There is a book published in 1970 which was very popular when I was a boy but has since disappeared from the libraries. The author was Andrej Alekseevich Amalrik (1938 – 1980) a Soviet dissident and the title of that small book was Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? Amalrik predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union first in 1980 but then the temptation of the Orwellian ‘1984’ proved too strong for him to resist. According to Amalrik, and I am quoting his own words: “Any State forced to devote so much of its energies to physically and psychologically controlling millions of its own subjects could not survive indefinitely.” He compared such State to a soldier pointing a gun at an enemy for a very long time: finally his arms, under the weight of the rifle, will tire and the enemy will escape. Then he added that: “The isolation has not only separated the regime from society, and all sectors of society from each other, but also put the country in extreme isolation from the rest of the world. This isolation has created for all—from the bureaucratic elite to the lowest social levels—an almost surrealistic picture of the world and of their place in it. Yet the longer this state of affairs helps to perpetuate the status quo, the more rapid and decisive will be its collapse when confrontation with reality becomes inevitable.” Amalrik’s predictions on the causes of the ultimate Soviet Empire’s break-up were a disastrous war against China – which was indeed a close call but was fortunately averted – and then ethnical antagonisms. He failed to take sufficiently into account the economy and the unsustainable expenses occurred during the arm race against the United States of America, a factor which in the end proved to be the real killer of the Soviet giant. At the beginning Amalrik’s work was mistaken for a dystopian tale, much like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, not interpreted as a serious work of political forecasting coming from a far sighted intellectual who knew well the system. It became popular with common readers as a sort of clever oddity but was dismissed by academics and even by American experts working for the CIA. Today we know that some of his predictions proved correct while some were incorrect, to start with the wrong date of the collapse, which occurred seven years later than predicted, in 1991. In 1970 Amalrik was arrested for “defaming the Soviet State” and sentenced to three years in a labour camp at Kolyma. At the end of his term, he received three more years but due to his poor health and protests in the West, the sentence was commuted after one year. Expelled by the Soviet Union he died in a car crash in Spain in 1980. Will the Soviet Union Union Survive Until 1984? is in my opinion a study which could still be read with profit today in Hong Kong.

Tobias Smollett (1721 – 1771) was a Scottish physician, traveler, poet and journalist, considered one of the greatest novelists of the eighteen century. With the Scottish referendum nearing his name and works are going through a sort of rediscovery in his native land.

He is buried with his wife in Livorno (Leghorn) where they took residence. Both are resting in the old English cemetery of Via Verdi, Livorno, at the very center of the city but, despite its centrality, it is a place in a sorry state of disrepair and closed to visitors. Nearby there is a large car park which was built after demolishing the Odeon cinema, one of the few examples of rationalist architecture in Italy.

Smollett is mainly famous for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), which were greatly admired by Voltaire and which later were a source of inspiration for novelists like Charles Dickens and George Orwell.

He was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton, in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland and educated at the University of Glasgow, where he qualified as a surgeon; he then proceeded to the University of Edinburgh but left without taking a degree; in 1739 he went to London to seek fortune as a dramatist. Being unsuccessful he became a naval surgeon on HMS Chichester bound to Jamaica, where he settled down for several years. In 1742 he served as a surgeon during the campaign to capture Cartagena. On his return, he opened a medical studio in Downing Street and married a wealthy Jamaican heiress, Anne “Nancy” Lascelles (1721–1791). They had one child, a daughter Elizabeth, who died aged 15 years around 1762 breaking their hearts.

His first published work was a poem about the Battle of Culloden entitled “The Tears of Scotland”, but it was The Adventures of Roderick Random which made his name, his poetry was described as ‘delicate, sweet and murmurs as a stream’.

The Adventures of Roderick Random was modelled on Le Sage’s Gil Blas, and was published in 1748. Smollett followed it up by finally getting a tragedy, The Regicide, though it was never performed on stage. In 1750, Smollett took his MD degree in Aberdeen, and also travelled to France, where he obtained material for his second novel, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, another big success. He was now recognized as a leading literary figure, and associated with David Garrick, Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson, whom he famously nicknamed “that Great Cham of literature”. In 1755 he published a translation of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, which he revised in 1761. In 1756, he became editor of The Critical Review.

