Ms Fico, who married Antonioni the year after his stroke, said that instead of more drastic means he had "simply stopped eating”, with "incredible willpower". He had eaten little or nothing from September 2006, just over a year before he died, she told La Stampa. "He came to table with me, to keep me company, but only ate a few spoonfuls". He had proved that "one's body continues to live even if you go month after month without eating".
She said that like the mystics who had similarly starved themselves, Antonioni had acquired "extraordinary mental lucidity" towards the end. He had put up with his decline and illness "gloriously", but "not to be able to see was for him truly unacceptable".
He had wanted to die "to free himself not so much from pain as from the body which was the origin of his suffering." She said his death "was a masterpiece as much as his cinematic works. He went in absolute peace, embracing the absolute, as if he were a mystic. He wanted to de-materialise".
Clever Circe, the enchantress who bewitches... and for what reason? She wants a Tower. A Tower so high that it can contain all knowledge. A Tower where Circe can keep the secrets and legends of every creature in the Universe. Her galactic library has no equal. From the dawn of time when clay tables were replaced by parchment, which was then replaced by print, then by videos. Circe wants to keep everything, to know everything. No spacecraft can escape the tower's gravitational pull. Once caught they remain here forever.
What happens to the crew?
The Thousand Spells of Circe keep them as slaves. They give her their knowledge and she gives them the power to forget the past. They place stone upon stone for her and so the Tower grows and grows.
[ source ]