In bookstores from October 18 for Solferino, the essay-memorial in which the writer reflects on the post-Covid world: “We have humiliated the Earth, we need an apology”
To “become human” one should first of all open one’s eyes. Literally, those that Mother Nature has provided us to defend ourselves from predators, to find food or identify a potential partner. And, literally, the ones you lend us Susanna Tamaro from his observatory in the woods of Umbria, where Mr. Sars-Cov-2’s irruption into civilization was not such a big surprise. Quite a predictable (and expected by scientists) countermeasure to our intrusiveness on the planet.
It was the dominating pride that blinded the man: «It is useless to give orders to Alexa, useless to make a video call with a friend in New Zealand or to let our avatars live exciting adventures – warns the writer -. For nature we are alone large furless mammals to keep under control and, sorry to say, nature has an infinitely more powerful arsenal of weapons than we have at our disposal ».
It is not a novel, the last book of the famous author Go where your heart takes youpublished by Baldini & Castoldi almost thirty years ago. It is not a manual,even if he gives advice. Nor a medical, war or environmentalist treatise, also because «our ecological battles – he writes – are actually eco-egoist battles. In short, saving the Earth means nothing more than trying to save our species ».
To become human again, 280 pages published by Solferino, in bookstores from Tuesday 18 October, is rather a memorial, a testimony. Or so begins, against the backdrop of the beautiful library of natural sciences, accumulated over sixty years by the author: “What the algorithm does on the Net, my memory does it in front of the dusty shelves.” So crowded with molds, microbes and bacteria? Yes, of course, but in this way Susanna Tamaro has enriched, in addition to her knowledge, her own microbiota, the personal trainer of the immune system. While that didn’t stop her from being one of the first victims of the virus that changed the world. Or, better, of the virus that has taken advantage of a world that has evolved in the wrong direction: “It has hit our pleasure-seeking society and, in a few months, has turned it into a heap of ruins.”
An epicurean society, engaged in a carnival that lasted beyond the maximum time. A company that behind the cheerful masks hides the jaws of the sharks. «The economy has abandoned ethics and turned into finance. The economy fed men, finance feeds sharks ». If Covid-19 had a merit, it was to bring back (briefly) the human sense of gratitude towards doctors and hospital staff.
As an attentive observer of vices and virtues, weaknesses and frailties that characterize our species, and as a cultivator of oriental wisdom, Susanna Tamaro alternates her personal diary, during the pandemic, to anthropological reflections on fear and its perception, for example, in the Chinese universe, where it is represented by an unpredictable ideogram, the character kong: the stylized drawing of two birds in a nest threatened by a drum roll. The invisible enemy. The one that opened the doors to “infodemic”: the prophecy of a “viral Armageddon”, the spread of news as alarming as it is inexplicable, even if unfortunately founded. The scapegoat thus became the pangolin, of which few knew its appearance or even its existence, before its sad forced march towards unjust extinction began.
The story has the merit of direct recording, whether it is inside a vaccination center or from the open window on a flight of swallows. The novelist tells about herself: a sixty-year-old with a little eremitical tendencies, but passionately immersed in her rural life; an anarchist rebellious to the obsession with preventive therapies, rationally grateful to vaccines and calmly opposed to their mandatory nature and the intransigence of the Green pass. «A world full of sick people is the world dreamed of and then created by the great pharmaceutical giants for which the ultimate concern is our true health. They care about our imaginary well-being, “she accuses. And she adds, against therapeutic persistence: “A medicine that no longer admits the defeat of death is a medicine that begins to walk in dangerously swampy lands”. Because life at any cost does not always take into account the quality of life. Because medicine has learned to cure Covid almost always, but not yet to remedy all the damage, whether present or future, of repeated doses of the vaccine.
And “return human”? That exhortation that seems to be included in the title as a comforting possibility? It should start with a request for an apology, the author speculates. By the rulers, in whom the majority of the population has placed their trust, while also demonstrating commendable discipline. The list of shortcomings to be forgiven occupies over two pages of the book: «Forgiveness is the lifeblood of every human relationship that wishes to remain so, grow in depth and compassion over time – concludes Susanna Tamaro -. Politicians are human beings and, like all of us, they can make mistakes. Now that we are in front of the shards of a country and the burden for the energy and world crisis is becoming increasingly difficult and gloomy, it would be very important that this step be taken ”.
Then it will be necessary ask the Earth all together for forgiveness, “Because we have not been able to do anything but humiliate her, throwing over her the dark curse of our pride.” The frustrated pride and anger of not being the creators. It will be a repentance in any case fatally belated, but necessary, “because it is not obligatory to succumb to the banality of evil. You can always choose, you can always resist ».
There are those who have been able to do it in even more inhumane times.
October 17, 2022 (change October 17, 2022 | 10:12)
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