In what sense can Virgil be defined as urgent? And then, is it only Virgil who is urgent, or are the other classics too, provided they are read and reread under certain conditions?
Readers will have to find the answers for themselves by leafing through the pages of this small book on classical literature, which stems from an editorial gamble: to lay out the reviews reserved for Greek and Latin authors without interruption alongside those of modern classics and, above all, those of their current “colleagues”, promoting friction between the ancient and the contemporary. Because, as the author writes, “only the contemporary can generate new and pressing questions to ask of the books of the ancients, without neglecting their dramatic otherness”.

With a note by Pietro Boitani.