From 1757 to 1765 he served a short prison sentence for libel, and while in the nick he produced another novel, The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (1760). Having suffered the loss of a daughter, he went abroad with his wife, and the result was Travels through France and Italy (1766) which had been translated in Italian in 2003. He also wrote The History and Adventures of an Atom (1769), a picture of British politics during the Seven Years’ War under the guise of a tale from ancient Japan.

He had suffered for some time because of an intestinal disorder, and had sought a cure at Bath but eventually retired in a villa he had bought near Livorno.

Timothy Findley’s Pilgrim is a best selling novel – a sort of variation of the myth of the Count of St. Germain – which had been reviewed by Ciriaco in this blog. Findley seems fascinated by Leonardo Da Vinci; well, he is not the first and he’ll be not the last. All is permitted to a novelist but nothing is permitted to an historian, although analyzing the works of a novelist using an historian pair of glasses is somehow unfair. In the case of Leonardo Da Vinci, where very little is known with a good degree of certainty, it is not only unfair to the novelist but also dangerous for the historian. I am going to explain why. A Russian novelist, Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, one of the founders of symbolism wrote The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci around 1910 (English translation, New York: Putnam, 1912). Which was appreciated but not taken seriously. But recently some of his basic intuitions had been proven right. This novel inspired Sigmund Freud to write a psychoanalytic essay on Leonardo – more a novel itself than pure science – which is still in print in several languages and yet again Freud’s ‘novelist’ side he had been proven right.

Ciriaco, who has read Finley’s book, tells us that this novel is about a man going by the name of Pilgrim, who cannot die, a man who may or may not be immortal.

Having nearly completed a book on the life of Leonardo Da Vinci using recently mined documents, which may or may not change radically our view on him, I am in a position to try to answer his questions.

– Is it true that Leonardo raped Monna Lisa, or Elisabetta Gherardini, Madonna Elisabetta del Giocondo, la Gioconda, to punish her because she wasn’t her twin brother Angelo Gherardini? In fact, Elisabetta and Angelo used to play by exchanging their clothes: Elisabetta acting as a handsome young man and Angelo as a delicate madonna Florentine. And Leonardo was fond of him. Yes, because his passion – according to Findley – were the young boys, not the girls.

There is no trace of a twin brother for Mona Lisa, or Elisabetta. She was never called Elisabetta but always Lisa in the documents. We are not even sure that Leonardo really met Mona Lisa del Giocondo and that he painted her portrait. The only reference is in Giorgio Vasari (who was not born yet) where he wrote of a head not of a portrait of Mona Lisa. Besides this point Mona Lisa at that time was married with Francesco del Giocondo who, I daresay, would have objected to see her wife staging erotic plays with Leonardo…

That Leonardo da Vinci had no sexual interest in women is clear looking at the corpus of his 10.000 pages of notes left in his several Codex, which constitutes only a part of what he left. Half or two third of his sketches and notes have been lost. There the most solid contact with a woman comes from a secondary note (now lost) putting him in connection with a certain lady called Cremona. Courtesans at that time took the name of their city of origin. All other – not explicit hints – point to his direct interest in ‘Greek love.’

– And that one of his lovers was Alfredo Strazzi? And that in 1476 Leonardo was questioned by the Signoria of Florence, the committee of the town, in relation to his preference for young boys? And humiliated, condemned and fined?

This name Alfredo Strazzi seems invented. The note I am reporting below had emerged only in 1896, causing dismay and embarrassment among Leonardo’s fans. An anonymous accusation – it was later repeated again – accusing Leonardo of buggery on a young male prostitute.

I notify you, Signori Officiali, concerning a true thing, namely that Jacopo Saltarelli…dressed in black and is about seventeen years old…has been a party to many wretchedaffairs and concent to please those persons who exact certain evil pleasures from him. And in this way he was….served several dozen people about whom I know a good deal, and here will name a few: Bartholomeo di Pasquini, goldsmith, who lives in Vacchereccia. Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci, who lives with Andrea de Verrocchio. Baccino, a tailor who lives by Or San Michele…Leonardo Tornabuoni, called il teri; dressed in black. These committed sodomy with said Jacopo, and this I testify before you.

The fact that also a Tornabuoni was involved carry weight in both his acquittal as well as in the accusation, which might have been politically motivated, because the wife of Lorenzo the Magnificent was a Tornabuoni. Leonardo, then 24 years old, must have been shocked by the fear and the humiliation.

