The Message of the Vanished Stars

Sometimes works speak to each other across time. My first book was a novel, an embodied story carried by characters, which ended under the sign of an image: that of the vanished stars.

These stars, though dead for millennia, still send us their light. They remind us that the clarity of the Enlightenment, the impulse of democracy, the strength of freedom, survive apparent defeats and present injustices.

Today, I am beginning my second book. It will not be a novel but a philosophical essay, entitled The Message of the Vanished Stars, echoing the last chapter of my first work Christine and her Life of Adventures in the Moon Islands. This essay will seek to shed light on the message of the vanished stars: that of thinkers, peoples, and heroes who, throughout the centuries, have defended freedom against tyranny, tolerance against fanaticism, and justice against arbitrariness. Their struggle was not in vain: it still enlightens us and obliges us.

The heritage of the Enlightenment is this message that reaches us from the depths of time and can guide our steps today in the face of the threats of our age: dictatorships, mafias, corruption, political impotence, digital manipulation, ecological crisis, fanaticism…

This essay will not be an academic treatise but a personal meditation, an attempt to connect the legacy of the Ancients to our uncertain present. My ambition is modest: to show that philosophy is not dead, that it can still guide us, and that the light of the vanished stars still shines above us. It can lead our steps towards justice and freedom, towards an accomplished life — what the Ancients already called happiness.

 This project is a new adventure for me: more philosophical, but still guided by the fragile and enduring light of the vanished stars. I invite you to walk with me on this path, where literature meets philosophy, to keep alive the clarity of the Enlightenment.