An impassioned close-combat with origins thinking to reflect on what makes us what we are. The decisive question today is indeed the same as it has always been: the relationship between the human being and his animality, thus the way we inhabit the world. For if we want to heal our soul, we must first accept our nature as mortal animals.

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Poetic, enigmatic, oracular, the most ancient thinkers are dominated by a dramatic complexity that has always challenged readers. Yet it is to the eternal reach of their vertiginous and bewildering verses that Matteo Nucci relies to remind us what challenge we must accept lest we forget our true nature. It was, in fact, these wise men-Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles-who gave the most exact and obscure answer. And it is precisely with their obscurity that we must confront, if we are to experience to the full the power and weakness of that which distances us from the animal kingdom, the logos, in order to experience our humanity, and especially our animality.

Re-reading myths in which human and animal intertwine in fantastic creatures-from the Minotaur to the Sphinx, crossing the centuries to find ourselves before writers such as Dürrenmatt and Hemingway, or poets such as Kavafis and García Lorca, we discover how powerful and compelling certain ancient reflections are, how famous stories such as those of Oedipus and Ariadne can make us look with other eyes at themes that we usually judge with the prejudice of superficiality. Accompanied by illustrations by John Baptist Porzio, The Cry of Pan confronts us with the decisive truth: "What are we but mortal animals? Beings that are born and die, immersed in a continuous cycle of births and deaths, we like those animals who do not share our logos instead. This is what we are and what we forget."