The Mediterranea
(ANSAmed) - ROME, AUGUST 5 - The Italian scientific, cultural and nautical expedition Mediterranea, which weighed anchor from San Benedetto del Tronto on May 17, will be landing in Athens on August 30. A month of cultural events have been planned for the occasion. Numerous members of the Greek cultural community responded to the call sent out by the expedition, which over the next five years will be stopping in 29 countries and meeting with writers, artists, and intellectuals from the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Red Sea in search of ideas to deal with the crisis of our times. Those going onboard - to meet with the writer Simone Perotti and other members of the expedition and to liven up the many events planned for the entire month of September - include the writers Petros Markaris, Nanos Valaoritis, Ersi Sotiropoulos, Ioanna Karistiani, and Thanassis Valtinos; Antonio Ferrari, journalist and correspondent for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera for the eastern Mediterranean; Kostas Koutsourelis, poet and translator of Italian Renaissance; and Maurizio De Rosa, essayist and translator of modern and contemporary Greek. There will also be the poet and former Greek minister of culture Telemaco Chytiris, the actress Giota Festa, historian and art critic Nikos Moschonas, and the deputy director of the Hellenic Foundation of Culture, Panagiotis Makris. ''It does not surprise us that our fellow Mediterraneans, the Greeks, reacted in this manner. They were the ones to invent dialogue, were they not?,'' said Perotti. ''The enthusiastic response that we received from so many parts of the Greek cultural world shows openness, a welcoming attitude, and - above all - a lack of provincialism.'' The complete program of events will be presented on September 16 at the Athens Italian Institute of Culture by Perotti and Silvana Vassilli, cultural attache of the Italian embassy in Athens and director of the institute, which the same day will hold two debates on ''Humanism in the Post-Crisis Period'' and ''The Mediterranean and Stories: writers in a time of crisis''. (ANSAmed).
