La Morte nei detti calabresi: parole per esorcizzare, accettare, ri-modulare la vita

Abstract

Popular sayings, the musical background of dialects, provide detailed descriptions, sometimes verifiable, in relation to the discussed topics. Often composed in rhyme, they are passed down orally by older generations, who use them to effectively summarize, “adapting” them to various contexts, the teachings they preserve. The Calabrian ones presented here reflect the way of dealing with death, an inevitable and sometimes incomprehensible human event. First of all it is exorcised, accepted with religious resignation and, with its equal treatment reserved to all people, considered the only and valid yardstick for daily actions, which are therefore continually re-modulated, precisely because the end to which it leads is the only irreversible thing, in a continuous effort that unfolds between the elaboration of mourning and the resigned acceptance of loss, aware of the fact that the mystery of death always looms, and sometimes in the most unthinkable ways, over each of us.