my Marche

The infinite by Franco Arminio.

Art and Culture

I wonder if the Infinite by Franco Arminio is so different from that of Giacomo Leopardi. It would be nice to compare them and hear their versions, their way of being and seeing life.
A few years ago I had the honor of speaking with Franco Arminio a Borgo Futuro, the Festival of Sustainability  of Ripe di San Ginesio, on a summer afternoon, in front of an audience perched on the steps of a square. I should have talked about the villages of the Marche, as an expert on places in my region, while he, the writer and landscape expert, discussed and wrote poetry about his Lucania. Extraordinary. I remember his words: " In the Marche there is no eros, you always have this dim light, the mist that doesn't make the colors of the horizon clear. Quite the opposite of my sun-baked land."
I couldn't answer, he was probably right. We are middle ground, in the middle of everything, for better or for worse, reserved and almost shy, but even if we are not, we contain ourselves, in who knows what vessel and keeping ourselves who knows for whom, we really don't have that strength, eros precisely, to overflow and trespass into terrain that apparently does not seem congenial to us. Could it be because of this fearful sky?
To a boy who complained about his life always being the same he said " Know that a long eternity awaits us“. "You make it easy, but how do I support myself if I don't work in a factory? ” the boy replied when Arminio proposed that he live according to nature, with the little he has. ” Very expensive – he continued undaunted, in his light Campania accent –  as I was telling you, a long non-existence awaits us after this existence that has been given to us.” The audience remained silent to listen to him, the boy didn't say anything more.
I don't know why but while I was listening to him, I assimilated Lucania to Greece, to the fatalism skimmed off by Christianity, to this ability to merge being with the soul of the world, the warmth of the earth, the imperishable and immutable time and I compared it to Marche soul, always combative and ready for crusade, but ultimately also latent, when opposite the sea or the hill, admires the infinite and gets lost in it.
On Thursday 23 January at the Castello Svevo in Porto Recanati at 21.30pm Franco Armino will be back in the Marche again, to present his new book " The infinite without paying attention” Bompiani editions.
" Paesology is traveling around the surrounding area, it is the solution for those who can no longer stay in their own country but can't even leave it.” Ultimately it speaks to all of us, always eager to be elsewhere, but infinitely attached to our roots, like trees to the earth.
(his previous books:  Strong wind between Lacedonia and Candela. Landscape exercises (2009 – Naples Award), Postcards from the Dead (2010 – Dedalus Award) e Terracarne (2011 – Carlo Levi Prize and Volponi Prize),

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