Five years have passed since, as two great friends whom many have called “visionaries,” Antonello Pelliccia and I began a profound dream of harmony, aimed primarily at mutual understanding.
It was 2019. In the historic halls of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Antonello had been teaching Landscape Design for nearly thirty years, while I was leading a workshop on the intersections between visual art and literature, titled “The Object as a Work of Art.”
I remember seeing each other every day and feeling united and happy, in a sweet and gentle sense of brotherhood, imagining scenarios that would quench our thirst for knowledge and solidarity, in a world that seemed arid and headed for the abyss, devoid of the primary values that humans should always cultivate with dedication and wisdom.
The “New Manifesto on the Arts” brought an immediate wave of change within and around us, and many immediately wanted to endorse its ideas, embracing those enthusiastic, decisive, and passionate thoughts, despite everything, especially considering the manifestos’ lack of popularity. But we believed in it, also because our writing actually began as a thoughtful, oral speech, “On the Arts”, delivered on the occasion of the inauguration of the Contemporary Arts Center founded in January 2019 between Milan and Cilento (where we have hosted countless artistic and cultural events, always with a highly relevant and often, I believe, innovative focus).
At the time, attentive artists and critics wrote to us and encouraged us to propose this discourse as a programmatic innovation in a true “Manifesto,” and the definition of “New Manifesto on the Arts” is due to the philosopher and unforgettable friend Remo Bodei.
In turn, our reservations overcome and hesitation broken, Antonello and I began to present our vision as a new artistic manifesto, not yet envisioning a true Movement, though something within us was igniting, soon bringing about a far-reaching transition, a natural consequence—decisive, dreamy, and harmonious.
Meanwhile, Antonello, now retired, returned to live in Carrara, while I had to hastily leave Edinburgh, where I was spending a period as a Visiting Scholar and where exciting new projects for work and life were emerging on the horizon.
The Covid-19 pandemic arrived like a curse upon humanity, and I found myself alone and confused in the tiny, sorrowful Omignano, which I had left at my impossible eighteenth birthday, but had rediscovered in the beauty of my family, consoled by my parents, now sweet, sad children.
Like a bolt of lightning in a leaden sky, I awoke one morning and, lost in a mirror, said aloud: “Today Empathism, the Empathic Movement, is born!” The idea took shape because I hated the solitude I had found myself in, the same solitude the world had fallen into; because I detested the negative feelings that human beings continue to foster; because we had to respond with love to the hatred that this society, like it or not, constantly fosters; because I could no longer tolerate the division that exists between humankind, and in particular, I was horrified by the ferocity I see among artists in every possible sphere of knowledge and creativity.
The Empathic Movement would rise from the ashes of Post-Modernism, which, in my view, had long since ended and it was time to provide new, albeit timid, answers. Antonello, as always, was enthusiastic about the idea, even though he saw it as almost unachievable. However, rich in profound humanity, he did not discourage me, agreeing to outline together an initial definition of the Cultural Pyramid of Cilento , which we immediately imagined as “the private space in a world that does not belong to us”, the walls guarding our “things” and our “objects”, to quote the late Bodei.
Among other things, in 2017 I had conceived the Cilento National Poetry Prize, subsequently giving rise to the denomination “Village of Poetry” for Salento Cilento, which together with Omignano Cilento – “Village of Aphorisms” , and Vallo della Lucania – the first headquarters of the Contemporary Arts Centre , in my vision formed the “Cultural Triangle of Ancient Cilento”.
And so, between a solitary idea and others shared with Antonello Pelliccia and numerous traveling companions whom I would soon involve, the journey of the “Scuola Empatica – Literary, Artistic, Philosophical, and Cultural Movement” began.
I remember that the Movement’s first presentation was held in Vallo della Lucania (Salerno) in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. No one came, except a small group of artists and prominent figures in the Cilento cultural scene, ready to challenge the then-strong fear of contagion. We didn’t get sick; on the contrary, we recovered, and we toasted with clear eyes to a bright future to wish for all humanity, vowing that we would never let any adversity stop us as long as we had breath and strength.
Thus, in just a few months, the first one hundred artists, teachers, and cultural figures—whom we call “Empathic Masters” because they were already motivated to advance their vision of unity in the world, with an even more conscious sentiment today—joined the Movement, immediately bringing about the much-desired turnaround: the hypertrophic Ego, the undisputed victor like evil over good in our society, was now being fought, silenced as much as possible before a We that sent a strong signal of rebellion and, with grace and determination, suggested innovation.
The artists, and by extension, the common people, came together, rejecting the individualism that is leading everyone ever further astray, almost towards the futility of the arts and culture itself.
Clearly, all this was and is only a sign; the world continues its wars unconcerned (so much for empathy!), and the news grows darker day by day, leaving us dismayed. But that flower of hope of ours has been planted, has taken root, and is producing flourishing buds, reaffirming, through love, the magic of beauty and goodness, that the human species needs to reverse course toward rebirth if it wants to improve itself and the world that hosts it. A world, today, so clumsily cared for by us, heedless of its signs of intolerance towards our behavior. There is no empathy, it must be said, either with the Earth or with the Other; the freedom to be as each of us is or has chosen for ourselves is not permitted. Human actions, upon closer inspection, are more often than not miserable and destructive.
