“Strano”, “stranio”, “estraneo” : Ettore Majorana come personaggio di romanzo

The text that follows is based on the paper presented at the sixth Leonardo Sciascia Colloquium, «“E possibilmente anche dopo”. 1938, 1975, 2015, La scomparsa di Majorana : riflessioni e inquietudini» (‘And perhaps beyond’. 1938, 1975, 2015, The disappearance of Majorana : reflections and concerns’), which took place on 20-21 Nov. 2015 in Palermo. The construction of Sciascia’s physicist turns on, firstly, a documentary aspect, encompassing both myth and legend, and secondly, a broadly Freudian-Lacanian, or psychoanalytic aspect; the author’s finely tuned, politically engaged, and at times Proustian, voice serves to unite them. Majorana becomes a symbol of the temperamentally ‘unsuitable’ genius, who foresees the catastrophic results of atomic research; hence his intention to disappear, demonstrating that he is a f ree man. In taking to their logical conclusions journalist and historian Robert Jungk’s opinions, expressed in Brighter than a Thousand Suns, Sciascia lays bare a ‘dangerous myth’, which Jungk himself must needs revise fundamentally. But also significant is the dramatic way Sciascia enters into the supposed debate about the ‘two cultures’, suggesting that modern science can only lead to ruin. All that is left, as a defence, is a perennial humanism, which is at once materially disinterested, philosophical and speculative.

Il personaggio di Ettore Majorana nell'omonimo romanzo-inchiesta di Leonardo Sciascia. Realtà anagrafica e finzione: procedure documentarie, sondaggio psicologico e caratteriale. Il modello romantico-decadente e stendhaliano; la teoria del genio; il rapporto con Heisenberg e la tesi dell'indisponibilità che gli scienziati tedeschi avrebbero manifestato a costruire una bomba atomica nazista. Sciascia e Dürrenmatt; la figura di Oppenheimer.