Abstract

The essay reflects on modes and functions of the "contemporary presence of times", a special characteristic of Carlo Levi's writing, in particular in Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. Here, from the contrastive relationship between the alien and hostile time of the history and the arcane and "sacred" time of the myth, filled with a poetic truth that in itself protects and nourishes a new anthropological humanism, the word "wavy" of Levi's prose, suspended and sought after between past and present, draws the utopian thrust of his meditative and visionary lyricism.