AENEAS IS ME CONFERENCE-PERFORMANCE

A conference-performance animated by the beauty of 20th century poetry inspired by the figure of Aeneas and the poetry of Virgil.

Everyone who loves literature is familiar with Calvino’s definition of the classics, namely ‘a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say’. This definition is the best one to use about Aeneas and the reception of Aeneas in the 20th century.

Aeneas is not the classic hero but the vanquished, defeated hero who knows how to rediscover and reconstruct values. He therefore never finishes telling us what he has to say and what Virgil suggests. A truly universal myth, which lends itself to being reinterpreted in the light of every age and every world.

“Aeneas is me” comes from an expression used by the great poet Giorgio Caproni. Aeneas is in search of a land, of a destiny, as are the men and women of the 20th century, for whom certainty no longer exists. Aeneas the hero is a non-hero: and this is why Aeneas is one of us.

The conference-performance, with Massimo Cimaglia and Barbara Gizzi, took place on 24 September 2021, at the Cloister of the Convent of San Francesco in Sorrento, as part of the first edition of La Crociera dei Valori, an initiative that aims to present and make known the values of the cultural itinerary of the Aeneas Route certified by the Council of Europe: the meeting of cultures, the common roots in a Mediterranean that unites, the continuity between generations, the love for the sea.