” This precious drink that spreads a lively excitement for the whole body was called the intellectual drink, the friend of the literati, of the scientists and of the poets because, shaking the nerves, it illuminates the ideas, it makes the imagination more alive and quicker the thought “.
So Pellegrino Artusi describes and celebrates coffee in his fundamental written “Science in cooking and the art of eating well”.
A red thread unites coffee to the world of art, of literature in particular. Once when there were no publishers the selection was entrusted to the so-called literary society, a spontaneous association of writers who, for one of those strange pacts, neither written nor spoken, gave mutual advice and support. And they did it by gathering in living rooms, bookshops, but above all coffee. It is not difficult to imagine that some of the most beautiful pages of literature have always been written on the tables of Parisian bistros or under the pergolas of Roman cafe’s, where next to smoking cups, ink on white sheets gave body and life to heroes and heroines destined for the immortality of books. It is to give continuity to this tradition of “connivance” between coffee and literature that Moak has been promoting since 2000 Caffe’ Letterario Moak a national fiction contest that promotes talented young artists or vaterans of writing.
