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Given that in the pictorial work Hamlet's characters have elements taken from the vegetal and animal world in place of their heads, it is not fortuitous that the world of birds predominates in his sculpture, in fact, Hamlet's paintings possess a prevalently satirical character while his sculpture, on the contrary, is dominated by a eulogistic pulsion. The symbol of the bird is extremely rich in redeeming and sacred connotations. Given that they live between the earth and sky they become classical symbol for the relationships between the earth (female chthonic principle) and the sky (male uranian principle). They often represent the superior states of being, or else the stage of transition between the human and the divine. In this way Garuda, the man-bird of Hindu mythology, is no longer human without, nevertheless, taking on the condition of the divinity. In going back to the birds, a frequent motif in Hamlet's compositions, we want to point out that the night species represent female values - and, more specifically, those of intelligence, intuitive gifts and wisdom (the little owl is consecrated to Athena) - . .
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due to their faculty of seeing in the dark and their association with the moon. Sexual love, instead, is incarnated by the pigeon, the duck and by the dove, the bird of Aphrodite. By way of conclusion, I shall say that the theriomorphism of these characters reveals the artist's desire to evoke the statute of the person initiated, who has completed the process of individuation. If it is true that every protagonist of an artistic or literary work is to a certain degree the self-portrait of the author, to create actors with feral characteristics and freatures means giving them the awareness of their most intimate nature. Jung recalls that the animal in the psyche of the individual stands for his or her instinctual side and warns that "the acceptance of the animal soul is the condition of the unification of the individual and of the fullness of his or her development" (1964:238-239). So we thank Max Hamlet Sauvage for revealing to us - th - rough his art - a world embodying precisely that therapeutic value of every myth which is integrally lived. Arturo Schwarz .
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