Everything was matter. The spirit ran away.

"Where do you come from? To whom do you belong? What are you seeking?" Thus the wayfarer-narrator is asked in the lands of the fathers. The wayfarer proceeds with the step of the initiate, his gaze sharpened, his memory populated with stories. And the stories come to him in the guise of figures, each bearer of destiny, who have the task of inspired companions.
Places and characters sound, with their "stortinomi," still and mythical, immersed in a human and geographical landscape that mixes the known and the unknown. Scatozza "tamer of trucks," Mandarin "shepherd of men," the Totara, Cazzariegghio, Pacchi Pacchi, Testadiuccello, Camoia, the Marescialla: each one briefs the wayfarer, each one warns him, each one seems to be the custodian of a truth that concerns us all the more, the more it is outside History. The wayfarer must contend, along with the reader, with a heritage of wisdom that seems to have deserted everyone who moves along paths and roads, under the moon, in the light of noontide, accompanied by the barking of dogs.
And then there is the music and the musicians. Marriage music, sonnet singing, music to kill the swine, dance music to fall "sponzati come baccalà," serenade music, funeral lamento, rural music, reckoning music. Vinicio Capossela has written a memorable work in which reality is visible only behind the deforming veil of a grand, epic sense of human existence, of a past that returns to populate the opacity of our chaos with mysteries and splendors.