Elisabetta Sgarbi on Publishing, Memory, and the Future

Elisabetta Sgarbi, founder of the publishing house La Nave di Teseo (2015), reflects on her career and vision for the future in an interview. She cites childhood trauma involving Ilaria del Carretto's funerary monument by Jacopo della Quercia in Lucca as an early artistic inspiration. Sgarbi feels represented by all the books she publishes, highlighting the complete works of Carmelo Bene in one volume (Bompiani Classics) and Enrico Ghezzi's 'Paura e Desiderio' as courageous projects. She co-founded the magazine Panta (later Pantagruel) with Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Genius loci is important to her, particularly Ferrara's cultural heritage, citing writers like Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, and sculptor Alfonso Filippini. She quotes Augustine ('memory is the womb of thought') and Borges's Funes on the necessity of oblivion. Advising young people to be radical, she cites Kenneth Patchen's line 'We were never anything completely, not even soldiers.' A reader of Roberto Calasso, she believes the sacred persists even when masked. She recalls Leonardo Sciascia's book 'Il futuro della memoria (se la memoria ha un futuro)' and hopes the parenthetical doubt is unfounded, focusing on the future of memory. The interview is part of Artribune's 'Futuro Antico' series by Ludovico Pratesi.