From one of Europe’s most original and brilliant classicists, an inspiring and deeply personal reflection on loss, memory, and what we owe the past and others, inspired by a night spent in Athens’ Acropolis Museum
One day in late spring, Andrea Marcolongo walks into an outdoor store in Paris to buy a camp bed, a sleeping bag, and a flashlight. Her destination: not a remote forest or mountain peak, but the deserted halls of one of the most famous museums in the world, the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, where she has been invited to spend a night completely alone.
But it’s hard to be truly alone when you’re surrounded by the scarred beauty of the Parthenon, lit only by the moon and summoning echoes and ghosts from the past. One of the shadows visiting Marcolongo is that of Lord Elgin, the English diplomat who in the early 19th century orchestrated the controversial removal of the Parthenon marbles from Ottoman Greece to London, where they remain today. The other is the memory of Andrea’s father, whose recent death she is still mourning.
Drawing on a lifetime of engagement with classical culture and its legacy, Marcolongo examines the burning question of the restitution of works of art removed during the age of imperialism, and the broader issue of the role of power and inequality in the history of art. As the night goes by, however, the empty space left by the missing statues—a wound filled with white plaster—starts evoking other, more personal absences. Surrounded and inspired by the ruins and splendor of the classical world, Marcolongo reflects on the ever-changing relationship between present and past, and on the choices and people that make us who we are, even—or perhaps especially—when we have to leave them behind. The result is a powerful and courageous book, one that crosses time and space to remind us that we cannot live in isolation but are continuously connected and indebted to others.
“Marcolongo is today’s Montaigne…There is wisdom and grace here to last the ages.”—André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name
Andrea Marcolongo is an Italian journalist, writer, Classics scholar, and former speech writer for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The Ingenious Language (Europa, 2019) was a bestseller in Italy and in many of the other dozen countries in which it has been published. She is also the author of Starting from Scratch: The Life-Changing Lessons of Aeneas (Europa, 2022). She lives in Paris, France.
Will Schutt is the author of Westerly, winner of the 2012 Yale Series of Younger Poets award. His translations for Europa Editions include The Ingenious Language by Andrea Marcolongo, The Breaking of a Wave by Fabio Genovesi, and Elena Ferrante’s Key Words by Tiziana de Rogatis. He lives in Italy.
