L'antica madre

The narrator recalls a childhood shaped by an ancestral countryside that nourished imagination and artistic vocation, describing vivid sensory memories—a terrifying sunset, the presence of an elderly relative, and the earth's manifold beauties and miseries. These scenes give rise to admiration and later to existential doubt as the narrator confronts the limits of human grandeur, irony, and the emptiness of conventional certainties. The text alternates lyrical recollection with philosophical reflection, tracing a restless search for meaning that moves from wonder through skepticism toward a desire for resolution, while emphasizing the sustaining bond between person, land, and memory.