Love come, love go. For Plato it is the feeling that determines all the actions and aspirations of human beings. For Empedocles all living things – trees, wild animals, birds, fish – are born from the labor of love, in which everything comes together, because everything dies of desire for the other. Love becomes illness in the verses of Sappho, which describes the symptoms one by one, and leads every loved one to love the one who loves them back as in the famous verse of Dante. It’s insanity for Lucretius, obsession with Cole Portersecond unhappiness Aragon. Every time and every author has investigated the meaning of love. And it is precisely to Eros that we dedicate the cover of this week Robinson on newsstands from Sunday 11 February, with a reflection by Silvia Ronchey.
But love and in particular the poems that this inspired are also at the center of the third book on newsstands with Robinson, the anthology Loving you as I love you, from a verse of Federico García Lorca, edited by the writer Fabiano Massimi, a teacher at the Holden school, and by the bookmakers who are part of the editorial committee of our cultural insert. A collection of one hundred poems that comes out close to Valentine’s Day and, as Sara Scarafia tells us, crosses the centuries and languages (with original texts alongside): inside there is the crazy love of Alda Merinithe irreverent love of Michele Mari, beloved on Booktok, the love that blooms of Antonia Pozzi, Prévert e Dino Campana and queer love from Sappho a Renee Vivien. And in the space dedicated to TikTok, the bookmakers who helped us create the book tell us what their favorite poem is.
For the week’s reading we instead publish an intense testimony by Umberto Eco about his childhood, between his family and the trauma of war, in which the great author reveals where his passion for novels was born.
As always, there are many reviews of the latest releases in bookstores. Starting from the expected Lucy in front of the sea (Einaudi), poignant fresco on the strength of nature in which Elizabeth Strout returns to tell the story of Mrs. Barton, his latest protagonist, who finds her ex-husband, while the world is shocked by the pandemic: Leonetta Bentivoglio read it for us. While with Gabriele Romagnoli we discover the Frenchman’s lucky debut at the age of 55 Laurent Petitmangin that in What you need at night (Mondadori) constructs a current and at the same time emblematic story where a militant left-wing father, who abstained from the presidential elections obviously not to vote for Le Pen, but not even Macron, one day discovers that his son has become a fascist.
It arrives instead for Racconti edizioni Lesser-known monsters of the twenty-first centurythe first book translated into Italian by Kim Fu, a young Canadian writer of Chinese origins: a collection of surreal stories where horror, dystopia and fantasy are megaphones of fears and anxieties that are all too real as Michela Marzano tells us. Author to finally be rediscovered by popular demand from readers this week is Giuseppe Tomasi from Lampedusa, a writer definitely worth rereading while in 2024 a Netflix version of the novel that made him famous arrives: the portrait is by Alberto Anile.
On the pages dedicated to children Steven Guarnaccia, American artist and designer, collaborator of MoMA as well as author of books, enchants us by taking us to visit an original and imaginative “Museum of Nothing”, demonstrating that absence is part of human creativity. AND Museum of Nothing is the title of his new illustrated book, brought to Italy by Corraini.
The latest novel by is also aimed at younger people Sofia Galloa prolific writer from Turin with training as a historian and a past as a teacher in middle and high schools, as well as a previous life as an editorial consultant: her title is Escape in the snow (Salani) and retraces the adventures of two cousins fleeing from the Germans during the Second World War, mixing history and invention against the backdrop of the mountains beloved by the author, as Ilaria Zaffino tells us.
The protagonist in art is the photographer Magnum David Seymour, Polish naturalized American now rediscovered by a Venetian exhibition in Grimani Palace where all his empathy for the last of our country emerges in the post-war period: Marco Belpoliti saw it for us.
For the comics Luca Valtorta interviewed the artist Marcello Jori no The extraordinary journey of the world (Rizzoli), neither a comic nor a graphic novel but a real world-work – “a painting told on paper, so real that it becomes real life” says the author – offers us a way of salvation. This week’s Straparlando is finally with Benedetta Craveri.