2024-07-15 16:15:51
This book, along with two other anthologies, forms a trilogy that the Moroccan embassy has been working to distribute since 2021 with the contribution of some 90 writers who are members of the association of “Argentine Poets Friends of Morocco” (PAAM).
Entitled “Dialogues between Morocco and Argentina”, this work gave pride of place to texts and poems which deliver the impressions and interpretations that a dozen paintings by Moroccan painters inspired in around fifty Argentinian writers.
The writer and poet Mariela Palermo, who was in charge of correcting the three anthologies, explained the scope of this “literary project” patiently constructed with the aim of “reducing distances” and promoting rapprochement between two countries and two cultures separated by an ocean.
“The book we are presenting today at the Buenos Aires Book Fair establishes a sensory dialogue. It was conceived as a conversation between the arts and invites us to explore the artistic identity that emerges from the interaction between painting and words,” Palermo said, emphasizing that each Argentine writer chose a painting by a Moroccan artist to develop a text from an image.
For his part, the president of the “Book Foundation” organizer of the Buenos Aires fair and president of the Argentine Writers Association (SADE), Alejandro Vaccaro, welcomed the presentation of this anthology within the framework of the 48th book fair of the Argentine capital.
Vaccaro stressed on this occasion the central role that literature, and culture in general, plays in the discovery of other horizons, in the exploration of other perspectives and, ultimately, in bringing peoples together.
The writer Santiago De Luca, coordinator of the “Argentine-Maghreb Jorge Luis Borges space”, gave his own reading of the anthology from the perspective of a connoisseur of both sides of the Atlantic.
By reading some fragments of texts contained in this work, Santiago De Luca highlights the relevance with which the authors interpreted the paintings of Moroccan artists, despite the geographical and cultural distance that separates them.
The Moroccan ambassador to Argentina and initiator of this project, Fares Yassir, welcomed the success of this “cultural diplomacy” project which has become a trilogy, thanks to the creative genius and generosity of a group of Argentinian writers who are friends of Morocco.
The Moroccan diplomat expressed the hope that this third anthology, like the first two, would be declared a work of cultural interest by the city of Buenos Aires.
He also announced the upcoming translation of the trilogy into Arabic, in order to bring its content even closer to the non-Spanish-speaking Moroccan reader.
In the book’s prologue, the Moroccan ambassador observes that this “conversation” between two cultures “not only breaks down the barriers of language and nationalities, but it brings together two peoples different in terms of geography, culture and traditions (…). It is a call to strengthen the mutual knowledge that already exists between Morocco and Argentina.”
At the end of the presentation, diplomas were awarded to the fifty or so writers who contributed to this literary work.
2024-07-15 16:15:51