Nel « queto vortice del nulla »: Pascoli lettore della Favola di Amore e Psiche

Giovanni Pascoli's Psyche, a poem collected in Poemi Conviviali, is one of the many examples of fin de siècle reworking of the myth of Psyche. In the poem, the character undergoes a process of interiorization that reflects the spirit of post-romantic literature. Moreover, as in many rewritings of the Apuleian tale, the figure of Psyche relies on the symbolic interpretation of the myth as a journey of the soul. In the case of Pascoli, symbolism involves two different conceptions of the soul: the first draws on the (neo)Platonic traditional interpretation of the novel, the second is connected with some pre-psychoanalytical theories (e.g. Haeckel, Myers) whose influence emerges also elsewhere in Pascoli's work.