Giovanni Testori and Maurizio Fragiacomo met by chance on September 16, 1972, on the doorstep of the Bagutta restaurant in Milan, and for the writer, it was love at first sight. From that moment on, Testori began writing daily “diary-letters” to the young Maurizio, which he would hand over to him at each new meeting in his studio on Via Brera, without ever receiving a written reply. Soon, the words written in blue ink were joined by words written in blood, alongside flowers drawn in the same manner.
Testori, aware of his soliloquy, observed: “In fact, if one day you wanted to re-read all the pages I have sent you over these four and a half months, you would realize that it is a single, long letter; a single, long conversation: a letter and a conversation that never wanted to be interrupted, and that nothing and no one will ever succeed in interrupting.”
Two important archival discoveries are the subject of a meeting and an exhibition that opened at Casa Testori on Monday, June 22. The findings concern an overwhelming, one-sided love correspondence addressed to a young man from the Milanese upper bourgeoisie, Maurizio Fragiacomo. That experience, which unfolded between 1972 and 1974, later became the thematic core of a novel, La Cattedrale (The Cathedral), published at the end of that relationship. Coinciding with this discovery, the Foundation to which Maurizio Fragiacomo entrusted the management of his estate decided to donate the novel’s manuscript (three notebooks enriched with many of the writer’s drawings) and the books with Testori’s dedications to the young man to the Testori Association. A number of Testori’s drawings, still owned by the Foundation, will also be on display in the exhibition.
