(ANSA) – PALERMO, 06 DEC – A Sinologist and a Latinist critically reread after three centuries the work of the Sicilian Jesuit Prospero Intorcetta who in the seventeenth century was the first to translate and popularize the thought of Confucius in the West, the forerunner of the cultures of dialogue. Alessandro Tosco, who teaches Chinese language and literature and directs the Confucius Institute at the Kore University of Enna, and the Australian Rodney Lokaj, Latinist and professor of Italian philology, retraced Intorcetta’s studies from a comparative point of view. They made a volume (“Zhongyong. The constant practice of the right medium”) now published at the Frederick II Foundation. For the first time, a critical translation in Italian and English was presented of the writings of the Jesuit originally from Piazza Armerina and of the Chinese text that Intorcetta published by translating it into Latin, then the language used not only by the Church but also by culture and political power. “That operation – says Tosco – had the merit of showing the intellectual caliber of the Sicilian Jesuit and of bringing Europe and China closer”. Before him, another Jesuit Sinologist, Matteo Ricci, had observed the Confucian philosophical system but his work arrived incomplete. That of Intorcetta instead deepened Confucius with a reading that still today, says the director of the Federico II Foundation, Patrizia Monterosso, opens up “new anthropological, religious and philosophical interests” in a context where dialogue and understanding of the culture of other. (HANDLE).
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Source From: Ansa
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