loStraniero

When he sees the light in an unspecified location in Southeastern Europe, a furious storm shatters windows, sends crucifixes and paintings spinning, extinguishes lamps and candles – until a gigantic flash illuminates the newborn and all the clocks go haywire. That flash will be Gregor's hallmark. He soon reveals himself to be not only fragile, shadowy, and disdainful, but exceptionally gifted in the sciences: it seems almost as if he can visualize things before they even exist, with three-dimensional precision, without the need for sketches, diagrams, or drafts. Thus, he will be an inventor, a visionary, prophetic inventor, megalomaniac, always teetering between science and magic, mechanics and charlatanism, genius and madness, dream and bluff. And he will be a man desperately alone, as attractive and brilliant as he is unreachable, intolerant of any relationship with his peers, whom he prefers to birds. We will partake in his phantasmagorical adventures with the same enchanted astonishment as when, as children, we flipped through an illustrated book by Jules Verne: from the early, harsh years in America serving Edison to the immense popularity gained through alternating current and the dazzling shows in which he appears, transforming into a long deluge of fire, to the ever more daring projects and the cruel decline: for Gregor invents relentlessly but dissipates everything as if only the pure act of creation matters. Once again, recklessly playing on