Entry tags:

book, calvino, literature, politics

The Importance of literature

What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks.

--- Arkadian Porphyrich, in Italo Calvino's, If on a winter's night a traveler, p. 235