“The Importance of Books and Reading: Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano Speaks at the Turin Book Fair”

Sangiuliano: “The circulation of ideas has no fences”

“I am happy to be here because my institutional role at the moment is combined with the passion of an avid reader, of someone who has been traveling around the world of books for more than 40 years”, said the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, in his speech to the opening of the Turin Book Fair. “President La Russa is also an avid reader, many times we have consulted on mutual readings. The value of the circulation of ideas has no barriers, and the presence of the second office of state here signifies attention to the world of culture and of the book and to the centrality that the Book Fair has gained in recent years with hard work on the international scene”.

“This is the city of Piero Gobetti, an extraordinary intellectual to whom I am personally linked because I studied that period – said Sangiuliano – at Gobetti’s house, when who was about to die who brought the medicines? Prezzolini. At certain levels there are no fences ideologies, there is a confrontation of ideas in a Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis and synthesis”, underlined the minister.

“I also want to recall a personal experience of these days. With La Russa we will inaugurate the exhibition at the Uffizi on the avant-garde of the twentieth century, I realized that Ordine Nuovo, the magazine by Gramsci and Togliatti, was missing and I demanded that space be dedicated to that magazine as well which was fundamental to the debate. And I say study, study. I am convinced of the universal value of the Book and of Reading. I tell young people to do three things: visit museums, listen to a good concert and read many books. Reading is nourishment spiritual”.

“I also want to recall from the Book Fair all those Ukrainian intellectuals who are suffering from a cowardly aggression. Giorgia Meloni immediately lined up Italy in defense of those values ​​of freedom and civil rights. I want to recall the value of the book and of freedom which it was born by chance. It must find a sediment, its nourishment. The book, dear Lagioia, is the tool in which freedom can consolidate. I thank you for the work you have done and then we will meet to think about other projects “, he concluded.