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10 October 2019 "Nobel Prize! The joy and the emotion took me". This is how Olga Tokarczuk, on Facebook, comments on the victory of the Nobel prize for literature. More than 16 thousand already like, comments and shares on his page to which the writer responds with a "thank you very much for all the compliments"."Today the streets of European cities should be named after Abelard of Bath, Robert of Chester, Alfredo Anglico, Daniel of Morley ...". This was written by Olga Tokarczuk in an exclusive article on l'Espresso, entitled "The world saved by the translators'." It was they, the translators, who brought a total revolution to medieval science and philosophy. A would transcribe n Latin characters, starting from the Arabic pronunciation, a word that they did not understand. And, in doing so, to transfer previously unknown concepts to the West, "says the poet and novelist, known in Italy for the book" I vagabondi "(Bompiani). The Nobel writer for Literature 2018 addresses readers with a strong invitation to read, never as necessary today "vaccine against an ad hoc vision of the world".
"Literature shows that once the collective languages gave rise to different visions of the world. And that is why it is worth reading: to realize these different visions and convince ourselves that ours is only one of the possible worlds, and certainly it is not given to us once and for all, "he says. The translators were the architects of "a revolution that allowed Western civilization to get back on its feet", he underlines, and have "the same responsibility as writers because they watch over the possibility of transmitting experiences and points of view".