Leonardo had left no real disciples worth of this name. His true disciples were only Durer and Raphael but they were on long distance learning, so to speak, not part of his entourage. Salai, the nickname of Gian Giacomo Caprotti from Oreno, was Leonardo’s favorite disciple. He had entered his bottega when he was 10 and remained with Leonardo – who called him pig-headed, glutton, prone to steal – and in spite of all the troubles he remained part of the team until Leonardo’s death in 1519.

– Is it true that Angelo Gherardini died of the plague?

Possibly, but he never existed. Plague was rife in those years, starting with the Black Death of 1346-57 which ravaged Europe.

– And that Elisabetta, la Gioconda, bore Leonardo’s son, who died aged one year?

Leonardo pre-deceased the husband of Mona Lisa, it is thus impossible that she could have conceived a son with Leonardo who, by the way, was in Florence only until 1482, then from 1502 until 1506. Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini was born in Florence on 15 June 1479 and married Francesco di Bartolomeo di Lanobi del Giocondo (1460 – 1528) in 1495 – hence her nickname Gioconda – he was a rich member of the guild of the silk weavers and traders, already a widower of Camilla Rucellai who he had married in 1491 and gave him a son, Bartolomeo, born on 24 February 1493. In July 1494 Camilla was dead, then in March 1495 Francesco married Monna Lisa Gherardini. She gave birth to Piero in 1496 and three years later to a daughter, Camilla, then she had two more sons and one more daughter. In 2007 a document was found proving that Mona Lisa had been buried in 1542 in the church of Sant’Orsola in Florence and that she died at 63. She was buried there because she and her husband were strong supporters of the Medici, and had contributed to the maintenance of the church. That Lisa del Giocondo was the Mona Lisa kept at the Louvre is highly questionable, several art critics do not believe it, and incidentally I am one of them.

– Is it true that Leonardo didn’t paint Jesus’s face in his famous The Last Supper, but left it white, scared by Savonarola’s threats?

There is no trace of contacts between Leonardo and Savonarola. Leonardo begun painting the Last Supper in 1495 and it was at an advanced stage by 1497. Savonarola was burnt at the stake on 23 May 1498. Leonardo had an atheist view of the world and he probably had a low opinion of that friar who, by the way, could not harm him in any way since he was in Florence and Leonardo in Milan. It is true that there was a bonfire of the vanities in Florence ordered by Savonarola and there probably several works by Leonardo went up in smoke.

–Leonardo Da Vinci, according to Findley’s book, appears to be a violent and moody man, so different from the usual descriptions I am used to.

The image I have of him is that of a shy, studious man. The only passage in which he seems short-tempered is a copy of a letter written while he travelled to Florence in 1504 from Milan to sign a deed. He was writing back to his young disciple Francesco Melzi – another pretty boy – saying that he had not received from him any news since he had departed Milan and adds, with a fatherly reproach: ‘When I’ll be back you will see what I’ll do to punish you for your negligence.’

I hope to have answered all the questions raised about this wonderful and mysterious man. I wish to remind the readers not to judge Leonardo by our modern standards but with the standards of his age, which tolerated pederasty in certain circles, in spite of the fact that harsh punishments were in store for offenders who were caught.

Piero Guadagnini – was Consul General of Italy in Hong Kong and Macau from

1960-63. He is remembered as a true gentleman, a great diplomat and a man of high culture and impeccable manners.

Below, Sergio Romano, former Ambassador turned historian and columnist, explains- in an interview he gave a few years ago – how he decided to enter the diplomatic service:

‘I was a journalist, and I had no intention of changing profession. But people have no control on their destiny. I met the Italian Consul General of Chicago, Piero Guadagnini, a man from whom I thought I should take example. He convinced me to take the diplomatic entry exam. I did, and I passed it.’

Daniel Cotton Rich, author and art historian was the head of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a great friend of Piero Guadagnini, and they were in contact even during his posting in Hong Kong.

If the membership for the FCC (The Foreign Correspondent Club) were open to ghosts, the leading contender for membership number 0001 would have to be a Swiss priest whose bones lie only a couple of hundred metres from the Club.

Theodore Joset was a missionary and a prolific letter-writer whose articles reveal he was an insightful reporter. His correspondence, penned as Britain and China squared up for war over opium, graphically illustrates the havoc the drug caused in China.
Here is a part of a report he wrote in January 1840, six months before the British flotilla fired the first bombardment.

