Allegorice loqui

Allegory, at the beginning, in the Middle Ages and in the practice of exegesis and hermeneutics, not only of the Scriptures, a privileged, if not unique, instrument, has become, in the modernity, starting from Goethe onwards, an aesthetic ornament, to be abhorred and rejected, as a cold and inessential mechanical frill. Nowadays it knows strongly revaluation, starting from, at least, Benjamin and Gadamer, who revealed its intrinsic value and content: both moral and cognitive. And while it is true that an allegorical text can be easily paraphrased, it is true that the allegorical text, when it is strong and successful, can never be completely paraphrased: the second and further meaning is insuppressible and neither can be paraphrased, nor can be said otherwise; the allegory says what the word, by itself, does not have and can not have: because allegory is the intrinsic otherness of any say.