The travel of Ercole Luigi Morselli (1904) to Latin America. From the myth of Ulysses to a new version of the myth: Orion (1910) and Glauco (1919)

Abstract

The young Ercole Luigi Morselli (1882-1921), a promising author and playwright to-be, goes on a one-year trip between the Summer of 1903 and the Autumn of 1904. The trip is motivated by a series of needs, including an outward intolerance of traditional rules and teachings by a free and rebellious spirit, animated by great artistic pretension. The desire for "another place" arises from the need to distance himself provisionally from "Madre", a term that should be understood in two ways: as the homeland - the land of letters and culture in which he dreams to assert himself in the future as a writer - and as the progenitor, that is, his mother, Anna Celli, to finally emancipate himself and "grow" as a man and as an artist, while maintaining, through letter, a strong connection to both. Morselli is one of the very few artists of his generation who traveled like this. This fundamental experience makes it possible to trace a kind of artistic and personal itinerary through the correspondence sent to his mother, in which the first clear signs of his ambition as an artist start to appear.