2023-11-20 21:22:22
“I wrote this book for two reasons. The first is that there was no complete biography of Giambattista Vico, and it is a very strange thing. Making his life known is not just a curiosity due to the fact that it was troubled and is therefore compelling, but it’s interesting because his thoughts are reflected in his life. We wouldn’t be able to grasp his thoughts without knowing his life.” Marcello Veneziani thus presents his book ‘Vico deimirali’, an intense and original biography of Giambattista Vico which the journalist spoke about this evening in the Spadolini Room of the Mic, in the presence of the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano in a meeting moderated by the director of time.news Davide Desario.
“An example? Vico played a lot with his children, and sometimes he got involved in the childish spirit of building imaginary stories – explains Veneziani – While he was having fun, however, he observed the spirit of childhood which for him was the laboratory of imagination. In the era of Descartes’ rationalism he introduced us to the other hemisphere of human intelligence which is imagination, a typical trait of childhood.” But there is another reason why the journalist wrote the book: “The intuition he has sown in his works has no comparison in Italian thought. It has opened many doors, its originality is also that of not being placeable only in the field of philosophical thought”.
In the book, written with a particular prose, there is a description of Vico’s Naples, of which you can almost breathe the smells and flavours, with many southern and particularly Neapolitan ways of speaking. “It hurts me, I tell Gennaro Sangiuliano, when I go to Naples and go to see Vico’s house and instead of his father’s bookshop there is a chip shop – the author of the volume observes ironically – It’s a bit like say that Vico’s thoughts must go to waste.” The text “gives us the possibility of better understanding Vico in his profound intimacy – says professor and essayist Alessandro Campi in his speech – This is a biography, it is life that becomes a work. The pages dedicated to Naples are functional to better understanding Vico. This mixture of passion and folklore explains his thoughts: that is, the idea that knowledge arises from enchantment, from amazement towards the world”.
Campi then launches, in the presence of Minister Sangiuliano, a proposal: “However, in Italy we make terrible use of Vico – he observes – Books about him are published all over the world, he is a widely read and studied author, because they read him in convenient translations into current languages. Here we have the problem of the great classics that we struggle to read because objectively there is a great deal of difficulty in understanding that archaic and obscure language. Reading these authors requires an effort that I’m not sure young people today have able to do”. Hence the appeal to “do a transliteration into current language to be able to read it the way the English read it, perhaps young people could appreciate it better”.
Minister Sangiuliano thanked Veneziani for the release of ‘Vico dei Miracoli’: “I say thanks to Marcello Veneziani for this biography because biographies also help us to better define the thoughts of the greats. Digging into their lives helps us to understand better the character. Furthermore, I know the neighborhoods described in the book well.” Among the things most appreciated by Sangiuliano of Giambattista Vico “the concept that the state organization must be based on an idem common feeling – explains the Minister of Culture – Another great pillar of Vico’s thought is the value of history. Whatever we do, Even political choices, we must frame them in history. Does it mean following in the footsteps of the past? Absolutely not: it means understanding the past to decide better in the present”, concludes Sangiuliano.
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