Silvano Agosti

Silvano Agosti (C.E.1938 — living), Italian writer and director.

Quotes by Silvano Agosti:

• Gregorio Samsa is the character who has the courage to become truly an unclean and gigantic insect to scream the injustice that is perpetrated daily against millions of people, who are forced to buy, to have the necessities... I was saying to live, but it is more correct to say to 'exist', they are forced to spend the whole day, either looking for a job, or doing a job, or submitting to a job, or sickness due to overwork. In short, restlessness is the main sentiment of all societies that do not take into account the greatness and preciousness of every single human being.

Letters from Kyrgyzstan:

• Here in Kyrgyzstan, in every public and private sector, you don't work more than three hours a day, at full pay, with the reservation of a possible hour of overtime. The remaining 20 and 21 hours of the day are devoted to sleep, food, creativity, love, life, oneself, one's children, and one's fellow human beings. (p. 8)

The current Western concept of vacation, on the other hand, is as ferocious as the very conception of work, not only because it profoundly interferes with the meaning of freedom, but because it transforms its meaning. During the holiday season, millions of people are forced to have fun, just as in the rest of the year they are forced to work tirelessly, to dream of finding a job or to recover from breakdowns and illnesses caused by forced and daily work. (p. 9)

• This mechanism of eight hours of work every day has always produced social tensions, neuroses, depressions, illnesses and above all the precise feeling of losing the feeling of life forever.

The Slave's Speech:

• So, in the meantime one must not put flowers at the window of the cell of which he is prisoner because otherwise even if one day the door is open he will not want to go out.
  He must always think, with a perfect conscience: "These people are stealing my life, in exchange for two and a half million a month, all right, while I am a masterpiece whose value is unspeakable."
• "Better lick the floor" but what's horrendous in this culture is that "licking the floor" has even become an aspiration, you know? But it's monstrous that the guy has to go to work eight hours a day and he has to be grateful to those who make him lick the floor, you know?
• The real slave, the true slave defends the master, not fights him. Because the slave is not so much the one who has the chain on his foot as the one who is no longer able to imagine freedom.

Do you understand why the whole West lives in an area of benefit? Because it's stealing eight-tenths of the rest of the world's goods.

Filmography:

• D'amore si vive (C.E.1984)
• The Fever (C.E.2005)

Bibliography:

• Silvano Agosti, Lettere dalla Kirghisia, Edizioni l'Immagine, Rome C.E.2007.