TURIN. The bed is a world view. It tells our story because in bed we are born, we die, we love, we dream, we live adventures, we exchange secrets, we are afraid, the doors of somewhere populated by nightmares open. With “The theater of the bed. Nocturnal stories among books, heroes, ghosts and fatal women ”(La nave di Teseo), Mario Baudino builds a cultured, light and smiling itinerary between art and literature on the pleasures of the horizontal position. Today at 6 pm at the Circolo dei readers, via Bogino 9, the writer and journalist who was responsible for the cultural pages and correspondent of the Press, presents him with Raffaello Palumbo Mosca. From Ulysses to today, passing through Guy de Maupassant, Proust and the Sun King, the bed speaks of us.
Why the bed?
«In the first lockdown I was always lying down reading, it occurred to me to write a story of that pleasure. With the excuse I was spending even more time in bed and I realized that an anthropological account of this piece of furniture was missing ».
How do you define the book?
«A history of Western culture through the prism of the bed. There are inventions, said Eco, which cannot be improved, such as the wheel. The bed is one of them: a piece of furniture raised off the ground on which to lie down protected from humidity, insects and the dangers of the soil. I start with Ulysses who is recognized in bed and returns to being king and I arrive at Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses, where the bed is the explosion of an uncertain self, passing through the libertine paintings of the eighteenth century with single women with a book in hand and the other hidden and “The nightmare” by Füssli ».
Does history also happen in bed?
“If we think of Louis XIV, the bed is also an altar because the king is sacred”
Was the bed born comfortable?
“Not exactly. The story of the princess and the pea says no. Greeks and Romans slept on skins. Since the Middle Ages, wool mattresses were hard and difficult to wash. The bed was the prerogative of the upper middle class because the poor slept on straw sacks or on the ground. Even today it is said “to sleep on a bed of feathers” but since the 1600s hygienists have seen that it was full of bacteria and flattened out. The first beds were very short, we almost slept sitting up ».
Was there anyone against the bed?
«Baudelaire used to say that one must not sleep but overcome sleep. In Romanticism the bed is something that must be avoided, an abyss of exasperated sensuality that attracts and is a place of perdition ».
And in favor of the bed?
‘Proust wrote almost the entire Recherche in bed. Yours is a nest and sleeping in unknown beds is a real pain ».
What are the best-told beds?
«In de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons the bed is the battleground where you can weave plots and seize the moment. The story of Crebillon son, “The sofa”, about an Indian prince condemned to become a bed until a pure love is consumed on him is beautiful ».
Is reading in bed good for you?
“In the past there was the fear that the lit candle would cause fires, today it is recommended because it is good for the couple, it avoids the cold light of the TV or tablet for the eyes and therefore makes you sleep better”.