2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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P RELUDE
concrete realization of such a theoretical imperative: a system that is complex enough to be
interesting but is fully bent upon itself. However, the dialectics between the open and the
closed that is essential to the world of game finds a last but decisive resistance in the ne-
cessity of the acceptance of the game by the player. The game must be recognized as such
and then accepted, but recognition implies an ineliminable distance between the player and
the play that is fatal to the whole operation because it necessarily entails the existence of
something external to the game itself. Something that nullifies the whole effort. Or, to be
more precise, something that changes its import, since ‘the’ game of existence becomes
‘just’ a game. It was the final solution to the voidness of experience—now it has been de-
graded to being just another, unsatisfactory experience. The characteristic vacuity it derives
from self-referentiality becomes now the mark of the ultimate meaninglessness of the
world. Even death, when considered from this perspective, changes its value. In fact, let us
go back once again to the last page of Mr. Palomar and take another look at the coincidence
between the end of the protagonist’s search and his death.
If, on the one hand, the coincidence between the end of the intellectual exploration and
the biological end can make up a true chord concluding on a restful harmony Mr. Palomar’s
existence, on the other hand it is not difficult to hear, in that same final clause, a dissonant
contrast. If we think it through, death reaches Mr. Palomar exactly at the moment when his
reflection has brought him to doubt of the possibility of death. Indeed, it is precisely be-
cause time has to come to an end, because its end can be imagined, it is precisely because
death exists and pervades existence that its reality begins to fade away. If the only place
where death can be met coincides with the end of time and space, it is clear that the uncer-
tain ontological status of such place cannot but weaken and almost annihilate the reality of
death itself. And yet, no rebuke was ever sharper: At that moment he dies. Far from being
the crowning of existence, Mr. Palomar’s death marks his life as a total failure. Not just the
single events, but also the will itself that animated them and his whole existential project
result in a failure. At that moment he dies. What is astonishing in that last enigmatic clause
is not only the possibility of the two conflicting interpretations I have just delineated, but
the contemporary presence of both of them in spite of their total incompatibility. The am-