La restanza

Abstract

To leave or to stay is a dilemma belonging since ancient times to the history of humanity and to places that have known calamities, earthquakes, landslides, displacements, migrations. The recent earthquakes that struck Central Italy revealed people who do not want to leave their places and their lives, perhaps made of fatigue and loneliness, which they would have liked to escape and which, instead, they realise they love just when they are forced to flee. The choice to come back or to stay is a drive tending to the construction of a new polis, a new way of living and organising spaces, economies, relationships, to the birth of a new community. The word ‘restanza’ (similar but distinct from ‘resilience’) denotes a creative and dynamic act, it means feeling on the road even when standing still. To stay requires the ability to relate past and present, to re-actualise lost and viable routes. Unproductive and abandoned mountain areas, for example, are rediscovered today as harbingers of new resources and opportunities of life.