«Alcesti non è più Alcesti». La tragedia secondo Alberto Savinio

Since its nineteenth-century precursors, modern culture has produced a negative view of the trag- ic, focusing on the theme of the ‘death of tragedy’ and the irrelevance of the tragic genre. The rel- ativistic view of the world, which characterizes a large part of the twentieth century experience, in fact denies the reasons for the conflict between man and God, between man and the cosmos, and undermines epistemological, ethical and aesthetic foundations of the classic drama. In this context, the tragedies of Alberto Savino, written after World War II, offer a very interesting point of view because they reflect, within the text, upon the problem of representation of the tragic in an age that, in spite of wars and of the bloodshed, he considers absolutely «indrammatica». The ar- ticle intends to focus on Savinio’s original conception of the tragedy – as overcoming the tragic and the modern anguish – with particular regard to Alcesti di Samuele, the most complex and ambitious drama with which the author would communicate his aesthetics, ethics and politics vision.