In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

264 CODES
a material body (atoms and electrons) and an aetherial body (radiation).
The material body is in dynamical equilibrium, but the aetherial body is
not; gravitation takes care that there is no outside flow of matter, but
there is an outside flow of radiation" (Eddington, 20). Whatever man
perceives as belonging to the surface level-the signifiers of human language,
as well as the radiation of a star-needs to be deciphered as the
expression of a meaning that is located at a certain depth. The cosmological
world is a world to be interpreted, read, and understood-and
this obligation and urge to read the world as the articulation of an
underlying order converges with an obsessive need to experience it as
ontologically structured. In other words, the complementarity of expression
and interpretation serves as an antidote to randomness and entropy.
Expression and interpretation are facilitated by the expectation of an
increase in order and clarity: "Expression puts an end to the opacity and
chaos of things in a disconnected state. The meaning of the spiritual
creation which we build out of the elements of our life ... consists in its
ability to make the world within us transparent, and to make us transparent
to the world that surrounds us-so that life and self may penetrate
each other, and a flow of meaningful life may unite whatever is
separated" (Hartmann, 238). The great debate about fascism and culture
in the Italian journal Critica Fascista elevates this relation between expression,
interpretation, and order to the level of an official program. If
Massimo Bontempelli defines fascism as "a whole orientation of life,
public and private-a total and perfected order that is at once practical
and theoretical, intellectual and moral, application and spirit," then art
in Fascist society is expected to both identify and express this "total and
perfect order": "For art is the sensitive instrument that must at once
demarcate and foster, express and bring to maturation, the fecundity of
the third epoch of civilization: the Fascist Era" (Bontempelli, 248-249).
Whereas Authenticity invariably suggests and postulates an order that
conveys meaning to all of its elements, Artificiality rejects the idea of such
an all-pervading meaning. Opting for the non authentic, Ernst Junger
ironically characterizes humans by their need to ask "the pointless question
concerning authentic meaning" (Junger, 5). For the first-person
narrator in Luigi Pirandello's Uno, nessuno e centomila (One, No One,
and One Hundred Thousand), true peace of mind comes from the psychic
strength of those who do not give in to the neurotic urge to interpret
the world. A precondition for this strength lies in suppressing the habit-