Activations of Landscape in De Aetna

The father-son relationship recurs as the central theme of Chapter 6, in which Etna powerfully symbolizes the generational tensions—Bernardo Bembo committed to traditional Venetian patrician civic duty, Pietro far more ambivalent about that calling—that underlie (and gently qualify) their congenial exchanges in De Aetna. Bernardo views Etna with studied detachment, resisting its wonder by systematically explaining its workings in terms of volcanic typology; Pietro’s Etna is as much a mountain of the mind as it is a formidable physical challenge. Bernardo objectifies nature; Pietro views Etna with a far more subjective eye for fabulist projection on to its slopes, for engaging with its air of mystery and enchantment, and above all for making the mountain his own as a figurative locus of self-expression. If Bernardo expounds de Aetna, Pietro exults de sua Aetna; whereas Bernardo deciphers the mountain, Pietro encrypts it in his own code of fantasy.