What is Literature For?

On May 28th, the Carlos do Carmo Auditorium in Lagoa will host another session of the Conversation Cycle: Loose Conversations - How do the arts contribute to our happiness?, this time with the theme What is Literature For? The session starts at 6:00 PM and entry is free. What is Literature For? Alongside the traditional theoretical or historical question — "What is literature?" — a more urgent critical and political question arises today: "What can literature do?" What value does contemporary society and culture attribute to it? What utility, what role do we recognize in it? As Italo Calvino wrote, "my confidence in the future of literature rests on the certainty that there are things that only literature can give us." Is this still one of our creeds? Or in the face of colossal disbelief in a world turned upside down, is it still one of the last strongholds of our struggle and confrontation - the more absurd and stripped down, the better - to delight us in the abysmal fall at the time of our physical disappearance like a tightrope walker in the anteroom of oblivion. Still, for those who write to be remembered, it would have been better to have been a person-artist without a work in life so that they could rewrite it. Or not? We count on your participation! 🙌🤗