I tried for many days to find Virgilio Scapin through the streets of Vicenza and among the hills that animate the surrounding landscape; but I can never find him alone. There is always someone talking to him, others who surround him, who ask him for advice, suggestions. A devout little woman who, in the middle of the evening, takes advice about a novel to overcome the temptations and the loneliness of the darkness. If then I try to bring it to the fore, to tell it in all its grandeur, with footsteps from a great man is infringed, leaving behind him the echo of his happy presence.
To talk about Virgilio, and overcome the sadness of his absence, it is better to use the conventional language of physics, fixing in him a point from which radiate vectors, forces that push other bodies that are set in motion towards other fields of force. And such is drawn in my mind an articulated system of people, of which, I notice, the first piece, of Dante and heavenly memory, is really him.
To have entered the field of forces of Virgilio has meant, for those who have enjoyed this privilege, to live an experience of joyous friendship, of respect for the wisdom of the ancient farming culture, of love for books and the written word, of consideration for the simple and witty mockery for the false prophets, for the trombones always too numerous, dissolved by his Olympic wit in the direct conversation and by the dazzling epitaphs with which he animated the pantagruelical parties that had him as master.
"Confraternita" of Bacalà, 2006
Virgilio has been able to make of life a theater and a story, of which he was the first performer, together with his characters, chosen with uncomparable precision, in the world of reality and that of fantasy and often superimposed on each other, using as the only criterion of judgment its extraordinary humanity and its impatience for inelegance and hypocrisy. How can you look, without embarrassment, at Pina and Firmino Miotti, people-characters, after reading the tale the Fiora? And how can you not think, with respect, about a plate of cod, almost miraculously arrived on our tables, thanks to the heroic deeds of the Venerable Brotherhood of Cod and its Prior Scapin? And how not to end up justifying the fatigue from mules of the venetians, only recently and perhaps not entirely freed from misery, interspersed and reactionary pretons so close to their people, such as the monsignors Scotton of Breganze, revived in the carousel of Archangels?
The sacred fire of Virgilio is the love for life, substantiated by refined culture and human bluntness, distilled in its narrative adjectivation, in which the Sermo familiaris is evoked thanks to the insertion of lexical gems full of indefinite Leopardian. In his life made of literature and in his literature made of life at the center there is the supreme value of friendship, which feeds on small gestures very scapiniani, which subtract from the kitchen of a restaurant a bowl of ripe cherries to eat in the company of a friend, while the indulgent hostess pretends not to see to share a childish transgression with nostalgia. Or get out of a cellar with a bottle of perfumed wine in hand, while the winemaker shows himself intent on other work.
Substantiated friendship of good complicity, to live life in a light and profound way …
Virgilio, an incomparable friend, able above all to change your life.
Tiziana Agostini
