Editorial

Abstract

The current issue of Claritas: Journal of Dialogue and Culture reserves generous room for an article by Fabio Ciardi, a long-time member of the Abba School, a group of experts from various disciplines who collaborated with Chiara Lubich from 1990 until 2008 in the study of her mystical text, Paradise ’49. The article that we publish here first appeared as a series in the Italian publication Città Nuova and is meant to offer a nonspecialist introduction to Paradise ’49, which is being prepared for publication both in Italian and in a number of translations, including English. The published text will present the fruit of the Abbà School’s editorial work in assembling and ordering Chiara Lubich’s writings from the period between 1949 and 1951 and will contain valuable indications as to the dating of various fragments of texts and the order that Lubich intended. The basic structure of Paradise ’49, following Lubich’s indications, is a series of paragraphs numbered 1 through 1,724. In his article, Ciardi decided to omit reference to the numbered paragraphs, and Claritas has opted to leave his article as originally published, without reference to paragraph numbers. Ciardi desires instead to foreground the aesthetic qualities of Lubich’s text, and in this context, paragraph references would burden his treatment. For Ciardi, the experience of reading Paradise ’49 is analogous to that of a traveler discovering a constantly shifting terrain. The result is a unique overview of the main movements in Lubich’s text and is the only general introduction to Paradise ’49 currently available in English. Ciardi’s article will provide a broad framework for more specialized treatments of Paradise ’49 that Claritas intends to host in future issues, especially in view of the publication of the English translation.