“One foot in scholarship, the other in magic arts”

How do you remember an author you love?

“Dedicato a…” is Festivaletteratura’s answer to this question: an occasion to pay homage to authors whose legacy is to be protected, and who risk being forgotten or overlooked.

This year’s event is dedicated to Marguerite Yourcenar, “one of the most beloved writers who ever lived."

Annarosa Buttarelli, Elena Petrassi, Tiziano Colombi and Lea Barletti pieced together a captivating picture, casting different spotlights on Yourcenar’s oeuvre. Memory, legacy, feminism, philosophy, friendship, poetry, pacifism and environmentalism are just a few of the threads woven into the heartfelt tribute. The result? A “portrait of a voice”, to use Yourcenar's words, crucially held together by the diary where see collected her thoughts and analysed her writing process.

Memoirs of Hadrian, her celebrated masterpiece, is a crucial piece of this puzzle. For Tiziano Colombi, Memoirs of Hadrian is a journey, a way to find the way back to oneself after being lost. Buttarelli focuses on Yourcenar's writing method, the method of delirium, recalling the author’s own words:

“One foot in scholarship, the other in magic arts, or, more accurately and without metaphor, absorption in that sympathetic magic which operates when one transports oneself, in thought, into another’s body and soul."

Empathy, her “sympathetic magic”, becomes the lens through which to look at her and the miracle that is her work: a miracle born out of depression, and marked by a deep affection for those who died young long before reaching their goals.

Poetry is another touchstone for Yourcenar always considered herself a poet more than a writer. And her long-lasting friendship with Silvia Baron Supervielle is one the reasons why we can talk about her today. Baron Supervielle was one of her anchors, a light in the dark providing her with constant support.

As if by magic, Marguerite Yourcenar takes the stage through Lea Barletti’s voice. Here lies the answer to the question of remembrance: the best way to remember someone you love is to give them a voice. Even when they are long gone.