Paris. “Freedom of Expression in Languages: Franco-Italian perspectives”: is the title of the Convention promoted by the Italian Institute of Culture in Paris on June 5th (9.30-17:00). In the 1930s, for the occasion of an international conference of the Pen Club, the president at the time, Paul Valery was happy to see how linguistic diversity was in fact the common denominator of the conference-goers. Nowadays, it is no longer a matter of celebrating the exotic differences between languages in an intercultural dialogue devoid of substance, but of making such an alterity, on which the act of writing itself is based on – “whichever” place as dictated of Goethe’s Weltliteratur. It is a question of bringing together writers whose common feature is the crossing of linguistic, geographical, and disciplinary borders; a community of transcultural artists often reduced to its national affiliation, which in reality already navigates in territories that function like the great modern metropolises. Writers, researchers, translators, publishers who have embarked on this path on either side of the Alps, are called to discuss the notion of literary diversity understood in its polysemy, between translation and migration. (9Colonne)
