Inauguration in the UWr College for Interdisciplinary Studies
We invite you to read the following text of professor Piotr P. Chruszczewski, director of the College for Interdisciplinary Individual Studies.
“Dalla terra italiana alla Polonia! From the Italian land to Poland!”
Quasi-literary account from another unique inauguration of the new academic year in the College for Interdisciplinary Individual Studies of the University of Wrocław.
On October 24th, 2025, at high noon, His Excellency Luca Franchetti Pardo, the ambassador of the Italian Republic, gave an inaugural lecture to students, university authorities, staff, and guests. At the very beginning of the academic year, His Excellency gifted the community of the UWr College for Interdisciplinary Studies with the perfect medicine – language, the creation of our minds and the most crucial component of our interactions. After his fascinating presentation of modern courses and possibilities of partnerships between Poland and Italy, he asked everyone to stay and talk a little more.
His Excellency’s invitation was eagerly accepted.
LET’S TALK. Language is the perfect medicine which permeates organs, integrates the body, holds back fear, and boosts happiness. Let’s be honest. Hiding who we are from our loved ones is our weakness, and trauma grows only if we bury it. We should embrace who we are. We ought to know that we are a mystery and that everything – a human word, the colour of the sky – is a story. There is no point in fighting ourselves and others anymore. Nobody is an eternal being, nobody will last. We are insects racing within the heart of the stone. Here is a new story: a human home open to animals, to leaves. Strike the air with your finger and you will release happiness, you and your day like a marvellous marriage in the church of the world. (Arminio 2020:30)
After the lecture, His Excellency was telling the students how his life is a set of dynamic acts which are the best cure for apathy.
A CURE FOR APATHY. A great part of our sorrow results from the apathy of our moods. Passive love has no meaning. An idle desire only enhances our distress. We gain from performing good deeds, not just from acknowledging them. Hence, there is one simple advice to heal ourselves and the world: let our bodies breathe, talk to each other, constantly embrace the air, touch things and inhale them. (Arminio 2020:68)
Nobody knows how much time each of us has left. It is worth remembering that good will always come back and stay with us, even if now it seems difficult or impossible to understand.
GLOW. The time is near for the soundless and tender. Ressentiment is like old iron. Good comes back to assist us and we will wear its glow on the tips of our fingers. (Arminio 2020:146)
There is no conflict of interest between politics and poetry. Together, they can create a common good and “unite the native with the foreign,” while the University should naturally unite life with studies, just as time unites the past with the present.
POLITICS AND POETRY. The first thing, dear Italy, is to remain sensual. Politics should stir the crust with senses. A cold-hearted fight for the Earth makes no sense. Reject the empty words, let the long-dead ants come alive in your blood. Modernity should be neither flattered nor denied: we need poly-modernity, the principles of cities and towns. We need a community which unites the native with the foreign, the utopians with the city-men, the visions of the elderly with those of Piero della Francesca’s. Outside of the parliament, there is Italy elevated and silent, marine and alpine, resourceful yet unhurried. We need to pursue time for the personal and civil, politics and poetry, the view of rules and the rules of viewing, the beauty of what surrounds us rather than the corrosion of what we’ve built. (Arminio 2020:148)
See you next year, on yet another remarkable inauguration.
Arminio, Franco (2020), La cura dello sguqardo. Nuova farmacia poetica. Firenze: Italia [free translation of chosen texts: Piotr P. Chruszczewski]
Below, ceramic wall ornaments made by children. Piazza dell’Immacolata, Rome, 2025. Photos: Piotr P. Chruszczewski
Translated by Małgorzata Stencel (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
Date of publication: 28.10.2025
Added by: M.J.