“I would like to write a few words about the situation here. We are close to a fight between the Chinese and the British, caused by the trade of opium which is transported from India to China: Chinese smoke it like tobacco; but it enslaves them, stupefies them; renders them incapable of any work. Once hooked, they can’t drop it without risking their lives. China did not spare anything to try to stop the commerce of such poison: seeing that all other means were useless, the Emperor sent to Canton a plenipotentiary to try to stamp it out. But he thought he could treat the British like the locals: assaulted the warehouse of some of them, others were arrested, condemned to suffer hunger and thirst; some were put to death. At the end the Mandarin told the British Consul that if he did not get rid of it (opium) within a certain time he will put them all to death…”

He then goes on to describe the events that ended with the occupation of the island of Hong Kong.

The Swiss diocesan priest had a good position in Macao, in spite of his young age, as the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide’s representative in the Portuguese colony. In addition to his clerical duties, he was also the representative of the King of Sardinia, at a time when Italy did not yet exist as a nation.

Joset was born in 1804 at Courfaivre, a small village in the Jura Mountains, into a large family which offered up several of its sons to the Church.

Louis Ha, keeper of the Catholic Archives, told us that there is no portrait of Joset known to exist. But he may have resembled his brothers whose pictures show they were small but sturdy, with piercing blue eyes, a square face, strong jaw and a boxer’s nose.

His brother, Joseph, became a protector of Native Americans in Oregon, Didace went to Thailand and Fidale assisted the poor in New York.

After being ordained a priest at Fribourg and spending two years at Saignelégier, Theodore departed for China on August 13, 1833.

He sailed via Leghorn and Malta to Alexandria, then travelled overland to the Red Sea, took to the sea again to Bombay, Penang, Singapore and Manila before arriving 15 months later in Macao on November 15, 1834.

Money was scarce. Europe was still reeling from the Napoleonic wars, but funds were needed to finance schools, orphanages and churches in Macao as well as in China. For this reason priests were expected to write letters and reports documenting their works, and giving precise details of their expenses. These reports were published and circulated in Europe in the hope of encouraging donations.

Joset was quick to grasp the implications of the Opium War and had forecast the British seizure of Hong Kong before it actually happened. This fact seems to back the Chinese side of the story: that Hong Kong was not “a barren island with hardly a house upon it” as Lord Palmerston put it, on which the British stumbled by chance,but that it was a highly coveted spotwhich was already being used illegallyby the British fleet as an anchorage.Bearing this outcome in mind hewrote to Rome seeking permissionto treat the new colony as a separateentity, detaching it from the MacaoDiocese.

The Vatican wasted no time andon April 22, 1841 sanctioned that Hong Kong would be recognised as a separateApostolic Prefecture. That was incredibly fast. Permission was grantedjust three months after the British hoisted their flag in what is now PossessionStreet in Sheung Wan in January1841 and well before the formalTreaty of Nanking ceding Hong Kongto Britain was signed in August, 1842. An Apostolic Prefecture is the firststep in establishing the church innon-Catholic countries. It is ordinarilyheaded by a priest, the PrefectApostolic, a representative from Romeappointed by the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide (Forthe Propagation of the Faith).

Joset understood perfectly that the Portuguese authorities would be incensed by his action, neverthelesshe set off to explore Hong Kong at the I have translated it from Italian. This article, which was published in June 1843 in Lyon, France describes his experiences in thefledgling British colony.

Theodore Joset

 

18 April ,1842

Sirs,

When on January 1841 I wrote a report about the island of Hong Kong, ceded to Britain by the Imperial delegate of China, I put forward my firm intention of building here, with the consent of the Holy Congregation, a small church for the soldiers and other European Catholics; near which I intended to built also a school for young Chinese and to open a refuge for abandoned children; being this, in my opinion, the surest way to promote our Religion into the Empire.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Treaty, agreed by the Chinese representative Chi-Xen (also known as Ch’i-san or Kishen) and the British plenipotentiary (Captain) Charles) Elliot, has not been ratified by the Emperor, the British kept possession of the island. Without waiting for the end of the hostilities they started to set up, with great expense, their own base attracting a great number of merchants from different nations who quickly assembled here and set up their own shops. More than one building has already risen, not counting those destined for the British administration and the Chinese houses, which are springing up everywhere.

