DOLOMYTHOS a landscape design by paul blanchard Montrez-moi le ciel chargé de nuages Répétant le monde enfoui sous mes pau- pières Montrez-moi le ciel dans une seule étoile Je vois bien la terre sans être ébloui Les pierres obscures les herbes fantômes Ces grands verres d’eau ces grands blocs d’ambre des paysages Les jeux de feu et de centre Les géographies solennelles des limites hu- manes —Paul Eluard, “À Pablo Picasso, II, 15 mai 1936”, in Oevres complètes, I, La Pléiade, 1968, p. 499. 1 abstract To paint a picture of the physical landscape of the Dolomites is simple: it is a place of pink stone, verdant forests and pastures, white snow silhouetted against blue winter skies; a landscape shaped by nature, as well as by the humans who have lived and worked in the region since prehistoric times. But there is another landscape of the Dolomites, unknown to many because intangible. It is the landscape of narrative, especially oral narrative, the fruit of a reciprocity between physical nature and human nature rooted in the most remote moments of history and the most obscure depths of the psyche. To inhabit the Dolomites is to know, and to know how to transmit, these stories, which tell, in a more or less veiled form, of the encounter between human imagination and a nature that is stately but frugal, generous but adverse, charming but dangerous. This is not to say that the oral narrative of the Dolomites presents a metaphorical record of the area’s settlement by one ethnic group or another. As instructive as such a record may be, in anthropological or ethnographic terms, to recast legends and fairy tales as a kind of historical novel undermines their worth rather than adding to it. Precisely because it is the fruit of free and unconditioned imagination, oral narrative is invested with a value that extends beyond the well-marked boundaries of a given linguistic minority. Thanks to its imaginative charge, the landscape sketched by oral narrative—in our case, by oral narrative of the Venetian, Tyrolean, Fassa, Gherdeina, Badiot, Fodom or Furlan tradition—belongs to all humanity. Dolomythos would restore the bonds that united these Dolomite landscapes in the past. The use of the conditional is a must, because the oral tradition that, for thousands of years, inextricably joined the two aspects of the landscape of the Dolomites—the tangible and the intangible—has lost importance in recent decades, yielding its primacy first to radio and then to television. Efforts to transcribe and analyze these stories (and there have been many: 1 Parco Naturale Paneveggio-Pale di San Martino. the suffice it to recall here the work of Hugo de Rossi, Karl Felix Wolff, Karl Staudacher, dramatic peaks of the Pale di San Martino and the vast Paneveggio National Forest make up this spectacular Angel Morlang, Klare French-Wieser, Ulrike Kindl, Giuliano Palmieri, Helmut Birkhan, nature reserve of 190 square kilometers in the province of Trento. This is an area of outstanding importance, Veronica Irsara, Catherine Percoto, Ferdinand Del Torre, Luigi Gortani Dolfo Zorzut, whose protection, secured in 1987 after some 20 years of public debate, marked a major victory for Italian environmentalists. i among others), have certainly helped to save the region’s precious unwritten heritage from oblivion. However, while recognizing the fundamental importance of these efforts from the point of view of preservation, one must acknowledge that they have not contributed to the recovery of an authentic oral tradition. Now what is at risk is not the literary aspect of the narratives—although this is inevitably damaged when one joins the many versions of a story in a single “definitive” text—but their socializing function—in other words, the opportunity to exchange ideas and impressions with others that is created when the story is told, performed and commented in company. Once, in the Dolomite valleys as throughout Europe, families gathered around the fire to share the experiences of the imagination; now every individual, forced by radio and television communication to listen in a passive and non-participatory way, imagines alone. If it is true that these technologies, born during the last century, tended to depersonalize communication, it is also true that new technologies can, to some extent, restore relationships damaged by the excessive centrism of broadcast media. The World Wide Web, as is well known, offers the chance to converse in a new way, to communicate dyadically. Dyadic communication gives rise to a multidirectional flow of information, is capable of supporting an exchange of ideas between individuals and allows each individual to contribute, in real time, to the debate on a given topic. Dolomythos will take advantage of the communications philosophy of the Web and the growing wi-fi connectivity in the Dolomites to develop a series of listening centers to be located on or near hiking trails in urban, rural and high-mountain settings. The project’s field of action will include all nine contiguous areas designated as World Heritage by UNESCO in 2009. Strategic alliances