Jonathan Ferroni
The first time I read the word "Amphiorama" I was eleven or twelve years. It did mention a book that my father had bought in Monterosso, which aimed to provide a fascinating overview of the history and prehistory of the coast of La Spezia, with special emphasis to the legends and unusual events or unresolved. What made me fantasize
in those years, I had read about that book!
were actually a few lines, which tells briefly what had happened to a British naturalist named Trafford, in 1869, and a clear spring day, while hiking on Mount Castellana, famous hill from which you has an excellent view of the Gulf of La Spezia.
According to his own account, Trafford would have been an amazing optical phenomenon, which lasted over five hours, during which he could see a kind of projection distance of the planet, in a very unusual perspective.
What wonder for the imagination, imagine seeing all the places in the world in real time, unfolding one after another in the clear sky of a beautiful sunny morning on the Gulf!
is a mental image that has long remained in my memory, populated in part by memories of walks in the hills of Cinque Terre and crystallized in a shot from the famous painting by Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Sea of \u200b\u200bFog, which I believe best represents the sense of wonder and astonishment astonishment of a man who feels lonely at the top of the world. Not surprisingly, this same painting was also used to illustrate the cover of the book by Bruno Della Rosa "La Spezia strange stories", one of whose chapters is devoted precisely to the story dell'Amphiorama.
In the years that followed, appeared here and there other signs to this incredible experience and I drew up a memorial that Trafford, a booklet in 1874 titled "Amphiorama, ou la vue du monde des montagnes de La Spezia", \u200b\u200bprinted in Switzerland with a run very low. The work fascinated me
unavailability immediately to the mystique that was created, and soon was born in me a desire to see the memorial and make it public so that everyone could get a complete picture by itself, without having to make do with the opinion of those few who had discussed in the past.
course, like so many dreams and ideas of childhood, remained closed for a while 'in the drawer. Then, noting that the topic was once again discussed, especially on the Internet, and to charge the public's attention, I decided to make that old project and began the painstaking research of original texts, to be able to translate and publish.
In December of the past year, this project is finally been completed and, although with several difficulties, the text has been published and is available at the site www.lcsscl.it at The Altar of the Sun Publishing, and of course in the major online booksellers. As with any idealization
lapses in contact with reality, the idea that I had made of that book is gone as soon as I could read it. The statement of facts is somewhat nebulous, the explanations are never particularly clear and the whole experience could also be a new scientific discovery or the fantasy of an undisciplined mind. Anyone who has got an idea
dell'Amphiorama can now compare with that idea reality, for better or for worse. Of course, the comparison of different interpretations, which will be interesting and challenging, will open a lively debate in the scientific world, if the interest aroused by the phenomenon is quite large.
My intention in publishing this book was mainly to make the audience break a text that relates, albeit indirectly, his land and his city. A text of the past that has never been published before in Italy and, beyond all the judgments of veracity, is not unusual, curious and fascinating, to be included in the archives of the memory of this territory.
will also be my care, welcome addition to efforts to send copies of the book to the mainstream press in Liguria, as well as some selected scientific societies, so that those who are "insiders", if interested, can groped to confirm or disprove the exhibition of Trafford, maybe adding a new case to the mysteries of science.
In the treatment of the first edition of the book (and even now), I wanted to refrain from expressing any opinion, since I am not responsible for any of the materials whose scope is involved in the experience dell'Amphiorama. As is natural, there will be conflicting opinions and propose certain theories can not be shared by the scientific world, too fanciful to be considered credible. It will be necessary, in fact, a very open approach and possibilistic, groped for those who wish to interpret the phenomenon, but we will still try to go to the essence of the facts, stripped of their casings from appearance, and add imaginative ruminations to those already existing spontaneously.
In the words of an ancient Eastern parable: "He who brings water to the fire wants to turn it off, while the one who brings wood still want to see the flame dancing!"
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