by Roberto Dulio
Ti racconto la mia storia. Dialogo tra nonna e nipote sull’ebraismo, Tullia Zevi (con Nathania Zevi), Rizzoli, Milano 2007 (pp. 148, € 16,50)
Zevi su Zevi. Architettura come profezia, Bruno Zevi, Editrice Magma, Milano 1977; Marsilio, Venezia 1993 (pp. 246)
“I liked him as soon as I set
eyes on him. I was struck by his
intelligent eyes and the sound of
his voice. The engagement lasted
six months but the incantation
less – he was a difficult, explosive
and highly-strung man, the only
male son of a traditional family
and totally spoilt. I was plagued
with doubt. He talked so much
and I remember going for long
walks, from which I would return
completely dazed. He could hold
long soliloquies lasting up to eight
hours without interruption that left
me fascinated but exhausted. As
soon as I opened the front door he
would explode, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t
stand it any more’… The first time I
tried to break it off was because he seemed such a hard man
to live with and I was afraid I couldn’t do it for a whole lifetime.
But I was drawn to him and fascinated by his intelligence, his
civil passion. One fine day, my father saw me crying and was
overcome by a sudden fit of paternal love, saying to me, ‘I tell
you he is mad and madmen frighten me’… This continued for
a while; I would break off the engagement and then go back;
I married him in the end.” (p. 42-43)
“Two days after arriving in New York, I went to a night
meeting in Franco and Serena Modigliani’s home with a dozen
or so young people who had been in America just a few
months. I spoke about the situation in Italy and described the
‘new anti-Fascism’. There was a girl there. I didn’t know her
name and we didn’t exchange a single word; we may not have
even shaken hands. In short, I ‘knew’ she would
be my wife. No overriding passion, no irrational
actions or overflowing emotion – something for
which I was subsequently often reproached. I felt
a more noble and solemn sentiment than attraction:
that of a common destiny. The next day I
asked Cagli to read the tarot cards. I chose a
card, a symbol, for her and one for me. Sitting
pensively on the fl oor, Corrado lay the fi gures
down at slow intervals. After completing the
operation, he remarked with wonder that the
second card had not appeared: ‘It seems strange
but you will never meet her again, whoever she
is.’ I left for Cuba to obtain a residence visa; in
the meantime I had learned that she was Tullia
Calabi, Jewish and from Milan. I wrote her a long
letter in the La Habana hotel… We met up again
in Central Park, I gave her the letter, or rather I
read it to her, and we decided to get engaged.
I felt as if I was reciting a stranger’s part, with
a foregone conclusion. I wanted to involve her
not in a love affair but in the things that come
after years of marriage: studies, work, the torment
of empathy, the outbursts and the depression,
self destructiveness and the desire to be
true rather than happy. Our engagement was
abruptly interrupted twice, which hurt us both.
Tullia was adamant and sought with all her might
to avoid a destiny that, as she saw it, was not
the product of love… We arranged to get married
in the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue on
December 26, 1940. The evening before the wedding,
I told Cagli that something had gone wrong
with the tarot cards and he said: ‘Let’s check.’
Once again, the two symbols did not come out
together. ‘You will be husband and wife but you
will never meet. Good luck!’… It is hard to gauge
how much truth lay in that prophesy. It clearly
referred to the overall journey not the everyday
chronicle of events. Neither of us wants to say:
Corrado was wrong.” (p. 42-43)
An encounter in the setting of Fascism, racial
laws, exile and war. The civil and cultural undertakings
that served as the backdrop to this
story were a constant presence in the
biographies of the two central characters:
Tullia and Bruno Zevi. She is a journalist and
was the first female president of a country’s
Jewish community (in this case the Italian one).
He was one of Italy’s most renowned architectural
historians, also famous abroad. Tullia’s
biography is recent, Bruno’s is older, but both
express a profound ethic. Both are well written,
with irony and feeling, as shown by the
intimate personal memories of the two subjects
– which by a surprising coincidence are
to be found on the same pages of the books.
A read that comes close to the canons of the
discipline and thus strongly recommended.
Roberto Dulio Professor of History of Architecture at Milan
Polytechnic
Zevi and Zevi
Ti racconto la mia storia. Dialogo tra nonna e nipote sull’ebraismo, Tullia Zevi (con Nathania Zevi), Rizzoli, Milano 2007 (pp. 148, € 16,50)Zevi su Zevi. Architettura come profezia, Bruno Zevi, Editrice Magma, Milano 1977; Marsilio, Venezia 1993 (pp. 246) An encounter in the setting of Fascism, racial laws, exile and war. The civil and cultural undertakings that served as the backdrop to this story were a constant presence in the biographies of the two central characters: Tullia and Bruno Zevi.

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- 28 May 2008