France and Italy are once again united in the name of culture: the Festival du Livre de Paris officially opened at the Grand Palais Ephémère in Paris, with Italy as guest of honor until Sunday and a rich program of meetings and events involving more than 50 authors from Italy. The Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangioliano, announced the opening of the Italian Pavilion together with the Undersecretary for Culture, Vittorio Sgrabi, Mayor of Naples Gaetano Manfredi, Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Rome, Miguel Guttore, President of the Italian Publishers Association Riccardo Franco Levi, and Italy’s Ambassador to France, Emanuela De Alessandro.
In greeting the Parisian public, before cutting the tricolor ribbon, Sangioliano reminded you of today’s interview in the Corriere della Sera with the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, for the new “European Renaissance” that starts from culture. “Matterella says that books are a means of knowledge: I fully agree with this vision,” said the minister on his second trip to Paris in a few months, and returned to pay homage, as he had done on his arrival yesterday, to the great authors of the epigraph. Literature from beyond the Alps: Chateaubriand, Balzac, de Maistre, “the formidable Flaubert,” Victor Hugo but also Jean-Paul Sartre, “an author in whom I found an interesting reflection,” he noted.
The Italian Pavilion is located in the sunniest and most spectacular part of the Grand Palais Ephémère, with a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower, and is bordered by large white arches reminiscent of the forms of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Eur (the so-called square Colosseum). In the central scene, which until the next day tomorrow will host meetings and discussions, is a colored copy of the Spanish Steps, erected in the axis of the Iron Lady. As if two iconic landmarks of Paris and Rome could look at each other and talk to each other. “We have not been and never have been a fascist government,” Sgarbi said in his address to the audience after Sangioliano’s speech.
The Undersecretary for Culture recalled what happened 21 years ago, in March 2002, when Italy – which was also an honored guest in Paris at the time – withdrew from the Salon du Livre after protests against Berlusconi’s government. He then joked, “We were attacked like fascists”, and “Being here today is a kind of revenge for me”, adding that “Governments are elected by the people: the people may have chosen wrong but they chose and we are still here”. Shortly before this, in the guise of an art historian, he presented an Italian masterpiece, “Ptolemy II Discusses the Greek Translation of the Pentateuch with Jewish Scholars”, by the Baroque painter Giovanni Antonio Galli, known as Spadarino, which was specially brought to the Salon du Livre. “A powerful literary and humanitarian work,” Al-Saghrabi explained, speaking of “the meeting point between art and literature.” Among the contemporary authors announced today April 21 in the French capital twinned with Rome are Alessandro Baricco, Iri Di Luca, Paolo Romes, Paolo Cognetti, Giancarlo Di Cataldo, Antonio Skorati, and also ‘Italians from Paris’ such as Andrea Marcolongo and Giuliano da Empoli (He reached the final of the last Prix Goncourt with the magician of the Kremlin), Emanuele Cuccia or Maurizio Serra, the first Italian to be welcomed into the restricted circle of the Académie Francais. The festival poster was also captured in the galleries of the Grand Palais Ephémère: a boy on a red Vespa steering wheel and a girl sitting behind it reading in white, red and green against the background of the Eiffel Tower.
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