IN SEARCH... IN SEARCH OF TIME... THE SIBYL
by Dominique Desanti
 Ferdinando Ambrosino lives in Cuma, near the water. The Phlegraean Fields, with those reds, yellows and blues, are now visible to us from high above, as if from a plane, now unearthed and accessible to us, and they invite us to enter.
Sometimes painters claim to give their works a name only once the work is finished, to please their entourage. In novels too, the title is often written at the end. As if, in order to baptize the work, it was necessary to keep it at a distance. I believe the title is never accidental but shows the depth of a forgotten intention.
Ferdinando Ambrosino has produced two series: À la recherche... 1, 2, 3, begun in 1987, and À la recherche du temps, begun in 1986, also numbered. At first, these titles in French misled me. By our own natural inclination, I iwould almost say our maniacal way, or according to the tic we French have, as soon as someone says “recherche”... and particularly “recherche du temps”... something takes us back to where we are guided by a small dog-rose bush, a tiny village bell tower, any of the Atlantic beaches; or else our companions in our youth, the rather ancient and pretentious restaurants, the snobberies or the ancestries; or else attachment to Mother, to the grandmother of our childhood affections, or even, at the other extreme of the sentiments, the allusion to hopeless jealousies.
In short, when Ferdinando Ambrosino says À la recherche du temps, whether as bait or with the aim of bringing the enquiry into the field of volumes, he guides us, intentionally it appears, to Proust. Actually, for us French, Proust is such a strong presence that for some, the unconscious, complexes, repressions show themselves not through the work of Freud, but because they explain the characters of Proust.
But I have escaped the trap that Ferdinando Ambrosino sets in his titles. No, I won't be caught: it is not Proust that Ambrosino relives and transposes, it is Cuma with the Sibyl.
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