Il Labirinto scritto
La carpa del sogno
Giovanni Mariotti
2017 / 302 PAGES
As a child he wanted to become nothing, and became a small thing; he was a monk then a hermit, a painter of fishes and also a fish. With his extra-social destiny, the figure Kōgi puts a new spin on the ancient, abandoned Way of the Solitary, of those who cloister themselves.
The first volume of the series “Il Labirinto Scritto”, a series released intermittently, where books “happen” in an unpredictable way, is La carpa del sogno by Giovanni Mariotti, a historical collaborator of Franco Maria Ricci. As a child, the protagonist wanted to become nothing and became a small thing; he was a monk and then a hermit, a painter of fishes and also a fish, albeit for the brief reincarnation period, and with the right to withdraw. With his fate on the fringes, extrasocial, Kōgi - this was his name - put a new spin on the ancient, abandoned Way of the Solitary, of those who cloister themselves. It was enough for him to think “Kōgi suffers” instead of “I suffer” to suffer less; with grammar he prevented the world from hurting him and, as vulnerable as he was, if the world hurt him, it was not a matter of fatal wounds. Running along the ridge between dreams and reality, reincarnations and metamorphosis, his tortuous path led him to learn the art of living on the fringes, without giving too much importance to things. Now free from vanity, from anger, from the fearful need to be judged for what he was and from the desire to be something other, he came to know the simple natural joys, which depended neither on the Gods nor on men.