will be forged with local, provincial and regional authorities, the one national park and the numerous regional parks, and major cultural players such as the Istitut Cultural Ladin at Vico di Fassa and the Museum Ladin at San Martino in Badia. The Dolomythos team will assist the nascent Dolomites UNESCO Foundation in the selection of architects, landscape architects and other professionals, with a view to restoring degraded or derelict land or buildings to make listening centers; providing listening centers with the technology necessary to present locally-sited narratives in ways that are distinctive but always instructive and engaging; engaging playwrights, actors, sound engineers and other technicians to produce works of aural theater; creating a highly interactive Web site devoted to the narratives and their relationship with the land—all under the supervision and guidance of a locally constituted advisory committee. Through these actions Dolomythos will enhance both the material landscape of the Dolomites and the intangible landscape of the region’s symbolic and narrative traditions. In addition it will take the oral narrative of the Dolomites as a starting point for a project of mutual understanding on a large scale, whose broader objective shall be to create and sustain a vibrant and dynamic cultural debate that sees diversity as a human value of primary importance. Paul Blanchard iii DOLOMYTHOS i 3 11 abstract philosophy site land and landscape pale mountains 25 intervention layering meaning 33 heritage material and immaterial wealth 1 philosophy land and landscape A landscape is not a natural fact; it is always the result of a human in which the two situations coexist (Italian, Spanish). There construction. This is obvious when the word is applied to a genre are movements of meaning from one language to another of painting. But it is equally true when one considers the subject (Dutch>German and English), and movements of meaning from of the painting. The ‘landscape’ is, in effect, a set of elements ancient to modern languages (Latin>Italian, Dutch and German). artificially ‘cut out’ of the real. Moreover, to form a landscape these French is the only language that invents a new word to designate the elements must appear as a unitary whole—so, in order for there to re-presentation of a part of the world. Among all the Western words be a landscape, there must be a ‘shaping perception’, to borrow a for landscape, the sixteenth-century neologism paisage (in modern term coined by Simon Schama.1 One may join this author in noting usage, paysage) is, in fact, the chef de file of two separate but that representations of the land and the names by which they are related lexical groups: words without Latin roots, and words having called, in English (landscape) as in German (landschaft), come from to do with representation. Recent research suggests that paysage 1 Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most important Holland (landskip)—that is, from a country where nature has, more arose specifically to designate representation in the visual arts, being and successful artists of the twentieth century than elsewhere, been modeled by man. It is difficult to think of this first used to describe the images that were painted or engraved at (here photographed by coincidence as a matter of chance. One might wonder, indeed, if Fontainebleau between 1530 and 1543.2 Alfred Stieglitz, 1918). Her ability to capture the the polysemy that makes it possible to use the term landscape to Contemporary usage of the word landscape is characterized by essence of the natural beauty of northern New designate both a portion of the earth and its pictorial representation, countless figurative applications touching upon the most diverse Mexico desert, has given does not imply an ambiguity that is more than semantic. It is as domains: mention is frequently made of interior landscape, political the area the appellati- ve, “O’Keeffe Country,” though what one means, by landscape, belongs neither to the world landscape, cultural landscape. It is reasonable to ask if the word indissolubly mixing the identities of artist and of things nor to that of ideas, but suggests the existence of another does not lose in understanding what it gains in extension, this way. land. mode of being, inhabits an intermediate reality that is its own Is it emptied of meaning, does it lose sight of all reference to the specific dimension and the source of the landscape’s extraordinary landscape ‘as such’? Or does this metaphoric extension, on the mnemonic and aesthetic power. contrary, reveal certain unexplored and unexploited properties of landscape? The broader acceptation of the word clearly does not designate Landscape as word the landscape or landscapes represented by this artist or in that work, it describes a certain world view intimately tied to the In Europe, there are languages in which one and the same word sensibility and style of the artist: not this or that reference, but a set designates the countryside and its representation (Dutch, German); of references.