Grazia Zolla Marchianò

With deep sorrow, thinking of her readers and of us, Cortonese and devoted friends, we bid farewell to Grazia Marchianò found dead on April 12 2024, at the age of 83, in her home in Montepulciano. Aesthetician, philosopher and orientalist,* she moved all that met her to a more profound reflection on Being.
She attuned immediately to the spirit of the Cortona Week and got involved with an energy and passion that warmed all that met her.
We will miss Her dearly.

Eulogy by Luigi:
There is some Death which, in addition to sadness, produce an acute sense of injustice. Mostly when the person who passes away was, is, the very representation of life and energy. The case now is for Grazia Marchianò, a woman living alone since several years, after the death 2002 of his well-known orientalist husband Elimire Zolla. A very strong woman, living alone, and who most probably, as one colleague has acutely observed, had found in the Cortona-week a family, a home.
I had met Grazia only shortly before the Cortona-week 2023, where she came, and, although not a rich person- she found the way to give a generous donation to the Cortona week.
Coming to know her, came the surprise of so many common interests, and begun between us a rich series of emails, which enriched me very much. One of the common interests was the life principles of ancient East, Vedanta and Buddhism in particular, and we rediscover together among other, the old Tibetan philosopher Nagarjuna. He is the "inventor" of the notion of emptiness, which for him means, that nothing is this world is endowed by its own intrinsic reality. Actually, everything is dependent from other entities. This table is dependent from the wood of the tree, the tree is dependent on the seed, the sun, the rain, the farmer, and the farmer from his parents, and so on. All things are therefore empty, in the sense that they lack of intrinsic reality. Thus, there is nothing which exists per se, everything is dependent from other things, it is then a world of relations, one thing causing the other, so to have finally just one world.
Oneness.
It is therefore a mistake, a case of ignorance, if we focus the attention to only one aspect of the problem, or on only one discipline.