Sergio Mattarella at the Paris Book Fair: “Culture is the essence of democracy”
“It’s nice to think that Italy is not only its past but a casket permanently enriched. The Italian cultural industry is a driving force behind our production model which allows the creations of ingenuity to be showcased. Our country enjoys abroad a very high reputationwhich invests its past but, as I have observed, its present too”. Thus speaking the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarelladuring an interview with Corriere della Seraat the start of the Paris Book Fairwhere Italy is the guest of honour.
The head of state defines Italy’s presence at the Parisian demonstration “among the most prestigious European cultural occasions”, which “in addition to recognizing the contribution made by Italian civilization to global sentiment, represents a great opportunity to continue on the path of an osmosis that increasingly consolidates the common platform of values on which the European House is founded”.
According to Mattarella “the cultural autobiography of a country is its entire culture, the high and the popular, to recall the thought of a great transnational Italian, Umberto Ecoable to speak to all cultural expressions”, an autobiography that “finds in Dante Alighieri the man who completed the passage between Latin and the vernacular, recognizing the literary dignity and communicative superiority of the spoken language, what we now call the Italian language – and it was a revolution”. Furthermore, Mattarella points out, “the encounter and dialogue between cultures it offers the opportunity to get to know each other beyond consolidated stereotypes and creates, in comparison, the conditions for overcoming the fragility of an interpretation of identity based on closure and rejection of the other. Reflection in a large space is what allowed the growth of civilizations”.
Subscribe to the newsletter