La via Emilia

The via Emilia, an ancient military route that used to run parallel to the Roman limes with the Celtic population occupying the area, becomes the keystone of the new settling concerning the Cispadane region starting from the 1 st century AD. Perhaps the most important axe of the History of Italy. Translated by Graziella Buccellati, French poet, and essayist Gabriel Faure travels along its width from end to end. It’s the journey of a writer, not that of an art critic – as he declares with his own words in these pages – “at the incessant exploration of that ineffable which constitutes the heart of every single human experience: what does it matter if I cannot express… []! Do I know, perhaps, what generates the charme of a peeling rose, of a reflection in the water, of a womanly glance?” In this text art history and literature are presented in succession, intertwined one with the other. Just like prose blurs in poetry and moments of pause along the path become the occasion to deepen those indefeasible bonds that join places, people, and things. “We find ourselves in a constant state of relation with an external world that keeps changing in every instant”, writes the author, perceiving a certain sense of nearness between the pictorial gesture impressed on the canvas and the swaying tops of cypresses standing out against the sky. The reader is going to find a text rich in references and cited works together with passionate and intense descriptions, taken especially from the oeuvre of Correggio and the city of Parma, and is going to recognize an inspired traveller in the figure of Faure.