Elena Dardano: “In the newspaper, reading goes into the background, the Festival allows listening, slowing down meeting with silence”

The news of Denmark is these days that wants to reset the tax on books which is currently 25%, one of the highest in the world. The books purchased in 2023 in the country were only 8.3 million on a population of 6. In Italy, in the same year, the copies sold were 115 million with a population of almost 59 million people according to the data of theItalian Editori Association. The Danish one is an attempt already implemented in other countries that has not brought new readers, it has only loyal to the existing ones. In our country the number of readers is on average higher, but it is falling. According to the detection of the Observatory of the Italian Editorial Association (AIE) on Pepe Research data, 30% of readers read in a fragmentary way, dedicating themselves to this activity only sometimes a month if not sometimes a year. People between 15 and 74 years of age who declare that they have read, even if only partially, a book in the last year (printed, e-book, or listened to an audiobook) are 73%, against 74% of 2023.

“The data on the flexion of reading times and the number of readers, which go hand in hand to the flexion of the market, confirm the need to return to support the demand for books in our country especially among the youngest, creating a custom with the books that continues throughout life”, explained the president of Aie Innocenzo Cipolletta. “There is no cultural and economic growth and development for Italy if we do not grow readers, especially in the south and in the less prospera areas of the country”.

To create this custom are, in recent years, the festivals, meetings and appointments, which give direct contact with the world of the book. Hyle Book Festival The Sila Park makes it revitalizing it with incursions between literature, art, nature and sustainability. After a year of suspension, the Festival, born in 2020, returns with renewed energy, with the title The continuous dream. «In an increasingly urgent need to balance the frenzy and daily speed in which we are immersed with the moment of listening, slowdown and meeting with the silence that reading requires. In the festivals, perhaps time expands and reading becomes participation, meeting, exchange and perhaps also purpose and intent »explains Elena Dardano, creator and curator of the festival who is scheduled from 22 to 24 August. «More difficult it is when this time we have to carve out among the thousand daily commitments, between days that seem to slip away and between cell phones that impatient and unplolent resonate bip. Here the reading therefore passes almost in the background and that readers decrease. Hyle is an invitation to recover this time and to rediscover it also in the placid calm of nature, which exists and that’s it, which brings us back to the ability of being even without doing. This is the purpose that we want to leave to the public, together with a literary dissemination that can also take place in internal areas, mountain areas and countries “.

What can a festival that has a limited time do?
«Leave a trace in the suggestions of meetings that, through the different arts, want to inspire and make perceive how much literature accompanies us closely, always present in telling what we live and in returning it with clarity and depth. Cultivating talents and expressiveness: this is the intent of the naturalistic writing residence that the Festival promotes biennially, a job that begins in the festival through three days of workshops, workshops, immersive writing in the woods and experiential editing in contact with nature and which continues for the following two years with the editing work of the publication of the works, thus going to leave concrete trace in the formation of young talents book. Vehicular culture through ties with the social: the festival this year will open to the donations of books that the public will be able to direct to a library in the area, to a child penitentiary institution, to a naturalistic center or a school, so as to always build links and connections. Making and open up: they are two movements in which Hyle believes and that from this year we want to make even more current by creating a network of people who can be in contact throughout the year in the name of literature and culture and then find themselves at the Festival. It is something we often think and that has become a compass: what remains of the Festival after the three days of the Festival? Hyle proceeds in this direction at a slow but constant pace ».

In the years how has the festival or its audience changed?
«The first edition of the Festival took place in 2020 thanks to the strength of a group of enthusiasts, people and institutions who believed in the possibility of creating a review of literature in a territory where the offer in this sense was less. Born as a Sunday appointment on August, the festive has gradually chosen to concentrate events on consecutive days in the “A. Garcea” Visit Center, a place of extraordinary value, a crossroads of cultural sensitivity, research and scientific dissemination, capable of returning that sense of fullness and awareness that the festival aims to transmit. The audience slowly has grown and grows. What has never been sought is the trouble and logic of numbers. The festival has always believed, rather, in the construction of a recognizable and authentic cultural proposal, capable of generating a faithful public for the identity of the event itself. And so it was, and slowly the festival was followed for those who are, not for those who try to be or become ».

Massimo Polidoro dialogue with Piero Angela. How much do the characters count in culture and dissemination?
«I think it is more correct in this case to talk about testimonies, than about characters. At the Massimo Polidoro festival he will tell the testimony of a life, that of Piero Angela, spent on culture, dissemination, research, scientific discovery. But not only. He will tell the ability to take the witness and continue to convey it through his commitment, in the concreteness of his business. This profound sense of continuing is also at the root of the 2025 theme of the Festival, The continuous dreamtaken from a verse of a poem by Daniele Radano and exploration of the dream not only in Chimeric, but in the concreteness of a commitment that continues in trust and believing it. This is the meaning of Massimo Polidoro’s lectio magistralis, a wonder that becomes commitment and is rooted in life. This is also the will of the Festival: to tell the essence of things through stories and testimonies that can inspire and feed the critical sense, the ability to discovery, live with awareness from literature and culture “.

How do you bring culture where there are no structures always exist?
«First of all, believing in what are there, and for hyle are different. Hyle exists thanks to the support of the structures that, from the cultural spaces in which the Festival takes place to the hotels, dialogue with the association in a positive and above all confidence in the proposal and in what you do. The Festival takes place in the “A. Garcea” visit center, a naturalistic oasis of the Sila National Park managed by the Carabinieri Biodiversity Department of Catanzaro which grants the structures for the appointments every year. We have a trusted bookcase, the hotel structures that offer conventions, we reside in the municipality of Taverna, the orange flag Touring Club and the seat of a civic museum that houses valuable canvases, starting from those of the seventeenth -century painter Mattia Preti, together with an active and well -stocked library. From this point of view we are lucky. Other things are a little more difficult. I think first of all of the roads. Reaching southern Italy is not easy, reaching Sila even less. This year Hyle has several institutions that have given confidence in the Festival and for which many things – including the road network, from the transport internal to the achievement of the festival by guests from other regions of Italy – become possible. From the support of the Calabria and Extraordinary Calabria Region to the Carical Foundation, from the BCC Calabria further to the Municipality of Taverna to the collaboration with Avis Preesila, the culture is possible and arrives in the places if there are means, first of all economic, which can support a programming that is not an end in itself, but that it is far -sighted and slowly becomes a territory, community and planning. We often say that Hyle is a festival that grows together, and we often mention John Women with his no man is an island. Even the festival is not an island, the culture less than it must be “.