Barbarus hic ego sum. The mutual gaze and the "sade story" of otherness from Ovidio Peregrinus to Ndjock Ngana

Abstract

In a climate of violent and painful relations with otherness, Italian Literature of Migration describes the displacement of the migrant, the “dismatria” illustrated more than two thousand years ago by the latin poet Ovid, exul and peregrinus. “Ovid’s Diary” (Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto) and contemporary migrant narrations describe the disappointment and the fear of foreigners, who are victim of an identity crisis, in which what is central is the relationship with the other, the different, the hostis. The gaze of Otherness is mutual: there is the distrustful gaze of those who arrive and there are those who welcome, whose gaze is full of prejudices. Exiled-voices like that of Ndjock Ngana, author of Foglie vive calpestate (1989) and Nhindo Nero (1994), narrate all this.