CARNIVAL FRITTERS

What is Carnival if not a chance to express, without restraint, the desire to show ourselves, to emerge into the open precisely while wearing a mask?

Masquerades, or rather masks, offer opportunities to sublimate the ego: that brief moment when social rules change and we can play at being who we are or who we aspire to be.

From ancient Babylon and its rituals to the Greek Anthesteria and Roman Saturnalia, Christian Carnival is celebrated with the same impulse to subvert authority.

Irreverent, blasphemous rituals, even performed by religious institutions against themselves. The creation of chaos was seen as a necessary stage in the evolution of humanity and society: exploring the limits of madness without rules before returning to apparent order.

Image from the web of Carnival in Sardinia

Slaves became kings for a day, and masters bent to their slaves’ will as though they had wanted to all year. Yet at the end of these wild rituals, the slave-king himself was killed. (1*)

What remains of those rituals today?
Probably the most important element of medieval thought, which gave it a new name, expressed in the later term “carnascialeschi”.

Image from the web of Carnival in Sardinia

Dialect, as always, makes the idea more immediate and explicit:
“Carnaluvari – Carni ha luvari – a Carni ha lassari” (remove meat from the diet for the coming days until Easter).

Just under a week to indulge gluttony and every other sense before plunging into Lent and the denial of the flesh.

Why? Because flesh is pleasure itself, the source of every evil and every sin: pleasure belongs to the flesh and lives within it.

Christianity split the human unity of body and spirit. The latter reaches exaltation only by refusing to compromise with the needs of the former.
This unnatural, inhuman separation produces the frustrations through which church leaders have kept humanity subjugated, from the early Middle Ages to the Middle Ages of today.

Masks unsettle and attract us at the same time, because our desires beat behind them.

(1*) http://cedocsv.blogspot.com/2014/03/il-carnevale-dai-saturnali-alla-festa.html

Make delicious Carnival fritters with Maiorca flour alongside me, and make these festive days special!

“CARNALUVARI” FRITTERS CARNIVAL FRITTERS

(in other words, before parting with pleasure)