What can we be taught from the studying habits of our political leaders? Like any choice, they supply a window into the priorities, obsessions, and inspirations of a few of world historical past’s most consequential figures. Gabriel Boric, Chile’s progressive president, is a “serious reader of poetry,” Lily Meyer writes. One may marvel how his studying has influenced his sturdy schooling platform, which guarantees free college and student-debt forgiveness. On the opposite finish of the spectrum is former President Donald Trump. As David Graham writes, although Trump is, “in strictly literal terms, literate,” his disdain for the written phrase proved a big hurdle in a job that demanded the every day ingestion and processing of textual content—whether or not in briefings, memos, or coverage papers. Because of this, Trump was extremely blunder susceptible—Graham wrote on the time that his “misstatements and missteps earn him mockery and undermine his stature around the world.”
Today, we printed an essay by Anna Momigliano on the unusual cultural touchstone that these on the Italian far proper have adored from Mussolini’s time to the current: the medieval poet Dante, whom they see as the daddy of Italian identification. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s new prime minister, is carrying on the legacy of exploiting Dante’s phrases to additional a political agenda.
On the acute finish of this phenomenon is Adolf Hitler: He is “better known for burning books than for collecting them,” Timothy Ryback writes. But he was deeply influenced by his favourite writers. Part of his library is now held on the Library of Congress, the place it has largely been ignored by historians. According to Ryback, it’s value learning, particularly the books that Hitler annotated—together with two copies of German Essays, by Paul de Lagarde, a author who’s stated to have had a profound influence on the dictator’s anti-Semitism.
Of course, works that helped encourage hateful leaders turn into tainted by that truth. When Hitler noticed Oberammergau’s Passion Play, within the Thirties, he reported that “never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans.” But based on A.J. Goldmann, it’s potential to reinvent a piece, because the Passion Play has carried out, by means of a “concerted effort to eradicate its noxious depiction of Jews.” He argues that even a centuries-old efficiency that’s related to certainly one of historical past’s worst villains could be reformed into one thing transferring, significant, and trendy.
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What We’re Reading
Adam Maida / The Atlantic; Getty
An enchanting portrait of a rustic at a turning level
“Chilean Poet came out in Chile in 2020. In December 2021, Gabriel Boric, a leader of the 2011 student protests, won Chile’s presidential election, and in doing so partially answered Zambra’s question of what happens to Chile next. Before the election, Zambra wrote an influential essay, ‘Experiencia,’ arguing that Boric, who is about a decade younger than Zambra, belongs to an age cohort that has ‘refused to assume [their parents’] traumas.’ He is, therefore, prepared to lead Chile into its next stage.”
Brendan McDermid / Reuters
The president who doesn’t learn
“There’s been plenty of attention paid to Trump’s excessive (and implausibly denied) television watching, but it’s really more of a piece with his broader orientation away from the written word and toward oral culture. The president likes verbal briefings, phone conversations, and television because they’re all conducted aloud, sans reading.”
Hulton Archive / Getty; Print Collector / Getty; Stefano Guidi / Getty; The Atlantic
“The far right didn’t bring Dante out of obscurity. He has, of course, been one of Italy’s most revered literary figures for centuries. But to understand how his veneration reached a new level, one must look to Meloni’s historical predecessors, the original fascists.”
Daily Herald Archive / National Science & Media Museum / SSPL / Getty
“In these marginalia one sees a man (who famously seemed never to listen to anyone, for whom ‘conversation’ was little more than a torrent of monologues) reading passages, reflecting on them, and responding with penciled dashes, dots, question marks, exclamation points, and underscorings—intellectual footprints across the page. Here is one of history’s most complex figures reduced merely to a reader with a book and a pencil.”
Passion Play Oberammergau 2022 / Birgit Gudjonsdottir
How Hitler’s favourite Passion Play misplaced its anti-Semitism
“Cleaning up the play’s historical anti-Semitism and foregrounding the Jewish milieu of Jesus and his followers has allowed the director to create three-dimensional characters who grapple with human problems, including oppression, betrayal, and suffering.”
About us: This week’s e-newsletter is written by Maya Chung. The e-book she’s studying subsequent is Francisco, by Alison Mills Newman.
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