Philosophy and politics
Eichmann in Jerusalem: banality of evil
What Hannah Arendt meant by the banality of evil, and why the expression is as often cited as it is misunderstood.
History and travel
Studying before traveling changes what you see
The same stone says one thing to those who pass by and another to those who arrive prepared. Why cultural preparation changes the trip, not just explains it.
Philosophy and politics
A plaque on the ground weighs more than a monument
Why a ten-centimeter plaque on the sidewalk does a work of memory that no monument can do.
Art and Renaissance
Water Organ, in Villa d'Este
A 16th-century hydraulic machine plays music in Tivoli without electricity and without anyone playing. How it works, and why it remained silent for two centuries.
History of ideas
SPQR, what does it mean
Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, and the small detail of the enclitic -que, which almost no one explains properly.
Art and Renaissance
Villa d'Este, in Tivoli, what to see
What to see in Villa d'Este, from Tivoli, in order of route, from the Water Organ to Viale delle Cento Fontane.
Art and Renaissance
Fountain of the Turtles, in Piazza Mattei
The Renaissance fountain in Piazza Mattei, the real authorship behind it, and the addition seventy years later that no one can explain.
History and travel
Jewish ghetto in Rome, what to see
The complete route through the oldest Jewish quarter in Europe, from the Theater of Marcellus to the Great Synagogue, in the order in which it happens on foot.
History of ideas
Jews in Rome, the oldest community
From the 2nd century BC to the Arch of Titus, from the 1555 ghetto to the Greater Synagogue: how the Jewish presence in Rome never stopped.
History of ideas
Stumbling stones in the Rome ghetto
What are the small brass plaques in front of the doors of the Rome ghetto, and what happened on the dawn they mark.
Literature and cinema
Le notti bianche: Visconti films Dostoevsky in Rome
Visconti transferred White Nights to Livorno and built the entire city inside a Roman studio, an artifice faithful to the spirit of the book.
History of ideas
The dreamers of European Romanticism
Dostoevsky's dreamer has brothers in Europe: Foscolo's Jacopo Ortis and Leopardi's young man who waits. A guy who crosses borders.
Philosophy and psychology
Idealized love: why we love an idea, not a person
The person in love does not love the other as an object, but the idea they created of them. A concept from White Nights, by Dostoevsky.
History of ideas
Dostoevsky in 1848, before the tortured genius
In 1848, Dostoevsky was not yet the tortured genius the world would come to know: a young man of 27, acclaimed in the salons and silent within.
Literature
Where to start reading Dostoevsky
Don't start with the screams, start with the whisper: why White Nights is the best gateway into Dostoevsky, and the reading order to follow after.
Literature
Types of reading: why novels shape who you are
There are readings for reference, for expertise, and for entertainment. Understand why good novels shape our emotions, not just entertain us.
Philosophy
Is a minute of happiness worth a lifetime?
Is a minute of happiness enough for an entire human life? Dostoevsky's question in White Nights, and why it has no easy answer.
Literature
White Nights, by Dostoevsky: summary and analysis
White Nights is not the story of a consummated romance, but of the love that could have been. Four nights, Nastenka, and an ending without a kiss.
Literature and philosophy
The dreamer of White Nights: an archetype
The protagonist of White Nights has no name because he is an archetype: someone who feels too much and lives too little, between Raskolnikov and Myshkin.
Cultural trips
St. Peter's Basilica: what to see
A tour through the essentials of Catholicism's largest church: the nave, Bernini's Baldachin, Michelangelo's dome, the Pietà, the Chair in the apse and the grottoes.
Art and Renaissance
The Chair of St. Peter, by Bernini
The bronze throne that Bernini set up in the apse of St. Peter's Basilica, keeping the ancient wooden chair inside. The highest chair in Christendom.
Literature
How to identify biblical echoes in literature
Three images that the Bible has borrowed from Western literature for centuries: the baby in the waters, food from the rock, the key in the belly of the fish. A reading method.
Art and Renaissance
Oedipus and the Sphinx, by Ingres, at the Louvre
Naked Oedipus, in profile, answering the riddle in front of the Sphinx in the shadows. What Ingres' composition says about the man who knows everything but himself.
Literature
Lübeck, the city of Thomas Mann
The Hanseatic city in northern Germany where Thomas Mann was born, the family mansion that became the Buddenbrookhaus, and how that world of merchants formed the writer.
Literature and life
The fear of not being able to handle a classic
For those who have already abandoned a classic halfway through, or never had the courage to open one: welcome, not pressure, to enter a difficult author through the right door.
History of ideas
The legend of Gregorius and the Gesta Romanorum
The Gesta Romanorum, Hartmann von Aue in the 12th century, and what Thomas Mann changed when rewriting the old legend: the ironic narrator, the spirit of the story.
Philosophy and theology
Legal guilt x moral guilt
A court would acquit Gregorius and Sibylla, because they didn't know. But the soul is not satisfied with the law. The difference between being innocent and needing cleaning.
Philosophy and theology
From Greek fate to Christian grace
In Greek tragedy, destiny is a machine that crushes, and there is no forgiveness. In Christianity, guilt faced becomes raw material. The law that condemns, the grace that reintegrates.
Philosophy and psychology
Freud psychologizes guilt, Mann redeems it
Freud transforms Oedipus into a diagnosis. Mann transforms Oedipus into a path to salvation. Psychologizing guilt explains what happened, but does not absolve it.
Philosophy and theology
Psalm 51: the penitent's prayer
"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love." The prayer of David, the king who fell and, instead of hiding, knelt. The same prayer as Gregorius.