Small Holinesses

The Italian writer Franco Arminio lives in a small town called Bisaccia, located in mountainous terrain about fifty kilometers east of Naples. His signature style is short, rhythmical prose that lies somewhere between poetry and aphorism, which has already become familiar to the Russian reader through his book "Postcards from the Afterlife" (2010). The collection "Small Holinesses" is dedicated to the simple and unobtrusive details of life: a sprout breaking through the gravel, a photograph of a son on his mother's chest, a father asleep at the coffee table, the small breeze of breath, and the silence between the toes. One hundred and fifty microtexts of three to four lines echo each other with the ritual incantation — "holy, holy, holy" — and transform into a mantra. For Arminio, everything that instinctively evokes tender empathy in a person is sacred.