Back to nature. It took two months of quarantine to understand the importance of a leaf tossed by the wind. Many Italians have spent the last few weeks closed in apartments without a garden, or perhaps even without a balcony. And the need for nature emerged from the depths of the Italian identity. Of course, it is a human, universal need, it reminds us where we come from. With the unconscious we always think of those forests from which our ancestors came. But our specific history as Italians has something more.
The Italic peoples were all peasants. Agricultural realities, civilizations permeated by the relationship with the earth, with animals, with the cycles of nature. Our whole being is in relation to and gentle cosmetics.
And until a few generations ago this was so true that it was taken for granted. Today, with the cities growing, the Italians going to live in foreign cities, the call of the earth makes itself felt.
Just think of literature. It is certainly not only German romanticism that has put nature at the center. It is enough to read Virgil's bucolicas to understand that two thousand years ago the identity of the Romans was very clear: the land, agriculture, nature. And if we consider that Virgil was a model for anyone who made literature in Italy up to modernity - from Dante to Tasso to name two that sum it all up - we understand how once again art sees even beyond what the eyes allow.
And let's immerse ourselves in the reading of Pascoli, let's read "The rain in the pine grove" by D'Annunzio, let's re-read Leopardi ...
Very often we have not given due weight to our need for nature. Had we been aware of this, we would not have built the neighborhoods of the last few decades as beehives with no space for trees. But now that we feel the need, let's dive into the fullness of our identity and return to the trees, the parks, the meadows. Without making it an ideology.
Now we can enjoy this return to nature, to the earth, to greenery. Which, after having missed it, will be more aware, more experienced, more real.
