Lament, the impotence of language

Abstract

This paper is based on Giorgio Agamben's reflections about Ticiano's painting Flaying of Marsyas, in order to question the relationship between artistic "inspiration" and the work of critical thinking as a work of mourning. Thus, it establishes connections between thoughts of Agamben and Benjamin, in order to take from the german philosopher indications on the "baroque melancholy" in order to assert that Ticiano's picture, by representing the painter himself as Midas seeking to hear the "lament" of Marsyas, is "exemplary" of the mourning that corresponds as much to the work of the philosopher as to the work of the artist. This is because both would take as an "object" that which is unrepresentable to the look and impossible to the word: the relationship, always hanging, between potency and impotence.

Keywords: Lament. Language. Impotence. Artistic creation. Mourning.