Tre caratteri letterarii europei per una fisiognomica dell’individualismo moderno

Three European literary characters for a physiognomy of modern individualism

Abstract

A reflection on the modern age and the birth of individualism using three literary figures: Hamlet, Faust and Zarathustra. They concentrate physiognomic-historical characters that, in the 20th century, still summarize magnitudes and contradictions experienced in previous centuries. Hamlet, Faust and Zarathustra respectively see: the debut of the modern era in the “baroque century”; the affirmation of bourgeois values in the interval between the 18^th and 19^th centuries; finally, the period of decadence, the loss of all values and the solipsistic implosion of the 20^th century individualism. The three mythical-literary characters described by the political politician Rudolf Kassner are analyzed as predicates of “thought, knowledge and action”. In this case, we can consider: Hamlet as a “predicate of thought”, Faust as a “predicate of action” and Zarathustra as “predicate of knowledge”.