The British government is truly doing a great job here: a road is running from one side to the other side of the island and already stretches for four leagues up the mountains; on the other part there is a large port, where the sheltered harbour already extends about three miles and where ships will be protected by a citadel rising up from the east shore, while two powerful bastions with barracks protect it from both sides.

It is only a few months since I came into possession of a Pontifical Decree in which I was put in charge of all these Catholic souls, and I was convinced that the time to enact it was not yet ripe, nor that I should rush to ask for land for the construction of a chapel, as I could not believe that the British would have started such important works before the end of the war.

But on hearing continuous voices in Macao speaking about the rapid progress of the Europeans, and of the many Catholics going there, I finally accepted the invitation of a friend to come and see with my own eyes, together with another missionary.

I must confess that I was very surprised by what I saw: so many buildings already completed on a beach, which was only a desert of sand six months before. At that point I was convinced that I should delay no more, but present to the authorities in charge of the place the document signed by the Pope to ask for the required land.

The British officers welcomed me with great love and insisted that I select the site I liked most, only excluding the land already chosen for government’s use. With great wonder, I found out that the best had been allotted already. I spent three days in a useless search, and when I had lost all hope of finding a corner for my tent, and already resigned to move closer to the mountains or settle among the Chinese, by sheer luck I stumbled into a space which was missed by all, and which, even if it was not perfectly convenient, could be appropriate for an humble chapel, also considering that other spaces have been given to us for the abandoned children, for the Catholic schools and for the cemetery. With time and with the help of the readers’ charity and generosity we could start to set the foundations of a seminary.

Perhaps you would like to have from me a sketch of this island of Hong Kong, where we have recently raised the cross? It is known how the river coming down from Canton splits in several branches, one of which flows like a channel from the west and opens the way to Macao; the other, which is the river itself, turns on the other side; and on the east (bank) of this river appears the island, which is separated from the continent by a channel, which will be transformed by the Europeans into the best port of all China.

You can get in from two sides, one from the east of the river and the other from the west. The surface of the island extends perhaps for nine leagues of length and four in width. Except for three or four small valleys it is more unpleasant than beautiful, consisting only of a group of tall and arid mountains, so tightly squeezed together that it is hard to find a passage among them.

The hills on the southern side of the port don’t leave much space for construction except for a long, uneven slope, from which a great number of small waterfalls of very clear and healthy water rush down. The land on the opposite (northern) side, the top of which is for the most part of the year lost in the clouds, I found under construction the actual city; where the cold and hot weather is more intense, the air more strong, the dampness more clinging. I just said the “actual city” because there is now a discussion going on to move it elsewhere, into the valley on the east; an ideal place which could offer to a new city a larger base having around it a fence of hills.

This arrangement will leave a free side on the north, a space with a view to the sea. It would also have the advantage of being irrigated by a torrent of excellent water. If this plan is implemented, the river bed could be excavated in depth from the sea to the Chinese village, located at the end of the valley. To render even more pleasant this fine place it will be advisable to flatten a hill which blocks the view of the port, even if this is the only forested place in that area. The part of the mainland that faces (Hong Kong) island, called Kowloon, could offer not small advantages to the setting of a city; but it seems that, since the British are afraid of friction with the Chinese when living too close to them, they are resisting the temptation to settle over there.

Having reached the goal of my trip, not wanting to increase my expenses, I sailed back to Macao, leaving behind the missionary who was with me, after having left instructions for him to build a small chapel with a straw hut, and when your offerings reach me we shall construct something worthier.

The news of what I was doing preceded me back in Macao and a storm was stirred up, ready to explode on my arrival. I was accused by the Portuguese to have prejudiced their privileges, as they claim jurisdiction also on Hong Kong. I was summoned by the Governor and given the choice of agreeing to (allow the Portuguese) the privileges or, if not, to leave the city within twenty four hours.

My wish was to close that affair in an amiable way and buy some more time, and with this in mind I asked to be able to consult with my superiors, agreeing that, for the time being, I could partially accept the authority of the Portuguese Vicary until these jurisdictional points were settled with an answer from Rome; but in spite of my efforts I was unable to get any delay in their resolution.

