«Your children are not your children»

by Kahlil Gibran*

Illustrazione da “Il Profeta” , edizione Se (1985), traduzione di Piera Oppezzo e postfazione di Nicola Crocetti

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

* Dopo averlo pubblicato in italiano, eccolo nella versione originale in inglese il capitolo dedicato ai figli da Kahlil Gibran nel suo”Il profeta”. 

Una interessantissima rassegna al MIC, Museo Interattivo del Cinema di Milano, mi dà l’occasione per riproporlo. Onora il figlio, L’undicesimo comandamento è infatti il titolo di un “cine-seminario con la psicoanalisi”, un ciclo di 4 film selezionati da Glauco Maria Genga con la Società Amici del pensiero “Sigmund Freud”.

Si parte giovedì 26 gennaio 2017 alle 20,30 con Mio figlio professore (1946) di Renato Castellani.

(Paola Ciccioli)

AGGIORNATO IL 13 GENNAIO 2017