Cosa curava la rappresentazione? Sul valore terapeutico dell’antica catarsi

The aim of this article is comparing the way in which antiquity and modernity have conceived the idea of care through representational forms (figurative, theatrical, musical, and later filmic). It achieves this by examining, especially, Aristotle’s concept of catharsis, which is first analysed in detail in Poetics and Books VII and VIII of Politics, followed by a summary of its reception, which has continued uninterrupted into modern times. Such a reception, with few exceptions – one of which is mentioned in the paper: Walter Benjamin’s – has ended up in the modern era by overlapping, to the point of identifying them, the dimension that Aristotle actually dealt with only in Politics and which has been defined as “medical” catharsis, with a completely original idea of therapy, also called catharsis – a term that evidently “could be said in many ways” – obtained through tragic representation, the most eminent genre of poetic art at the time. An idea of catharsis that made use, so to speak, of “cognitive” drugs, which provided forms of treatment on which it is still worth reflecting today and seeing if, thanks to the new possibilities of representing reality offered by today’s poetic mimesis techniques, it is possible re-actualizing them, at least in part.