{"id":87342,"date":"2022-02-01T10:02:28","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T09:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/uncategorized\/la-forza-essenziale-e-leggera-delle-parole-di-mattarella-e-draghi\/"},"modified":"2022-09-21T08:47:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T07:47:45","slug":"crucial-and-light-power-in-mattarella-and-draghis-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/corporate-culture\/blog\/crucial-and-light-power-in-mattarella-and-draghis-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Crucial and \u201clight\u201d power in Mattarella and Draghi’s words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Words have extraordinary power, as also exemplified by the three terms \u2013 \u201chealth\u201d, \u201ceconomic\u201d and \u201csocial\u201d \u2013 that President Mattarella<\/strong> used in the short statement he made just after receiving the official news that he had been re-elected, in order to pinpoint the critical areas<\/strong> that Italy needs to tackle. Three clear key words that demand a political response, government programmes, Parliamentary reforms, for our health and for sustainable development.<\/p>\n

Mario Draghi, feeling emboldened now that his position as Prime Minister has been secured once more \u2013 thanks to Mattarella\u2019s re-election, in fact \u2013 also has a preference for terse and precise language. Indeed, his three-word slogan, \u201cwhatever it takes\u201d, saved the euro and Europe (and thus also Italy’s economic and social hold), and has now gone down in the history of good statecraft. And in fact, Draghi is now doing precisely \u201cwhatever it takes\u201d in terms of reforms and investments that are necessary to lead the country out of the hardship brought on by the pandemic and the recession.<\/p>\n

Here’s another key word that often occurs in public speeches: \u201cknowledge<\/strong>\u201d \u2013 which also means \u201cskill\u201d and, of course, \u201ctraining\u201d and \u201ceducation\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung people\u201d, asserted Draghi in a speech he held in September 2017 at Trinity College in Dublin, \u201cdon’t want to live on benefits. They want to work and increase their life opportunities.” And those in power have the responsibility to address \u201ca legacy of dashed hopes, anger and, ultimately, distrust in the values of our society and in the identity of democracy.\u201d Trust that needs to be rebuilt without \u201craising any false hopes\u201d, however, but through guidance and decisions that give rise to concrete hopes instead, because \u201cdepriving young people of their future is one of the worst forms of inequality.\u201d Therefore, \u201ceducation is the primary productive expenditure in which we must invest\u201d.<\/p>\n

And now that Draghi is in power, he\u2019s turning his words into reality, actualising his plans into concrete activities, regulations, funding opportunities, and the decisions made as part of the PNRR, the Italian recovery and resilience plan, as per the indications of the European Recovery Plan, are following suit.<\/p>\n

Words are important \u2013 they are \u201cstones\u201d, as Carlo Levi taught us. But they’re also \u201clight\u201d, though not vague and ethereal, as Italo Calvino explains in his Lezioni americane <\/em>(Six memos for the next millennium<\/em>). \u201cTake life lightly, for lightness does not mean superficiality but rather gliding above things, without a weight on your heart.\u201d Or, to quote Paul Val\u00e9ry’s poetry, \u201cWe must be as light as the bird that flies, not as the feather.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about the responsible and institutional \u201clightness<\/strong>\u201d of Mattarella and the organisational and pragmatic \u201clightness\u201d of Draghi’s good governance, then \u2013 easy feats? \u201cEasiness is a form of perfection that contains the substance of a lengthy commitment\u201d, to use words by Paolo Conte, a songwriter whose lyrics are extraordinarily poetic.<\/p>\n

Mattarella is a jurist, with an extensive and sophisticated humanistic background. Through education and experience, he became well acquainted with the meaning of two Latin phrases: \u201cRem tene, verba sequentur<\/em>\u201d (\u201cGrasp the subject, the words will follow\u201d), but also \u201cNomina sunt consequentia rerum<\/em>\u201d (\u201cWords are consequences of facts\u201d). And if it’s true that Latin is a form of reasoning, these mean that words define the world, narrate its story and hint at its future, though only if deeply connected with the substance of things. Otherwise, it’s just empty rhetoric, something a good jurist is well aware of.<\/p>\n

