Alessandro Rivali: “War, Catholics and the need for mystery”

Anyone who connects the dots in the life of Alessandro Rivali, Genoese, born in 1977, director of Ares editions, poet and journalist, easily feels good for the clarity of the biographical plots. As a boy, on the eve of a tedious summer in the Ligurian countryside, rivals discovered Eugenio Corti’s novel ‘The Red Horse’, one of the rare epic works of the second half of the Italian twentieth century, which had just celebrated its fortieth anniversary. publication (1983) wanted by Cesare Cavalleri, deus ex machina of Ares. That summer many years ago the young Rivali was unaware that ‘The Red Horse’ would not only save his holidays, but that he would become a disciple and friend of Corti and Cavalleri. From the second, who died last December, he would have inherited the baton of the publishing house; of the first he devotedly edited even the posthumous letters from the Russian front. Whoever visits the tomb of Corti, in Besana in Brianza, reads two engraved poems dedicated to him by Rivali, who in these days is releasing the drafts of the 36th edition of the ‘red horse’, while attending the publication of his novel ‘My name in the wind. History of the Moncalvi’ family (Mondadori), also fermented by war events inspired in a large portion by dramatic domestic memories.

Once upon a summer’s eve…

And there was a friend who recommended to me a book of impressive size and price as well: 28,000 lire. The reading that changed my life.

He would later meet Corti and become his privileged interlocutor. Escaping the risk of disappointment, he frequents those who appreciate a work and then meet the author.

It was an exception to the rule. Corti was one of my three teachers: the second Cavalleri, an outsized man, versatile, a Catholic who loved Group 63, with interests ranging from economics to the ‘Yijing’, publisher and severe critic who corresponded with Buzzati and was passionate alla Callas.

Third master?

The poet Giampiero Neri.

That is Giampietro Pontiggia, Giuseppe’s older brother, whom we interviewed in the Foglio of June 20, 2021.

It was at the antipodes of Corti. Eugenio had the long stride of choral narration, Neri was the pen of essentiality, brevitas. Both, however, with the characteristic of seeking truth and beauty. Neri said that a true poet is like the Baptist in the desert, he can feed on grass and locusts but he must not renounce the truth. Corti, who gave voice to the people of Catholic Brianza, wanted to know the world built without god: the communist Soviet Union. So, after officer school, on the form of the three preferable destinations for the front he wrote: Russia, Russia, Russia. Against everyone’s opinion.

Anyone who has read ‘The Red Horse’ and ‘The Most Never Return’ knows those events. What did the author add to you, as a friend?

Corti couldn’t wear his watch on his wrist because anything he held close to his body reminded him of the grip of the Russian frost. Some nights he woke suddenly reliving the nightmares of the military retreat. When he repatriated he joined the allied troops. To continue fighting he traveled the Abruzzo on foot.

The White Resistance was always less applauded than the Communist one.

In 2021 Alberto Leoni and Stefano Contini published ‘Christian Partisans in the Resistance’, attesting that the medals for valor to the Catholics were more than those given to the communists.

In his novel ‘My name in the wind’ echoes the epic of Corti, and it is a saga that draws on family narratives.

My grandfather escaped from Genoa in 1900 to marry the girl he loved against his parents’ wishes. They intended to arrive in Argentina, but stopped in Barcelona because she was due to give birth and they achieved wealth by opening the first Italian delicatessen in the city, which still exists. They lost everything in one night, on July 18, 1936, when Barcelona was set on fire with the Spanish civil war: they escaped on a ship without even their suitcases. My father told me that in order not to make the revolutionaries suspicious, they boarded him with a school apron. The family thought they had found a peaceful life in the hills in the province of Alessandria, but at the outbreak of the Second World War they became the epicenter of tragic events. My father lived the horrors between ’43 and ’45, he lost friends in the Benedicta massacre and the Germans captured him to deport him to Mauthausen, not believing that he was only fourteen. His teacher saved him. I had promised him that sooner or later I would write about it, unfortunately he died the day the drafts of the book arrived. In a few months Cavalleri, Neri and him left.

A thread separates death and life, Mauthausen and salvation, ‘the most do not return’ and those who make it. War stories make the narrowness of the border more evident. Do you have an answer?

A Russian sniper’s bullet passed between Eugenio Corti’s neck and fur coat, causing him only a scratch. And in Italy a German tank fired on the abandoned hospital room where he had taken refuge, stuck in the wall but did not explode, breaking a crucifix that he brought with him. They are the inscrutable providential designs. The present world, centered on science, prefers to abolish this mystery from life and thus kills it before its natural conclusion. The answer, however, must remain open.