An ever-burning torch

by Letizia Bardazzi

The theme of friendship concerns each and every one of us. Friendship is always an ambassador of hope, especially now in a time parched by the shadows of war. “Just the listening to a friendly voice and the destiny of that moment, of that day changes. Fatigue and solitude, the silence of the heart and the pain of the soul, melancholy and sadness disappear, and make way for the past, which becomes present, and becomes future” (Eugenio Borgna, On Friendship, Raffaello Cortina Editore).

The sentiment of friendship has been written about by the greatest thinkers, philosophers, religious figures, poets, and many books dedicated to its multiple human and spiritual facets have been rediscovered this year in the podcasts of the Italian Association of Cultural Centers for the Meeting 2023. New literary works, essays, novels, and rediscovered texts that will delve into the theme of this 44th edition: “Human existence is an inexhaust- ible friendship.” Thanks to the many guests who will enrich the BookCorner program (in Pavilion C2, in front of the Meeting bookstore) with podcasts recorded in person and previews already produced in recent weeks, the voice of friendship, a source of life and an opportunity for dialogue, will be given space. It will reclaim its human richness and the sense of discovery it invites.

Through the words of Aelred of Rievaulx, and through the “small rule” of life and family prayer offered to all families in their daily lives from Attanasio’s book, we will delve into the depth of the practice of friendship. With Dorothy Day, we will experience the strength of social friendship as a guardian of the vulnerable, in the novels of Francesco Fadigati and Daniele Mencarelli, where friends enable a recovery in living and a reawakening to reality that sets us on a journey, as the stories of Paolucci’s book document. And an understanding of the experience of friendship is offered to us by Petrosino and Cantore in the story of the “visionaries” of the East Harlem community in the early 1900s, Renzo’s journey in Manzoni’s masterpiece, Leopardi reinterpreted by Elisei, and the poetry collection curated by the Friends of Nicco Association.

In the text “My Readings,” which collects some of Don Giussani’s interventions on the modern authors he most loved and always returned to throughout his life, we will see his preference for those he calls friends and the role he assigns them in understanding the most acute questions of human consciousness. Authors who are returned to us in their originality of perspective by friends who have participated with us in this project. May the source of that past, which becomes present and future, to which friendship lived in this 44th edition of the Meeting refers, be for each of us an opportunity for beauty and a deepening of our original nature.

PRIMO PIANO L’amicizia sociale in un mondo segnato da solitudini, frammentazioni e competitività esasperata