1992) with Antonio De Filippo; I visited Chopin (FrancoAngeli, 1994) Van Gogh′s Doctor The Importance of the Doctor-Patient Relationship (FrancoAngeli, 1998) Waiting for Hippocrates. Towards Total Medicine (FrancoAngeli, 2000), Céline, Physician and Patient (FrancoAngeli, 2000). He writes for newspapers and takes part in numerous television shows.
CONFERENCES
Today′s massive migration flows require physicians to be aware of the ways in which the gene pools of people from faraway lands will react to the new environment. Therefore, scientists´ efforts must go towards unraveling the complex relation amongst genes, metabolism, food and environment; towards learning how these genotypes will express disease and aging; in a word, towards accepting the challenge of truly personalized medicine, which ends up concerning all of us.
Like every year at Spoletoscienza, Fondazione Sigma-Tau´s effort will be focused on creating an original pathway of ideas, marked by conversations with some of the world′s most authoritative scientists, to refine "the tools for thinking" in this area as well.
