THE WORD THAT BURNS

The Apocalypse in literature: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

With Don Paolo Alliata (writer), Simona Marchesini (archaeologist, linguist), Felipe Leon (cello)

Ancient peoples distrusted the written word as a means of transmitting knowledge. It is orality, they thought, that best guards the word from the risk of misunderstanding. From this point of view, the burning of books, which brutalized various pages of history, could not prevent the transmission of knowledge, the race of wisdom under the sky.
Even in Bradbury’s novel it breathes as a tension between written and orality. In a future, dystopian world, where literature is banned because it makes people think and opens spaces of dangerous depth to the imagination, a few courageous dissidents preserve whole works in memory, to deliver them to the civilization of tomorrow. They have become true tabernacles of the word.
Memory and depth of heart are the fire to face the dark days. To keep oneself open to some quiver of revelation just when one is in danger of drowning in superficiality.

In collaboration with: Educandato Statale Agli Angeli and Diocese of Verona

Thanks: Zanotto Foundation


Simona Marchesini, archaeologist and linguist, studied in Pisa and Tübingen and taught at the universities of Tübingen and Verona. Her research areas are fragmentary languages of the ancient world, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, and the anthropology of writing. Recently he has been devoting himself to an integrated theory of linguistic “context,” which aids in understanding the “meaning” of text. In 2009 he founded and coordinates the research organization Alteritas – Interaction between Peoples, which studies the dynamics of encounter between peoples in space and time. He is scientifically responsible for two European projects.

Fr. Paolo Alliata, after graduating in Classical Literature from the University of Milan, was ordained a priest by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. He is vicar in the Milan parish of Santa Maria Incoronata. He has written theatrical texts on the Bible for children and young people. He is committed, through preaching and writings, to propose interweavings between the Bible and non-religious literature. Since 2019, he has been in charge of the Biblical Apostolate Service of the Diocese of Milan.