I would recognize those eyes immediately. Those hands. That voice. The way of writing. That handwriting is undoubtedly mine. Even though I don’t always know how to read it, and I don’t always recognize the voice that emerges. Brief notes, corrections. The little notes I still write and tuck away who knows where have become increasingly private and concrete. But the lines remain the same, and they evoke a certain feeling of exile.
Biglietti agli amici was published by Tondelli in 1986 in a very limited print run (a first edition of 31 copies and a second of 500) to preserve the private nature of the booklet. The text consists of twenty-four short prose pieces—twelve for the twelve hours of the night and twelve for the day—each dedicated to a beloved friend. The passages conclude in just a few lines, and the composition has a fragmentary quality, blending citations and rewritings to form an intimate reflection on his personal story, on why life “could go in one direction rather than another.” Each page has an unmistakable light, made of memories and few plans. A silent trust that doesn’t hide the anguish or weariness.
To see the beautiful side, to be content with the best moment, to trust in this embrace and ask for nothing more because their life is theirs alone, and no matter how much you want it, no matter how much it drives you mad, you won’t change it in your favor. Trust in their embrace, in their skin against yours—this must be enough for you. You’ll see them leave many times, and then one time will be the last. But you say tonight, now, isn’t this already the last time? To see the beautiful side, to be content with the best moment, to trust when they look for you in the crowd, to trust in their goodbye, to have more faith in your love, which won’t change their life but won’t ruin yours either, because if you love them, and if you suffer and if you lose your mind, these are your problems alone; to trust in their kisses, in their skin when it touches yours—love is nothing more than this. It’s you who confuse love with life.
In those years, the theme of abandonment was central to Tondelli’s reflections: in his readings of Bachman and Barthes, in the lectures and critical texts that preceded the writing of this work (and later Camere Separate): “abandonment in love, abandonment of the loved one, abandonment of things or perhaps even of reality.” The notes are filled with kilometers traveled by train or plane, with waiting rooms, with past loves. And if every departure always implies the possibility of a farewell and a return, the writer seems to deny that there is any difference between the two. Each of his annotations, like every written page, carries with it a blank space that advances. It resembles memories because, like memories and snow, it covers everything.
Perhaps this is why the other evening, feeling terrible, he could only glimpse a quiet, familiar imaginary as a form of desire: Correggio, his home, his parents’ house.
In Un weekend postmoderno (1990), the Emilian author evokes a nocturnal writing at three in the morning, “very silent and absorbed, very receptive to the sensations and images from the outside and the depths. At three in the morning, as Bergman and Cohen teach, you settle accounts with your life, but not bureaucratically—rather, through poetic intuitions and painful inner images: the child self, the mother, the father, the leaving, the returning, the impossible meaning of life, of happiness, the weight of your own history.” The writing takes on the tired and nervous traits of a sentinel recounting their vigil. A feeling as ancient as it is painful. Who knows how many hours the night holds. Who knows what the readings are at three in the morning.
