Abstract

In the preparatory notes for the work on «cultural apocalypses» Ernesto De Martino interprets some literary masterpieces as evidences that the historical European culture is in crisis. That interpretation is elaborated as part of a comparative investigation about anthropological risk. The focus is that our presence in the world is not an asset guaranteed once and for all, rather resulting from dramatic choices which, in difficult circumstances, may endlessly fail. This article highlights the dialectic of risk in religious life, which is understood by De Martino under various aspects: the magic, the myth, and the ritual. From this point of view, we will see how the decline of traditional religious forms in the face of modern secularism reveals itself in some decadent subjects – i.e, nausea, absurdity, boredom – dominating the literary works. Therefore, according to De Martino they become symptoms of a much wider risk concerning the moral decay of the bourgeois world. In this crisis that does not seem to overcome itself, since it is lacking in its eschaton, De Martino sees the signs that Europe betrays the founding value of its the humanistic tradition, namely the historical reason, so dangerously embracing the «end of history» idea.