GENTLE SOUL

Whenever you come across a nice person you are faced with an amazing effort, a huge commitment, you are faced with a person who works on himself continuously, a worker of the heart who works night shifts on behalf of everyone you are in front of a person who never escapes, who manages to put care even in his distraction, who has learned to cause silence when offered to her a provocation remember that you are in front of it a story full of stories, long walks in the countryside of villages that we don’t even know how to pronounce, you have in front of you, a person who does not fear loneliness, who has learned to be alone to become an island to be alone who took his break a lifeline which he made of his salvation an anchor for others you stand in front of it to those who have known despair in person but she did not despair, that has disappeared from everyone, scattered everywhere, depended on no one, dispensation of the world whenever you come across a nice person thank life toast to the universe bow to the sun invents a Sunday throw a party you are in front of a work of art extremely fragile like the canvas of a painting, definitely immortal like a painting.

Fragility is part of me, this is true; I feel very emotional and sensitive, able to grasp details that normally people are not able to fully grasp. Even those details are fragile: those little pieces of the world that no one sees, perhaps hidden by the shadow of chaos and lack of time … I see them, and I appreciate them. I see the fragility of the spider web after it has rained, when the droplets of rain run down the threads … I see how easily it could snap, and I sigh, hoping it doesn’t. I am so fragile that when I see a bee, or a hornet, or any insect that could hurt me, that is drowning in a basin, I bend down and pick it up with my hands, because I know it won’t hurt me, because in that moment we are both fragile. At that moment we both suffer. I can’t explain more clearly the sense of fragility around me, but know that wherever you look, in everything you see, there is always a crack, a delicate edge, something that if you look even more carefully, you will find fragile. almost as fragile as you are.

ARTHUR’S ISLAND BY ELSA MORANTE

A wonderful classic that teaches and talks about a life in solitude. An Arturo protagonist in his narrating self, an Arturo who becomes a star among his animals and a star will also become a star for the reader who will not easily forget him. Arturo orphan of his mother, grows up with an absent and practically misogynistic father. Arturo tries to grow and while he tells the story his maturity reaches the reader, because even when he is a child, the young man already has to do it himself when he is a child. Elsa Morante, immense and poetic, calls him several times a forastic Arturo and it is precisely the idea and flavor that this reading emanates. The human essence made clear and wild before the blessed reader. Genuine, atavistic, sincere. Arturo is loved, but so is Nunzia, also Salvatore and even Wilhelm and all the protagonists; everyone has a role, everyone is part of the Moor, as is his Oriental Tent. The island of Arturo was awarded the Strega Prize in '57 with its story that leads the reader to a job in search of himself, following in the footsteps of Arturo in his difficult oedipal overcoming of his father. Immense and stellar. A masterpiece that leaves its mark.