Meanwhile, in 2023, the book The Empathic Movement was published in England (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), and many new international members joined the Movement, starting with the former Nobel Prize winner in Literature Olga Tokarczuk and the Palestinian Arabic-language poet Najwan Darwish, to whom we awarded the International Cilento Poetry Prize. Darwish, who arrived in Italy in the very first days of the war between Israel and Palestine, was barely able to speak. Tired and exhausted, he was deeply moved to recognize that our prize had brought him freedom: having first traveled to Istanbul to then reach Italy more easily, he had not been stranded in the infamous Gaza Strip. In that moment, I thought that love, art, and empathy had perhaps saved a precious life. If only for this, our efforts had already had a concrete meaning!
So many “Empathetic Masters” coming from abroad: from Victor Lucena, a refined Venezuelan visual artist, to Maria Mazziotti Gillan, who has been running a university chair in poetry and creative writing in the United States for decades, sponsored by the Paterson Literary Review; and also British saxophonist and composer David Jackson, a star of progressive rock; and Tomasz Krezymon in Poland, with his compositions at the Warsaw Conservatory. It’s worth noting that the Movement has also been joined by architect Joanna Kubicz from Krakow, Bulgarian musician Ilian Rachov , and the young Indian professor Prayag Tiwari, who researches artificial intelligence in Sweden, ready for a discussion on the development of emotional intelligence (which is the cornerstone of the Movement and the necessary engine for a resilient global recovery).
In addition to its members abroad, the movement carries out its work through great Italian masters: from major contemporary poets such as Cucchi, De Angelis, Santagostini, Pontiggia, Carifi, Bertoni, Pecora, Kemeny, Villalta, Rondoni, Testa, Neri, Magrelli, and Lamarque , to some of the most famous writers such as De Silva, Nigro, and de Giovanni.
The group of musicians is equally large, particularly Franco Mussida, Bernardo Lanzetti, Lino Vairetti, Michele Pecora, Carmine Padula, and Eduardo Caiazza, who have always demonstrated innovation, courage, and empathy; and again, the presence of the visual artist Omar Galliani is precious , as are the critics and philosophers Massimo Bacigalupo, Elena Pontiggia, Umberto Curi, and Remo Bodei (to the latter and to the equally incomparable Alessandro Serpieri and Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, sadly passed away but always present in me, I wanted to dedicate the first volume on the Movement, published in 2020 with the title La Scuola Empatica (Ladolfi Publisher).
Among the Masters, in addition to our beacon of infinite wisdom and culture, Maria Rita Parsi —who in this volume explains the Movement’s aims and socio-psychological implications—are some who have given life to the major literary festivals in Italy. I think of Laura Garavaglia with “Europa in versi”, which starts from the experience of the Casa della Poesia in Como, or of Gian Mario Villalta with “Pordenone Legge”, which has become a point of reference for poetry and literature in general, but also of Michele Murino in Cilento, who for years has been re-proposing the dramas of ancient Greece with “Velia Teatro”; and also of Maurizio Cucchi, who is the honorary president of the Contemporary Arts Centre (second president after the late Franco Loi), as well as President of the “Casa della Poesia” in Milan.
Furthermore, we must recognize the “empathetic” work that many masters carry out on national television (Cartolano, de Giovanni, Iannicelli, Arminio), in magazines (Ladolfi, Rondoni, Barra), in newspapers (Rossani, Guzzanti), or in universities and academies in Italy and abroad; in schools of all levels (Mariani, Schiralli, Mari, Pontani: psychologists who created “The Schools of Empathy” in 2021), and even on the streets by members of various well-organized cultural associations, who have joined with passionate and relentless cultural promotion.
The Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape for the Provinces of Salerno and Avellino also performed invaluable work, recognizing “The Empathic School” as the third “school” of thought to have historically emerged in the area, following the two renowned “Eleatic School” and the “Salerno Medical School,” thus establishing a further Macro Cultural Triangle.
The director herself, Raffaella Bonaudo, has become one of the Empathetic Masters, as have Senator Franco Castiello, the President of the Province of Salerno, Franco Alfieri, and the President of the Cilento, Vallo di Diano, and Alburni National Park, Giuseppe Coccorullo.
Thus, the socio-political foundations of the “Cilento Cultural Pyramid” have been strengthened among its constituent towns, which are not arranged vertically according to a hierarchical order of importance, but represent the points of a “network” that unites and gives voice to intense and genuine emotions and feelings, shared through the arts, in the rejection of individualism, social exclusion, and negative competition. The empathic movement is based on an interdisciplinary approach that opposes specialization in the artistic field. Interdisciplinarity is necessary to better grasp modern complexity and the fragmented vision of “truth,” investigated from multiple perspectives, aware of the importance of valorizing tradition while fostering innovation.
Starting in 2020, an empathic flow is bringing a breath of fresh air that appears overwhelming and, I hope, unstoppable as long as people can breathe and eyes can see…
In: L’Empatismo, Armando Curcio Publishing, 2025
