Hind Massad
"I was in a state of ecstasy from the idea of being in Florence near the great men who I saw their graves, and I enjoyed the contemplation of exquisite beauty, that I at some point felt heavenly feelings. As if everything was clearly speaking to my soul. Oh, if I forget what happened, it was My heart is beating so hard, and slowly, I began to lose my sense of life, and I went away and I was afraid that I would delay fainting at me at any moment. "
With those words, the French writer Marie-Henri Bell (1783-1842), known as the Stendhal, described his journey to the Italian city of Florence in 1817, which according to his description caused him a state of imbalance and disturbance from the excessive beauty of fine art that he saw for the Renaissance giants like Dante and Michael Angelo and Da Vinci.
Stendhal syndrome
Psychologist Grazilla Magrini coined in 1979 the term "Stendhal syndrome" to describe a pattern of mental disorders she observed during her time at Santa Maria Nova Hospital in Florence, where a large number of tourists, treated under her supervision, experienced the same disorders that Stendhal described during his visit to the city , According to the Telegraph.
In historical sites, especially museums and churches, tourists have symptoms ranging from minor physical disorders such as shortness of breath and heart palpitations to severe disorders such as panic attacks and hallucinations. In her 1989 book, La sindrome di Stendhal, Magrini admitted that she had treated 107 cases of Stendal syndrome between 1977 and 1986 alone.
Magrini described Stendhal's syndrome as a psychosomatic illness that causes tachycardia, fainting, confusion, and even rapid hallucinations in people contemplating unusual artwork, be it paintings or sculptures. Although psychologists have debated for a long time whether or not Stendhal syndrome is a mental illness, its effects on some patients are serious enough for hospitalization and even antidepressants.
Technical wound
Destoyevsky says in the novel "In My Crypt" that beauty and splendor weigh heavily on my shoulders.
In Florence again, a forty-year-old woman was taken to the hospital after she panicked, confirming that she saw the angels "dancing" in the archeological church of Santa Croce, which is only eight hundred meters from the graves of Michelangelo, Galileo and other giants of Italian art, It is the site known as the Temple of Italian Glory.
Of course, the doctors considered that what this lady saw was nothing but a hallucination accompanying Stendhal's syndrome.
However, art critic Christopher Linz sees in an article published in The Point that what happens, even if it is a hallucination and has a medical explanation, illustrates the enormous impact of fine art on man. Since some of the cases that affected Stendal Syndrome have relapsed again when visiting Florence for the second time, it is not just a transient disorder, but this psychological wound caused by art - and if treated - remains lifelong.
The eternal lute
Although Nietzsche viewed "eternal oud" from a logical and rational angle, and metaphysics may not seem related to it, he was influenced by the legend of Dionysus / Bacchus, the Greek god of wine who dies to be reborn as mentioned in his book "The Birth of Tragedy".
Likewise, the "modern Platonism", which spread in the 19th century, holds that a number of ancient Greek myths, such as the legend of Dionysus, are not incompatible with the Christian faith, where the eternal return of Dionysus symbolizes the return of the living Christ, and the wine in the myth is his blood.
Thus, the pagan Dionysus, with his wine and pure physical joy, transformed into the living Christ in a metaphysical fashion according to the updated Platonism. To a large extent, this is what happens with tourists, according to what Linz sees. If Florence's tourists feel dizzy and delirious, and sometimes they hallucinate the excessive beauty of artwork, then Jerusalem tourists also experienced similar feelings and physical disorders when visiting holy sites, and a large number of tourists also suffer Paris is the same.
And what is common to all these sites is that they involve not only great artworks, but also the site of distinct religious events. It may be what happened in it someday still happens every day, but in a different way. If a person sometimes feels that a moment has passed before and that he lived and experienced it, in what is known as "deja vu or an illusion of vision," then what sufferers of Stendal syndrome suffer from may be one of the paradoxes in a world that is itself full of strange paradoxes.
When Dr. Magrini isolated some cases with Stendal Syndrome in Florence to study, she was unable to reach precisely the reason for the excessive power of art to influence certain people to the point of fatigue, disorder, or hallucinations.
What is more, what Magrini ended up with is more ambiguity: there is no specific brain activity shared by the sufferers or a similar history, or the cause of some people explaining dizziness, confusion, and hallucinations when visiting artistic or historical sites.
However, Linz tends to accept that there is always something that we do not know in everything we know, and that it is better for us not to try to understand how or the cause of these strange symptoms that appear to tourists. Because there may be no explanation but that eternal return to all the epic moments that have been associated with those sites or artworks. And that these people may be in their temporal context present in another time context, where the artwork is a gateway or crossing between two worlds.