The great literature has a fundamental link with reality, without which it completely loses its educational function. It is the investigation of reality, albeit in the form of a possible reality, that makes literature broaden the reader’s horizon, making his understanding greater than that of someone who does not read. From this it is easy to see not only the importance, but also the need for the author to work on what is most strictly personal in the work. In doing so, he allows what he has been able to experience and understand individually to become, through reading, also the patrimony of his reader.
The Essential Role of Literature
The essential role of literature is to uncover, examine and criticize human possibilities that may go unnoticed by those who do not pay attention or do not imagine them. In short, it is a work of broadening and deepening understanding. Literature is great because it is never exhausted, because it contains within itself the potential of everything not yet imagined, harboring the most strictly personal ideas. These, put down on paper, renew it and enhance it, in an infinite expansion that never fails to make room for a new author.
The Study of History Is Unpleasant
The study of history is unpleasant because it forces us to look at the whole man, in all his manifestations. As a result, it shows us not what we would like, but what has been, and we have to contend with the infinite cruelties attached to practically every “great deed”. The more we investigate, the shorter our list of admirers becomes, to the point where we begin to question whether it is really possible to know and admire someone at the same time.
Again the Remorse
Leopardi says:
Sopra ogni dolore d’ogni sventura si può riposare, fuorchè sopra il pentimento. Nel pentimento non c’è riposo nè pace, e perciò è la maggiore o la più acerba di tutte le disgrazie.
It is incredible to note that, in other words, the same statement is already in these notes: remorse is extremely painful and invincible, acting as an immovable fetter on the spirit, against which nothing can be done. But the curious thing is to note the identical conclusion, reached by different and independent means, which, if it does not express a truth discovered twice, perhaps denotes similar experiences or spirits who react to them in a similar way.