The labyrinth of life

the labyrinth of life

In the enchanting Euganean village of Valsanzibio, there is a Garden, waiting for a man who is above all a wayfarer, a traveller. This book in fact would like to be taken simply as a travel diary and it was conceived to stimulate an experience. It will give you all the necessary information and explanations, but it is essentially a proposal, one among many possible, for a double journey: the first through the Garden of Valsanzibio, the second inside yourself. This book is different from any other: «… it is a journey which will gradually strip the visitor of his tourist attire, enabling him to wear the clothes of that very special homo viator that man is, and he will then feel transported through a quest, in a search for the meaning of life. Life is indeed a journey oscillating between sense and senselessness, where nothing is as it had first appeared. Where everything is a reference to other. A reference to the Other, whichever way that should be intended. Where, in any case, this otherness is inside us» (L. Biagi, in Foreword). This book is the clear proof that the author has started a personal search and that he is proposing it to us: that of turning from tourists into pilgrims. The tourist in fact is temporarily moving, looking incessantly and feverishly for sensations and pleasures. He collects photos and souvenirs to be later exhibited as mementos. He is always slightly detached and therefore sometimes he is only superficially or not at all absorbed by what he is seeing. The pilgrim, on the contrary, leaves from a given place to set out on a journey towards a destination, whose meaning is to be found in the transformation brought about by that same path and that very destination. So, if I were to point out a key feature of this book, I would say that it is an essential instrument to start a process of transformation through the direct experience of the journey inside the Garden of Valsanzibio. But this is, after all, what the author is wishing us with each one of his words.

Suggested for:

Those who love to travel, love art, spirituality, and in particular the world of the gardens; tourists, college students, young adults and people looking for new experiences and a different way of enjoying beauty and nourishing the heart, mind, spirit.