Paul Valéry, French poet and philosopher who was born on October 30, 1871 in Sète, of a Corsican father and an Italian mother, had an intense and complex relationship with Italy, animated by long-standing friendships and correspondences.
Among these, the relationship with Giuseppe Ungaretti and with Rafaele Contu, his translator, stands out, as evidenced by the dedications of appreciation for the "non-traitor" style.
This will be the theme of the event "Rediscovered friendships: Paul Valéry and Italy 150 years after birth, the rediscovery of Italian friendships with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Rafaele Contu", which the French Ambassador to Italy, Christian Masset, will welcome. in the Salone d'Ercole in Palazzo Farnese, Tuesday 13 April, at 6 pm, without audience and with live streaming on the Facebook profiles of the Embassy, the Institut Français Italia and ANSA.
Based on the original works and documents found by Luigi Contu, director of ANSA, in the library bequeathed by his grandfather Rafaele, the public will have the opportunity to explore the Italian papers of one of the greatest French authors of modernity.
An event that begins in the Contu library.
Last July, Christian Masset, also like Valéry originally from Sète, meets Luigi Contu who tells him about the library inherited from his father Ignazio: there, dusting and cataloging the many volumes, he discovered real literary treasures.
They tell, among many other discoveries, the story of a deep bond between Paul Valéry, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Rafaele Contu.
The latter, an Italian intellectual also passionate about French literature, who collaborated among other things with La Nouvelle Revue Française-the famous NRF, made in the twenties and thirties a job not only of fruitful contacts between France and Italy in the field philosophical, poetic and literary, but also of translation and dissemination of French works in Italy.
Luigi Contu in the difficult work of putting this gigantic library in order will find letters between Paul Valéry, Giuseppe Ungaretti, who also lived in Paris, and Rafaele Contu.
Luigi Contu will talk about this "family" relationship at Palazzo Farnese on April 13, at 6.00 pm, showing unpublished images found in his archive.
Patrizia Epistolari, teacher of French language and literature, will evoke the friendship that bound Valéry and Ungaretti to Contu about which she wrote.
And Benedetta Zaccarello, currently a member of the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes (ITEM, CNRS / ENS) of Paris, of which the "Equipe Valéry" directs, will reveal new facets of Paul Valéry, digging between poetic and philosophical thoughts. deep correspondences with Italy.
Jérôme Gautheret, from Le Monde, will be the conductor of the meeting, while Gaia Petronio will read short passages among other things from "Eupalino or dell'Architettura".
In Eupalino, in the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, we ask ourselves "Building oneself, knowing oneself: are they, or not, two acts?".