The other Andrea Camilleri, from San Calogero to IA

(by Elisabetta Stefanelli) ANDREA CAMILLERI (IN DIALOGUE WITH FRANCESCO DE FILIPPO), 'OF PLANETS AND MEN' (Castelvecchi, page 125, €16.00). ''Now it happened that I came to light with a week of ahead of schedule: the first Sunday of September 1925, that is, when the feast of San Calogero began. That is to say: while San Calogero was leaving the church, I was leaving the "my mother's womb". He was born like this, the third of three children who died in bands, Andrea Camilleri of which next September 1st will be celebrates its centenary. For the occasion, meritoriously, Castelvecchi brings the interview back to the bookshop, or rather the friendly and unfiltered chat (not even those linguistic) that Francesco De Filippo, journalist and writer, did with the master in 2011. ''It hasn't been 15 years yet years - De Filippo writes in the introduction - and reread those pages has aroused in me two opposing impulses: on the one hand it seems that we are talking about events from a past already forgotten, on the other hand, despite many of the names of the protagonists cited, nothing seems to have changed and every human experience - climate change, brutal conflicts, economic precariousness, pandemic and a dark omen that something definitive is about to happen, to name some more recent ones - it's as if it were part of a cliché, at the halfway point of a cyclical phase.'' In fact, he speaks Camilleri of Putin the dictator, but also of the right that in Italy will never have a chance of victory (he was referring to Fini), of the artificial intelligence of which he saw the side good, of exasperated capitalism, and of the world left worn out by the generations in power, or even by Europe marked by the original sin of being born under the sign of money and much, much more. In short, a Camilleri thinker, philosopher, even scientist, who definitely goes beyond the stereotypical image of success that binds him to double thread to the popularity of his Montalbano, to the iconography of the Sicily, which he was able to create in his novels. A Camilleri extraordinarily cultured and not at all wise in the most profound sense banal of the term, citizen of the world, especially within the time, but moved by an inexhaustible optimism of the will, of commitment. Even in the awareness that what we are living ''it's a fragile world, a very fragile world, it can collapse easily, end up in ashes, no chance of salvation, we are all in this together.'' But today, maestro, what is your legacy? De finally asks: Filippo: ''Since I can't see, everything is clearer to me: I would like to die knowing that I will leave my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a world of peace. I have great hope in the younger generations.'' Camilleri replies. And again, the interviewer asks, Death? ''It doesn't scare me.'' And again, But after...what's there? ''There isn't nothing - he replies - and nothing of me will remain, I will be forgotten, how much greater writers have been forgotten''.