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Just
as “Sabir” was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean, so
this Festival on the “White Sea” route,
hosted in the towns of the “Baroque Triangle”, Scicli,
Ragusa and Modica, nominated by UNESCO “world
heritage of mankind”, proposes to meet and dialogue periodically
with intellectuals of the two shores.
It is not the first time that Sicily, owing to its natural
position in the Mediterranean, and true to its centuries-old
tradition of contact among civilizations, offers itself as a
bridge between two cultures and as a real Bayt al-Hikma,
the House of Knowledge par excellence: a haven for women and
men, ready to transmit their own knowledge through the word for
the common aspiration of a future of peace.
The Mediterranean taken into consideration in this first
season is not a strictly geographical concept, but also includes
those territories which, although not directly facing onto the
Sea, make up an integral part of it for cultural and historical
reasons. And it is for this motive this first edition of the
Festival seeks to enlarge the cultural panorama to non-coastal
Arab countries, as well as to invite writers who, though being
born “far” from the Mare Nostrum, have chosen it as their
adoptive homeland.
This event on the “White Sea”, al-Bahr al-Abyad, as the Arabs
call the Mediterranean, should be understood, therefore, not
just as another jaded season of culture and of the arts, but as
a métissage between the Orient and Occident on the theme
of reciprocal knowledge without geographical frontiers
and ideologies." |
