A GAZE THAT BROADENS HUMANITY: LITERATURE AS AN EXPERIENCE OF REALITY

Eraldo Affinati, writer and teacher, founder of the Penny Wirton School; Paolo Malaguti, writer and teacher. Moderated by Letizia Bardazzi, President of the Italian Association of Cultural Centers

In his two letters of 2024, Pope Francis acknowledges poetry and literature as having an essential role: to explore the depths of the human soul in order to understand ourselves and the world around us. But what does it truly mean to “experience reality” through the pages of a book? How can literature become a training ground for our gaze, helping us learn to see through the eyes of another?
In this encounter between two voices of contemporary literature — Eraldo Affinati, who has turned the encounter with others into a calling through his teaching at the Penny Wirton School, and Paolo Malaguti, a writer who delves into the hidden folds of existence — we explore the transformative power of reading.
Reading is never a neutral act: it is personal engagement, an expansion of perspective, a construction of that “breadth of humanity” that only stories can give. A dialogue on the present state of Italian literature and its ability to help us inhabit the complexity of reality.