Italy's Giorgia Meloni Visits Tolkien Exhibition in Rome - The New York Times - 0 views
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“I found the exhibition very beautiful,” Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, said after her personal tour of “Tolkien: Man, Professor, Author.” “As a person who knows the issue pretty well, I found many things I didn’t know.”
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for Ms. Meloni and others who grew up in a post-Fascist universe that could not publicly look to the recent Italian past for heroes, Tolkien’s adventures — tales of warriors, invading armies and everyday folk defending their homelands — supplied a safe space to articulate their worldview. They dressed in character. They sang along with the extremist folk band Fellowship of the Ring at jamborees of right-wing youth called Camp Hobbit.
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He has said Tolkien was a major literary figure who deserved a major show marking the 50th anniversary of his death. Ms. Meloni’s critics have instead characterized the exhibit, which she called “a beautiful page of culture,” as a right-wing counteroffensive in the country’s culture wars.
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“Ask around who knows the names of the nine companions of the ring, see who responds,” he said, naming all nine. He added that when it came to Tolkien, “the right chose him as its go-to author.”
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The show was intended to transmit that tradition, said members of the youth wing of Ms. Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party, who were there, too.
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“It’s an inheritance,” said Andrea Paramano, a 21-year-old member, as he stood with his friends around models of the Shire and epic battles with Balrog, the fire monster. “It gets passed down. The respect of the tradition ——”
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Mr. Obama was quoted in the exhibit as saying he had moved on from the Hardy Boys to “‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’ and stuff like that,” and that they “weren’t just adventure stories, but they were also stories that taught me about social problems.”
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Mr. Martini was delighted that the works he loved, of mythical battles and ghouls, had finally been recognized as great art. The political overlay, he said, was “only an Italian problem.”