Abstract

In his reflections on the relationship between the two worlds, that of the visible and that of the invisible, which make up the overall space in which man’s life unfolds, an amphibious being precisely because his environment of reference is articulated in these two dimensions that contradict each other, Pavel Florenskij starts from a reinterpretation of Plato’s myth of the cave. He disagrees with the usual meaning attributed to it, a metaphor that refers to the prisoner’s effort to escape from the place of self-enclosed darkness in which things lose their contours, into the clear light of the sun and transcendent Truth, in accordance with a vision whereby the violent ascent towards the light is countered by the risk of falling into the abyss of the unknown. That is why he proposes an alternative reading of it, based on the idea that the invisible and salvation can only be accessed by placing oneself in an intermediate space between the darkness and opacity of the cave and the full light that blinds, a space in which darkness and light converge, generating that primordial penumbra in which truth is revealed to an extent that corresponds to the human capacities of the moment. If one is properly initiated and equipped, the cavern thus understood is first and foremost the place of the passage from outside to inside, from external reality to the inner universe, the space that represents the reality of the symbol and of human dwelling and knowing, the threshold that encompasses, connects and unites the two worlds in which our life unfolds