I was left with no choice but to follow the Decree of the Holy Father which was to put (Hong Kong) island under the Holy Congregation. I could not ignore it: precise orders from the Propaganda Fide were forbidding me to delay the execution of any instruction coming from the Holy See. To obey is my law and I was ready to suffer the consequences.

What distressed me most was not the fact that I was forced to leave on such a short notice, but that besides me, the only culprit, that the same decree was forced on my fellows. And not only that, but with a severity unheard before, the same order was also forced on my Chinese pupils.

The captain of the boat hired to move us to Hong Kong had some problems and did not show up at the appointed time of departure. But such was the severity of their orders that had I been unable to find Mr. Faucigny, Consul of France, who was able to obtain from the Governor a short extension, I could have been locked up in a jail for overstaying my time.

Thanks to that generous gentleman I was granted three more days, which I spent trying to put in order all my business, doing some packing, and preparing the materials necessary for building a hut. It is easy to imagine how costly for all of us has been such a sudden departure. We tried to salvage as much as we could, and if not for the help of some pious families, whose names will always be with me in my memory, we would have lost even more. For now, I am living in a miserable hut, together with my brothers and the pupils.”

Joset arrived back in Hong Kong on March 3, 1942, along with the priests and seminarians expelled alongside him from Macao.

He lived long enough to see the foundation stone of the first Church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception laid in Wellington Street (illustrated above) on June 7. A little less than a month later he was dead of fever. He was laid to rest behind the altar of the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Glenealy, just a short stroll from Ice House

Street, beneath a marble slab on which the following words were carved: “Here awaiting the Resurrection are the mortal remains of Theodore Joset, Swiss priest of the Propaganda Fide, Apostolic Representative, Procurator of China, First Apostolic Prefect of Hong Kong and of all the Missions. He lived thirty eight years and died on the 5th of August 1842.”

Giuliano Bertuccioli was a fine Orientalist and one of the most renowned Italian sinologists. He was born in  Rome on 26 January 1923. Received a degree in Chinese and Law during WWII He then joined the diplomatic service in 1950 taking care of the closing down of the Italian Embassy in Nanjin and its reopening in Beijing, he was working there as a interpreter at the Italian Embassy in Beijing. In 1953 he landed in Hong Kong and remained here until 1960. Bertuccioli was fluent in Chinese, Japanese, French, German, English and also Korean. Between 1960 and 1962, he was nominated President of the Oriental Department of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. In 1962 he was sent to Tokyo, where he remained six years. He alternated diplomatic service with teaching and publishing. In 1966 he was appointed Ambassador to South Korea, then Vietnam – North and South – and finally to the Philippines. He wrote several books on the Orient which are still read and studied. at . He died in Rome in 2001.

Bertuccioli had many stories to tell but one in particular gives an idea of his wonderful and deep humanity. It is an amusing account regarding his misinterpretation of the ruling against a fellow Italian, who had been sentenced to death by the Chinese Communist authorities in 1952. Bertuccioli had wrongly translated that the prisoner had been acquitted, informing Rome by cable of the judgement. As Chinese authorities were about to execute the condemned man by firing squad, Bertuccioli confessed his mistake and the Chinese, not wanting him to ‘lose face’, overturned the sentence and set the Italian free. Bertuccioli often recalled this youthful mistranslation with great satisfaction.

CNN, BBC, all newspapers around the world are full of stories about the suicide of Robin Williams. I am sorry for his death but only to a point. He choose to end his life and I respect his decision. And not only for this but also because  I do not want to know all the gossips, innuendoes, weird opinions of this or that friend or colleague of him. I don’t want to know all the lurid details of his troubled life, full of problems. I think that all the blablabla’ we hear and we see it is just fuelled by vulgar human instincts propelled forward by the Hollywood movie industry. They want us to think that this personal tragedy is a universal tragedy. I disagree on this, I feel sorry for him but his legacy is negative: drugs, alcohol, so much talent wasted.

Great actors who, like him, are so capable to slip into different characters seem to have a pathological streak that made their life – no matter which their achievements can be – miserable and prone to depression. They do not possess their own personality thus they can be anybody and anything. In Italy we had a very famous actor and imitator – who look like very much Williams, also in his facial traits – called Alighiero Noschese. He was wildly popular in Italy when I was a teen and he ended up like Williams, shooting himself.

