Perhaps it is really true that a great writer always writes the same book. Take Milan Kundera. He has written several books but they all revolve around this pattern: the individual is born and lives defeated, and moreover (to Alfred de Vigny) is all the more mistreated by fate and neighbor how much more deserves to be appreciated. And now think about how far this world is from that of Hemingway. Ernest always sees the individual as a giant who makes his way into existence sword in hand. Only as an elderly person (“The old Man and the Sea”) Its protagonist becomes less bold, but no less combative and courageous. The fisherman loses in his fight against the fish, but does not give up until the very end. Hector is no less a hero than Achilles only because he is defeated.
This phenomenon is also reproduced in a small way in advertising. When they prepare to read it, those who read the articles of Marco Travaglio (I’m not part of the group) they know what to expect. Because Travaglio always writes the same article of contempt and hatred, changing only the recipient of his poisoned arrows. When it changes. Often, however, it is a fixed nail. Is it wrong? No. It’s not that Labor wants to be the way it is, it was born that way. If he didn’t write that same article all the time, he would falsify himself. The result is that in the long run the amount of “novelty”, of “things worthy of being written and read”, decreases dramatically. Especially in an interminable (and blessed) period of peace like the one that Europe has experienced for almost eighty years.
Italy has been agonizing politically and economically for many of those years, and we have said it many times, that we are tired of talking about it. Obviously the great columnists, those who live off their pen, are forced to write again and again, but we are not forced to read them. And as for the future, on which they reflect so much, we can get by on our own. To say “this could happen”, “that could happen”, it is not necessary to drink the best minds in the country. Reading the newspapers has become so boring that in the end we resign ourselves to watching yet another documentary on lions. The 20th of September Sabino Cassese, one of the best minds in Italy, spoke to us about deliquescence, chalking, inconsistency and almost non-existence of political parties.
Precious words. But maybe we didn’t already know? After all – both he and us who think like him – we do nothing but “rewrite the same article”. The generalized decadence of contemporary society is a cliché that is not worth repeating. Politics is a disaster, but is justice better? Is the school going better? Is the University better? On television the errors of Italian are no longer counted, to the point that the language is changing: “Rather than”, instead of meaning “as opposed to”, now means “as well”.
And there is no way to stop the avalanche, so strong and indisputable is the fascination of error. Among other things, we know the cause of its persistence. People don’t read. Hear what others are saying and, if others are wrong, wrong with them. Because it doesn’t have the counterpart of good reading. At this point one wonders: if I were Sabino Cassese would I have written this article? Is it still worth talking about a Movement like that of the Five Stars? Of a Parliament like ours? Especially when no one counts for anything except Mario Draghi? Today we are under the “Dictatorship of Common Sense” (the one that Pericles exercised, even if overrated, and after him Augustus) and we must also hope that it will last. Because it could be even worse. But yeah, I’m writing the same article myself.