Il fuoco sapiente

“Ancient Greece, the land between the East and the West, home to Homer and Socrates, Sappho and Plato, Sophocles and Epicurus, is the inner foundation we contemporaries all come from. And tomorrow? Tomorrow is possible only if we rediscover our lost future. That future that began twenty-five centuries ago, when the mysterious Greeks settled in Pithecusa, Naxos, Elea, and as far as Adria and Marseilles. They, the masters of the West, taught us that life shines indestructibly because its rhythm swings between night and day, between war and peace, between Dionysus, the god of life, and Hades, the god of death. They also had the vision that Beauty and Goodness are two sides of the same reality. They kindled the fire of beauty through poetry, desire, and knowledge—a fire that created an entire civilisation: ours. And so today, if we are to avoid slowly fading into the decadence we now call modernity, we must rekindle that fire that ignites both the heart and mind. Without it, we are truly lost. We must rediscover the boundless, radiant reality of life’s indestructible flow. Not the trivial world that feeds on its own emptiness and meaningless chatter, but the vast reality that resembles a sea upon which beauty can still set sail, an uncharted sea, open to the thrilling adventure that is the future. “The sun is new each day”, as the Greek philosopher said, and we too can learn to be new every day.”

Giuseppe Montesano