thus spoke the man in the street

---

"What a curse living in a world so damnably orphic, where there is no room for the language of the man in the street. In a world where the man in the street cannot speak, even the poet has to remain silent"

Umberto Eco
On Symbolism

---

I recently read "On Literature" by Umberto Eco (on loan from Valentina), an interesting collection of essays on literature and literary criticism. Although some of them were probably a bit advanced for my literary background, I found most of them quite entertaining and with stimulating aphorisms like the one I am posting above. Apart from its certain appeal to my political views (not to mention my disdain to any kind of elitism) it reminded me of the nicest anecdote I can remember regarding art and its appreciation. I post it below the way I remember it, probably a bit embellished by the passing of time since the first time I heard it narrated by a very good friend.

Here it goes:

Three renowned film directors were once interviewed on a popular radio show. The show host started by asking the first one -known to be a passionate realist- what in his opinion was the purpose of art.

He said: Imagine an everyday scene in a very common place, a small street of a middle-sized city. Now imagine a common man, let's make him a builder or a docker. We give him an imaginary line in the film. What would this line be? In my opinion, what the man on the street has to say is a simple phrase, something as common and ordinary as his ordinary life. Because in the end, the purpose of art is to imitate life.

The host then turned to the second one, a prominent representative of the romantic wave and asked him the same question.

He said: Art is indeed an imitation of life. But life is not always ordinary. Life can be full of surprises. Utter greatness and extreme misery may sometimes be hidden in the most obscure clefts of everyday routine. Art's function is to reveal the unexpected. To clearly state the possibility for every man to rise above the ordinary. What the man on the street has to say? I say put in his mouth the greatest universal truth, the most outstanding, crucial aphorism. Make his words resonate in the souls of your spectators forever.

The radio host was delighted with this exchange of opinions. It looked like he had touched a very sensitive point and was very excited with the way the conversation was developing. He turned to the third director, one that had never been a particular fun of a given art movement and asked him his view on the matter.

Then he said: It is true, life can be ordinary and life can be exceptional. There are people who lead passionate lives, those that weave the same fabric of history and there is the man on the street who passes his ordinary days entangled in this fabric. Nonetheless there is space for greatness in everyone. Each one of us, our docker father, an illiterate man who works in a factory, an uneducated housewife are all very likely to spend our days without achieving greatness. Still, for each and everyone of us, there will come a day, long after we will be gone that someone who knew us, someone who loved us, someone whom we have hurt, will remember us. He will remember something we did or something we said, something that made an impact in his life. It may be a simple joke put brilliantly in the context of a moment, a proverbial curse, or wonderful words of love, nothing that would sound awkward out of our mouths but still something that touched the other so deeply that he still remembers them. Such are the words that make us immortal, and such words would I look for to put in the mouth of the man on the street.

And that was about when the show was interrupted by the stupid advertising jingle of one of the sponsors.