Why Did He Dye His Hair? On the Reality and Existence of Carmelo Bene

This short essay is a bonus track of the book published by the author in 2024 for FrancoAngeli Open Access. The first paragraph recalls the theoretical paradox on the «unrepresentable» that Carmelo Bene encountered in the last phase of his artistic journey. In the second paragraph, the theses on the «metaphor» with which the paradox was unravelled in the book of 2024 are firstly further validated through recourse to a text only recently found; subsequently, they are used to develop a thought on the relationship between reality and poetic representation that – with the support of theatrical practices – leads to addressing the theme of style and, collaterally, to refuting Carmelo Bene’s renowned (and far from provocative) statements on his own “non-existence”.