Mario Draghi is an economist. He studied humanities at the excellent Jesuit high school Massimiliano Massimo Institute in Rome, so that he, too, knows very well the value of words and the importance of data. At university, he learned from professor Federico Caff\u00e8, amongst other things, the import of an \u201ceconomy of affect\u201d, which entails values, human rights, expectations for a better quality of life and work, and brought his own original interpretation to a powerful idea in social reformism: \u201cReformists prefer a little to everything, the achievable to the utopian, gradual transformation to a sudden transformation of the \u2018system\u2019 that is always postponed\u201d.<\/p>\n

Both Mattarella and Draghi remind us that the ancient Romans termed \u201celoquens<\/em>\u201d a person \u201cwho speaks well, ethically\u201d, as opposed to \u201cloquens<\/em>\u201d, a person who simply \u201cspeaks\u201d, often inappropriately \u2013 even in our times, political life is rife with such people, and that small \u201ce\u201d at the beginning makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

Then again, \u201cLatin is a precise, essential language. It will be abandoned not because it will become inadequate in meeting the new needs of progress, but because the new people will no longer be adequate for it. When the era of demagogues and charlatans begins, when any oaf can speak publicly, with impunity and without being kicked off the stage, a language such as Latin becomes redundant. And their secret lies in the exploitation of a sloppy, evasive language that nonetheless \u201csounds\u201d good, so that they can speak for hours without actually saying anything. Something that cannot be done in Latin.\u201d \u2013 a harsh and very contemporary assessment by Giovannino Guareschi, a sharp and sensitive Italian author from the 1950s.<\/p>\n

Today, the fact that we are reconsidering learning classical languages (Latin and Greek, the languages of philosophy and science, as well as of poetry and drama) as part of a \u201cpolytechnic culture<\/strong>\u201d, bodes well in terms of knowledge.<\/p>\n

Going back to words and subtle lexical differences, another example comes to mind: the French language distinguishes between \u201c\u00e9crivain\u201d, a writer (novelist, essayist, a good author) and \u201c\u00e9crivant\u201d, someone whose job entails writing technical, ordinary, bureaucratic language \u2013 writers and scribes, in other words.<\/p>\n

Paying attention to differences is key in a world where people speak and write meaninglessly and senselessly, foolishly heedless to the responsibility they have.<\/p>\n

Mattarella is from Sicily and his strong, righteous attitude is completely at odds with that represented in Il gattopardo <\/em>(The leopard<\/em>), a novel set in Sicily in which those in power used words to deceive the people \u2013 something he knows well but that, out of his strong personal and political ethics, chooses not to emulate. Moreover, Mattarella is no doubt familiar with another great Sicilian author, Leonardo Sciascia, who, in his novel Gli zii di Sicilia <\/em>(Sicilian uncles<\/em>), wrote, \u201cI believe in Sicilians who don’t speak much, who don’t get worked up, in Sicilians who keep things inside and suffer in silence: those poor people who greet us with a tired gesture, as if they belonged to the past; and colonel Carini, always so quiet and distant, choked by melancholy and boredom yet always ready for action: a man who doesn’t seem to hold much hope, yet he is hope itself, the silent fragile hope held by the best Sicilian people… A kind of hope, I mean, that fears itself, afraid of words, close to and intimate with death, rather. These people need to be known and loved for their silence, for the words they hold in their heart, unuttered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just what we were saying: people of few concise words. And again, still by Sciascia, \u201cI believe in the mystery of words<\/strong> and that words can become life, destiny, just as they become beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beauty is a \u201clight\u201d word, a key term. It’s a commitment that concerns work and life and \u2013 why not? \u2013 governance, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Words have extraordinary power, as also exemplified by the three terms \u2013 \u201chealth\u201d, \u201ceconomic\u201d and \u201csocial\u201d \u2013 that President Mattarella used in the short statement he made just after receiving the official news that he had been re-elected, in order to pinpoint the critical areas that Italy needs to tackle. Three clear key words that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":86083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-corporate-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCrucial and \u201clight\u201d power in Mattarella and Draghi's words - Fondazione Pirelli<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/corporate-culture\/blog\/crucial-and-light-power-in-mattarella-and-draghis-words\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Crucial and \u201clight\u201d power in Mattarella and Draghi's words - Fondazione Pirelli\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Words have extraordinary power, as also exemplified by the three terms \u2013 \u201chealth\u201d, \u201ceconomic\u201d and \u201csocial\u201d \u2013 that President Mattarella used in the short statement he made just after receiving the official news that he had been re-elected, in order to pinpoint the critical areas that Italy needs to tackle. 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