Today I want to remember a great man, who also died on the 11 of August 2014. Simon Leys, who had dyed in Australia on the 11 of August. I consider him one of the greatest intellectual, translator, sinologist, poet of our times. But the news of his passing went unnoticed by the CNN and the BBC.

Luigi Bolla was born in Càrcare, Savona, in 1910. He received a degree in Law in 1932 and Political Sciences in 1934.

He then volunteer for the war in Ethiopia, as an officer he remained from 1935 to 1936 coming back with a decoration. He then began his diplomatic career in 1937, and was sent to Alexandria of Egypt in 1938 as Consul; Biserta in 1939 and then third secretary at the Italian Embassy in Berlin in 1940.

During the RSI (Social Republic of Italy set up by Mussolini) he was Secretary of Serafino Mazzolini, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. At the end of WWII he was arrested and tried and freed because he had not committed any crime but, on the contrary, he had saved many lives.

Although he had been “purged”, he was soon after able to start again his diplomatic career in 1949 joining the Commission for the Marshall Plan where he remained until 1951. He was then sent to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1951. Then to Rio de Janeiro, as Consul. To Cairo in Egypt as Counsellor at the Embassy in 1956. Consul at Damascus, Syria in 1958. 1960 until 1963 he was back at the Ministry. Then Consul General in Hong Kong from 1963 until 1969. Then Ambassador in Mexico in 1969. Back to Rome as inspector of the Ministry in 1972.

His diary published in book form: Perché a Salò, diario della Repubblica Sociale Italiana, – which can be translated as ‘Why I joined Mussolini’s Social Republic, a diary’ –  edited by the famous historian Giordano Bruno Guerri was published by Bompiani in 1982.

It is a book of considerable historical value, for it can be useful to explains how an anti-fascist – as he indeed he had always been – could accept to collaborate with Mussolini’s regime to the very end, out of his sense of duty.

Guido Relli has been Consul General of Italy in Hong Kong and Macau from 1954 until 1956. He was born in Trieste as Guido Kreglich. At the outbreak of the First World War, aged 17, by pure chance was in Russia as a sailor on a ship. Because he was an Austro-Hungarian citizen, he was interned in Siberia until the end of the conflict. There he learned to speak fluent Russian, German, English and French. This was the beginning of his relationship with Russia, which lasted throughout his life. Relli spent many years at the Embassy of Italy in Moscow as an interpreter, and personally witnessed numerous dramatic events, including Stalin’s purges and the Axis Powers’ attack against the Soviet Union.

Relli had been a well known and influential figure at the Italian Embassy in Moscow before WWII. Here is what Bernd Wegner has to say in his book From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939-1941 Oxford, 1997.

Guido Relli, an Italian diplomat, recounted his memories to Ferdinando Mezzetti in a book published by Greco e Greco (Fascio e Martello, 1997). He reported that Tukhachevsky visited the Italian Embassy in Moscow  in 1936 to attend the projection of a movie on the military operations against the Negus’s army in Ethiopia. He watched with extreme interest and congratulated the Ambassador and the Military Attaché. The relations cooled down, understandably, during the years of the Spanish civil war. In the summer of 1940, however, the Foreign Minister Molotov proposed to Italy a treaty in which the Black Sea would be divided between Italy and the Soviet Union, much like the treaty signed between the Soviet Union and Germany in August 1939 for Poland and the Baltic Sea. Such meetings and agreements were based on the assumption that Italy and the Soviet Union had valid economic and political reasons to become partners. Although it might seem a paradox, it can perhaps be said that the two countries shared a mutual attraction. Left-wing Fascism expressed some sympathy for the USSR, while Moscow showed a certain curiosity for Mussolini’s regime. 

Relli’s book, to which Romano refers Fascio e Martello: Quando Stalin voleva allearsi con il Duce. Guido Relli, memorie d’un diplomatico: dalla Russia zarista allo sfacelo europeo, Greco &Greco, 1997 and was written with journalist Fernando Mazzetti, reads like a novel because Relli led a peculiar and adventurous life.

In 1946, Relli did not miss his chance to protest with American Secretary of State, James Byrnes, for the treatment reserved to his native city, Trieste. Byrnes answered: “My dear young man – Relli was 50 at that time – what you say is true, but you forget one thing. Our boys must absolutely come home after such a horrible war. All our decisions stem from this fact.”