Iera Odos testo e fotografie di Victor Schnur
At first it was thirst, thirst for knowledge as strong as the thirst for mother’s milk that awakens us up screaming in life. Where do we come from? And where do we end up? What’s the nature of what we call reality? And the one of time? Funnily enough, that very first thirst rather than to life, would wake me up to death. Metaphorically...Maybe. Because now thirst is as tangible and real as it could get: while I’m walking on the edge of this six-lane motorway I can feel my mouth getting dryer and dryer, as most of the liquid in my body is getting sweated out from my pores (39 degrees Celsius are tough, especially when you are surrounded by 3000 square km of concrete). I wonder if Marcus Aurelius or Plato, who walked this very same path 2400 and 1900 years ago, where suffering in a similar way. Were they thirsty? For water? For knowledge? I can feel them as a presence alongside my steps: a fleeting mirage of thoughts and mumblings from my years as a student turning into life. Closing my eyes is enough to actually see them, and, along with them, hundreds of pilgrims, peasants, priests, and priestesses of different ranks and outfits. Some are carrying boxes, others singing hymns, while at the side of the road a crowd of hooded people is rhythmically crying an inscrutable litany: “O iacchus, iacchus Ooo!...O iacchus, iacchus Ooo!” Far in the distance, heading this tumultuous human river, I can glimpse a 2-m tall marble statue being carried by four young bare-chested men, maybe athletes? I know all of this is not here, this isn’t happening, all there is is asphalt, concrete, and whirling cars and trucks, yet I can’t fight the temptation to surrender to the vision and dwell into my wanderings, as many other greats from different eras of antiquity join the procession: from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to Aristotele, Augustus, and Plutarch. From Hadrian,Cicero, and Antinous to Commodus, Gallienus, and Julian...The fact is that all of them actually walked this road at least once in life, sometimes even more than 1000 years apart one from another, yet all following that very same statue that right now is heading this vision of mine. The goal, for them, was to be initiated.
The goal, for me, is still unclear. Initiation for them was to receive an illumination, illumination for me might be insolation, a heavy one . . . Or getting run over by one of the gargantuan trucks hurtling at 120+ km/h on my left. I’m on a
modern highway, and not in ancient Greece, I repeat to myself,and I’ve put myself in danger. Mind wandering is definitely safer on a sofa, yet I
wanted to cross Europe to see in real life places I’ve only read about in the safety of my home. I wanted to see how they’ve changed, if they’ve changed. And what in them survived of a secret ritual we know almost nothing about, nothing other than it might have shaped our culture more than any other. I’m on the road to Eleusi, I know that, yet I have no idea of where that road leads to...
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