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What can we study from the studying habits of our political leaders? Like every 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 “critical reader of poetry,” Lily Meyer writes. One would possibly marvel how his studying has influenced his strong 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 phrases, literate,” his disdain for the written phrase proved a major hurdle in a job that demanded the every day ingestion and processing of textual content—whether or not in briefings, memos, or coverage papers. Due to this, Trump was extremely blunder inclined—Graham wrote on the time that his “misstatements and missteps earn him mockery and undermine his stature all over the world.”
Right this moment, we revealed 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’s “higher recognized for burning books than for gathering them,” Timothy Ryback writes. However he was deeply influenced by his favourite writers. A part of his library is now held on the Library of Congress, the place it has largely been ignored by historians. In line with Ryback, it’s price learning, particularly the books that Hitler annotated—together with two copies of German Essays, by Paul de Lagarde, a author who’s mentioned to have had a profound impression on the dictator’s anti-Semitism.
After all, works that helped encourage hateful leaders change into tainted by that truth. When Hitler noticed Oberammergau’s Ardour Play, within the Nineteen Thirties, he reported that “by no means has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as on this presentation of what occurred within the occasions of the Romans.” However in line with A.J. Goldmann, it’s doable to reinvent a piece, because the Ardour Play has executed, 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 one in all historical past’s worst villains may be reformed into one thing shifting, significant, and fashionable.
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What We’re Studying
Adam Maida / The Atlantic; Getty
An interesting portrait of a rustic at a turning level
“Chilean Poet got here out in Chile in 2020. In December 2021, Gabriel Boric, a pacesetter of the 2011 pupil protests, received Chile’s presidential election, and in doing so partially answered Zambra’s query of what occurs to Chile subsequent. Earlier than the election, Zambra wrote an influential essay, ‘Experiencia,’ arguing that Boric, who’s a few decade youthful than Zambra, belongs to an age cohort that has ‘refused to imagine [their parents’] traumas.’ He’s, due to this fact, ready to guide Chile into its subsequent stage.”
Brendan McDermid / Reuters
The president who doesn’t learn
“There’s been loads of consideration paid to Trump’s extreme (and implausibly denied) tv watching, nevertheless it’s actually extra of a bit along with his broader orientation away from the written phrase and towards oral tradition. The president likes verbal briefings, telephone conversations, and tv as a result of they’re all carried out aloud, sans studying.”
Hulton Archive / Getty; Print Collector / Getty; Stefano Guidi / Getty; The Atlantic
“The far proper didn’t carry Dante out of obscurity. He has, in fact, been one in all Italy’s most revered literary figures for hundreds of years. However to know how his veneration reached a brand new stage, one should look to Meloni’s historic predecessors, the unique fascists.”
Day by day Herald Archive / Nationwide Science & Media Museum / SSPL / Getty
“In these marginalia one sees a person (who famously appeared by no means to hearken to anybody, for whom ‘dialog’ was little greater than a torrent of monologues) studying passages, reflecting on them, and responding with penciled dashes, dots, query marks, exclamation factors, and underscorings—mental footprints throughout the web page. Right here is one in all historical past’s most advanced figures lowered merely to a reader with a e book and a pencil.”
Ardour Play Oberammergau 2022 / Birgit Gudjonsdottir
How Hitler’s favourite Ardour Play misplaced its anti-Semitism
“Cleansing up the play’s historic 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 issues, together with oppression, betrayal, and struggling.”
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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