Julius Caesar’s dream – Reflections on the figure of the chiasmus
Dal Bon, Christine
Julius Caesar’s dream – Reflections on the figure of the chiasmus - 2021.
57
On January 10th 49BC, the day before crossing the Rubicon, Julius Caesar “dreamt the he was uniting sexually with his mother”. I have used this fragment, related by Plutarch, as a pretext to browse through the ancient texts. A dream about incest and a major offensive military tactic: what link is to be established between two so different and contemporary elements? This raises the question on the very nature of the link between incest and parricide. Plutarch gives them in a chronological proximity. Yet they could be correlated otherwise, according to diverse modalities, namely; causality, reciprocity, synergy, etc. The idea that came to me from Julius Caesar’s dream focuses on the specific logic of the chiasmus. The first theorizations concerning its introduction in marble sculpture date approximately from the era of Sophocles’ tragedies.
Julius Caesar’s dream – Reflections on the figure of the chiasmus - 2021.
57
On January 10th 49BC, the day before crossing the Rubicon, Julius Caesar “dreamt the he was uniting sexually with his mother”. I have used this fragment, related by Plutarch, as a pretext to browse through the ancient texts. A dream about incest and a major offensive military tactic: what link is to be established between two so different and contemporary elements? This raises the question on the very nature of the link between incest and parricide. Plutarch gives them in a chronological proximity. Yet they could be correlated otherwise, according to diverse modalities, namely; causality, reciprocity, synergy, etc. The idea that came to me from Julius Caesar’s dream focuses on the specific logic of the chiasmus. The first theorizations concerning its introduction in marble sculpture date approximately from the era of Sophocles’ tragedies.
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