Imaginería magmática: El Etna entre mitos, creencias populares y relatos de viaje

Abstract

Unparalleled telluric kratophany, colossus of inconstant nature and terrifying power, voracious destroyer of hovels and palaces built of its own stone, of fields and plantations previously nourished by its own lava, Etna contains and represents precisely, materially and symbolically , the opposites: the high peak that reaches to touch the sky and God himself stands on the fiery abyss seat of Lucifer, the deep heat of the magma responds to the frost of the snowy peaks, the extraordinary fecundity of the volcanic sands responds to the sterility of the lava rocks , the lava conduits that furrow its bowels suddenly pouring outwards respond to springs with fresh and pure waters. This inseparable ambivalence, this fascinating oxymoronic nature, is found explicitly or implicitly in the travel reports and diaries of the many who have ventured onto Etna or who have limited themselves to observing it from its slopes.