Roberto Rizzo

I do not think being a homebody type of person. Perhaps this is because I took my first flight when I was before nine months.

From Africa to Europe, from Libya to Italy. At the yoke of the plane was my father, a Tripoli air force pilot who, at the beginning of the war, was moved to Novi Ligure airport where I am still living and where I have been writing since the age of fifteen. But my always hidden desire to travel burst forth at the age of eighteen when, without any money, I decided to wander across Europe. Other times, a different Europe, other borders. Real borders and in some cases almost impassable. However, I wandered for more than two years traveling throughout Europe with a friend of mine, hitchhiking and working in different places to scrape together the few money needed to survive.

It was in Copenhagen that we were in serious difficulty, because we lost our job and, with a few cents in our pocket, we were certain to be in a position of constraint.The humiliation of the travel warrant was in our hands but we had to think up a solution that could delay, at least temporarily, an inevitable surrender, when a sudden inspiration, gave me the solution. I could draw, we still had a few cents to buy a colored chalk box and being in perfect physical condition to overcome any hesitation, I had the winning idea: we would work as pavement artists! From that moment everything changed. No more empty stomach, fears and hardships, but beautiful women, smart restaurants and nightclubs at night. Qualified begging but, above all, well-paid, during the day. It was during that long period of "dolce vita" that I knew a Danish girl, I married her and took her to Italy, where I started a business. In the meantime I kept on writing and composing my first songs andI had the chance to share some musical experience with Fabrizio de Andrč. I attended many literary and poetry competitions where I got gratifying results, and began to cooperate with "Panorama", a Yugoslav magazine written in Italian.

Some of my poems were published in the prestigious journal "Fenarete" and in other qualified periodicals, until it happened to me to know Eugenio Montale who, at that time, was not the Nobel Prize yet and who, luckily, expressed me sympathy and which I grew fond of him a lot to. In that period he was living in Milan at 11 Via Bigli and I was accustomed to visit him every Monday when I went to Milan because of my job. Even if at first I had gone there because of it, for a long time a kind of fear kept me from submitting to his judgment even one of my poems.” But the day came when he asked me why I had not brought him one of my writings yet, so that he finished with a sentence I will never forget: "I have not yet figured out if you're one of the most honest and fair man I have ever known or just a very smart guy. "

It was just this honesty to give me a confirmation of being faced to the wittiest man I had ever happened to meet. Not only that conviction kept unchanged but was strengthened in time.

The following Monday I took him almost everything I had written until then.

For two weeks he told me nothing. During our conversations I was pleased with his encyclopaedic knowledge and with his intelligence ranging from philosophy to politics, from art to science, from psychology to religion, and, of course, from literature to poetry. From our conversations I drew confirmation to have almost the same point of views with the one I considered my only teacher. The following week, for the second time, he was approaching the subject: "Don’t you want to know what my opinion on your writings is?"

I felt like I was going to sink: " Sure! Of course!" I said eagerly.

"So why didn’t not you ask me?"

"Because I fear your judgment. Moreover just because you haven’t spoken to me before about it, convinced me that your opinion was negative. ”

"I want to give you an advice. Enter the competitions no more. "

I felt like I was going to die. My doubts were changed into certainties.What I wrote was worthless or at least was of very little value, and therefore, implicitly, his advice was to consider myself a writer no more.

"Got it”. - I said, mortified. - I'll stop writing."

"You have understood nothing."

He replied and, smiling, he added a sentence that, satisfying me beyond all expectations, I will keep for ever in my heart, but my discretion always prevented me from reporting it to someone. However, encouraged by his exhortations, even after his death, I tried never to leave my passion for Literature, Poetry, Theory, Philosophy, Music and Related Texts.

In the mid-eighties, somebody thought of electing me as President of a cultural association in my town. I complied with enthusiasm because it was intended to promote new talents by publishing their literary works and offering them the chance to express opinions through the magazine of the association. It is a commitment I could carry on for few years only but whom I give credit to for having given me the opportunity to carve out a short time to write everyday.

I have always supported the idea that a life with no news is not worth living and maybe just because of it I have occasionally tried to breathe new life. The last chance I had was when, going to the Russian consulate to get some details, I asked about a young Russian tourist who, by chance, as I could verify very soon, was fond of literature. What could I do but marry her?

However, today, thanks to a chain of events, not least as a result my marriage, at last I was able to put into practice the exhortation of Montale by being able to write at full time and I am sure that it is consequential that often happens to me to feel the sensation that he himself could be pleased because I've heard him.

And now, traveling into my mind, I get high on space, formulating theories that recklessly try to stretch out their hands to embrace those who desire to think, to know, to understand. As I try to do so..