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writers and poets and who opened up new horizons to me on the knowledge of Italian literature.

Now it was my turn. Alone. It did not even cross my mind, he would never have lent himself to do it, to ask him for a recommendation for a publisher. I only recommended going to Alberto Mondadori: if I managed to get into the Lo Specchio collection, I was fine. In fact, the collection housed names already known all over the world, Saba, Quasimodo, Montale.

I found it natural to immediately aim for the maximum: if it went well, good; one could not always hope to fall back on a lower step; but settling immediately for less I would have been left with the doubt that I could have done better.

And so I left for Milan, select poems under my arm, and took possession of a small apartment that a friend of mine had kindly given me in his absence. I immediately phoned Mondadori but Dr. Alberto Mondadori was in a meeting at that moment.

I had unpacked and telephoned again: he was still in a meeting and he was in a meeting even after I had taken a bath and so I decided to call Toto instead who I knew would not be in a meeting and later we went to eat a pizza together and I almost came back immediately home because I wanted to go to bed early to be up early in the morning.

But when I called in the morning Alberto Mondadori was already in a meeting, later he had gone out for a moment, no I couldn't leave a message, said the secretary because as soon as he came back he had to go to a meeting. So I telephoned Barnabo Visconti and went to breakfast in the building in via Cerva which fortunately was close to where I lived, via Visconti di Modrone; luckily because I was in a hurry to go back to my accommodation to call, get the poems and go to Mondadori.

For days and days I had gone to breakfast in via Cerva...