La casa chimerica

The text suggests a reading of the phenomenon of dwelling in relation to building which hypothesizes the applicability of the notion of "chimeric" as a hybrid and in the technical sense suggested by the anthropologist Carlo Severi (chimeric is the ability to activate, through a "single representation ", a "plural being ", and, through "a series of inferences"," its invisible parts": "what we see is implicitly considered as part of another form, whose presence is supposed) to the house in the dual meaning of aedes and domus, as belonging to a certain family and social context, and, at the same time, living in a built place. The reading proceeds through an exploration of some exemplary samples of the "chimeric house" in the aesthetic-literary field, retracing first of all a series of works, starting from the condominium and intra-wall texts of Marcel Aymé (1902-1967) and Roland Topor (1938-1997), from their "crossings", "contrasts" and "nightmares", between visible and invisible, background and foreground, teratomorphic hybrids and machines for living, with their expansions and variations in different media of the imaginary. In conclusion, the article hypothesizes further verifications that develop the acquisitions of the research carried out so far.