In this anthology, the editor has gathered poems, literary passages, essays, theatrical dialogues, and writings on psychology, psychoanalysis, and pedagogy—spanning from antiquity to our own time, from Homer to Montale, from the Bible to Lucio Dalla. Every voice in these pages shares a common thread: all were children, many became parents, and here they speak of fatherhood and motherhood. Quilici, who founded the I.S.P. — Institute for the Study of Fatherhood in 1988, argues that "no human bond runs deeper, carries more weight, or remains more mysterious and contradictory than the one between parent and child, and child and parent." The book serves both as a way to know these authors more fully and as an invitation to reflect on our own relationships with our parents and children.
We recommend this book to our readers because it brims with compelling passages, because we found ourselves moved by familiar poems and discovered new ones that struck us, because it is fascinating to enter the family world of great writers across time, and because reading aloud, reciting poetry, staging dialogues and simple theatrical scenes can be a worthwhile investment of our shared free time.
Maria Teresa Cabras, 2002