Lorenzo Tosa, 40 years old, is a journalist with a vast social audience. In I would like to ask you about that day (Rizzoli) reconstructs the day in which her father accompanied her to the nursery door and then killed himself. The violent and self-inflicted death deprived Lorenzo of all other memories relating to his father. They were silenced, removed, sweetened. Until the author felt the need to shed light on his father’s suicide and from there start to reconstruct his figure. Building a novel that is also denunciation of the stigma that still surrounds mental illness.
Where is he from I would like to ask you about that day?
«I started writing this book 2 years ago, but in reality its origin dates back to 38 years ago, to that day when my father took me by the hand and accompanied me to the kindergarten door and then disappeared forever. His became a sulphurous presence of which I never knew anything again. For the agreed omission of the family, out of modesty, shame, desire for protection. But also due to the responsibility of society which considers mental illness and suicide taboo topics. So that the stigma encrusts the lives of those who are affected by it” replies Lorenzo.
What story is this?
«When I became a father at 35, I felt this in turn responsibility, for my son, but also for me, to search for the complexity of the human being Bruno Tosa. Among other things, this is a story of fathers, in fact. The history of bond to be found between me and Papabruno, as I called him. The story of me and my son Ludovico, who asked me to give substance to those photographs of his grandfather that he saw everywhere around the house. In front of a photo of my father, who looked so much like him, one day he asked me to tell him who his grandfather was. I found it natural as a father to look for the elements to respond to him. But it is also the story of my grandfather Teresio and his son, who clashed harshly, in a season in which the political distance between two opposing worlds, and irreconcilable conceptions of life, was embodied in family conflict. A clash that marked every moment of their adult lives but did not prevent them from searching for each other and chasing each other every moment. All their lives they loved and hated each other with the same strength.”
Lorenzo Tosa author of I would like to ask you about that day (Rizzoli, 18 euros). Photo credits: Gianni Ansaldi
You are a journalist. Is this an investigation?
“Surely there is an investigation part, with the investigative tools of the trade I collected sources, addresses of those who had known my father during the years of political militancy in the far left movements, I acquired letters, diaries, analyzed pen drawings, furniture design tables – I went to meet the key people, Nina, Rebecca, Antonio, the other Bruno, his cousins, his companions Continuous Struggle, in the 60s and 70s, in Genoa…. The militancy and the specter of the Red Brigades all play a role they allowed me to get a more precise idea of Bruno’s knowledge and affections. But I would like to ask you about that day it is also a novel, the reconstruction of dialogues, of meetings that I could only imagine. Like that last day of my father which could only take shape in fiction. It is a non-fiction book that has its roots in fiction.”
False ideas about suicide
The book dedicates a lot of space to reconstructing the natural history of your father’s mental illness. A reconstruction that seems to be studded with instructions for use for anyone who finds themselves retracing the same route, or parts of that route like him and those who were close to him. Was this sowing of clues intended?
«No, I didn’t want to leave any instructions to anyone because I am a journalist. I leave it to others to support those living with mental illness, has suicidal urges, or lives next to a sick person. However, I wanted to reconstruct the collapse of my father’s ego made up of many stages. Today again we hear about suicide as a fact disconnected from the premises, like a sudden gesture. Bruno’s story shows that this is not the case. How that decision (and the dynamics of the gesture made by Bruno shows it, ed.) was the result of multiple complex factors. But this is certainly also the story of the birth and development of mental distress in an era in which this pathology was not considered carefully and was kept on the margins.”
Alongside Progetto Itaca
“Today one has the courage to talk about suicide on prime time TV, in top programs, I’m thinking of Fazio’s. Suicide is a phenomenon that also affects many young people, I think of those who cannot handle the pressure of having invented a non-existent university career and who collapse when faced with reality. But I’m happy if I was able to give a photograph of the fall of a human being in his fragility, to break this silence. This is why I wanted it in every one of my presentations in every city the volunteers of Ithaca projectwho have been dedicating themselves for many years to breaking down the stigma of mental illness and supporting people who are experiencing or have experienced mental suffering”.
Would Bruno have been saved today? At a certain point the question emerges in the book, after the many inactions that have left the river of disease swelling have been highlighted. There are doctors who did not understand the seriousness of mental distress, family members who did not know how to handle that illness, the very vision of treatment which considered drugs as a solution to be avoided…
«I deliberately left this question unanswered, in a book that is made up more of questions than answers. I withheld judgment to let the story speak for itself. It tells of a human being like many others and it makes sense if it leaves everyone to draw their own conclusions. In truth, I tried to get an answer from Antonio, my father’s psychiatrist friend. He explained to me how mental illness today is very controllable. And he contextualised the fact that, instead, the refusal to take but also prescribe drugs was part of a political stance against the medicalisation of “madness”. Even today, however, drugs can remove the risk of the suicidal impulse being realized, but they cannot completely exclude it.”
The duty to know
You underline in several passages of I would like to ask you about that day how you felt driven by a “duty to know”. And at the same time you talk about a “reassuring family silence” that has protected you for over thirty years. How do these two aspects coexist?
«In this book I let loose a torrent of thoughts, so that one might think that writing it was a liberation. I certainly perceived my right to tell this story, which is not only mine, only my father’s, but also my son’s. But I also felt it was a duty to reconstruct it, because I have always seen this omission which affected all of us as a form of complicity on my part. Of course, whoever told this story in a certain way (making the father a saint”, we read in the novel, ed.) did it to protect children, to put a wall against shame, out of modesty. But I accepted this version to protect myself. At a certain point, however, I strongly felt this call to tear down and pickaxe this version. Of course, even ignoring how to know is a form of salvation, but the salvation of those who know is definitive.”
What ties her to her father now?
«Today I can say that I am at peace, at peace with the history and figure of my father. As I write, I have arrived at this point, reconstructing the figure of Bruno beyond the lies, beyond “the holy card” also driven by pressing doubts. For example: was my birth a cause of my father’s mental breakdown? Was I not “enough” to stop his decision to commit suicide? Reconstructing the fabric of love given and received by my father, his contacts, the vastness of this network allowed me to meet not with a theory but with the complexity of the figure of a human being. It is probable that on the one hand my birth distanced Bruno from career ambitions, due to the concrete pressures that he exerted on his family life. Which took him away from writing his thesis, from becoming an architect, the great architect he felt he could become. But on the other hand I understood that I was wanted as a son and loved, as he wanted and shared all the choices he made in his life – politics, Nina, my mother, his children – even if then a superior force l ‘forced her to leave them.”
«He wasn’t a puppet»
«None of his friends and companions really understood Bruno Tosa’s suicide. Everyone blamed themselves for not understanding in time. But this attribution of collective blame ended up painting an image of my father as a puppet dominated by others.. Of Nina, of politics, of the defeat of politics. Instead, with I would like to ask you about that dayby restoring Bruno’s complexity, I believe that, without prejudice to the co-responsibility of others, I have also restored the intent personal of all his choices, Nina, my mother, the children. Not just the painful and definitive one. This is the chronicle of an unannounced death. In this sense also the photograph of an era, in which the defeat of politics led many around him to take refuge in other projects to go beyond politics. While my father never accepted this further, he was unsuitable for a new life and this was repeated to me by those who had fought with him.”
The presentations: Genoa, Milan…
The tour of presentations is starting. How did the meeting in Genoa go?
«I was quite intimidated, it was in the Hall of the Great Council, at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, the one where the presentations of the books by Alessandro Barbero and other bestsellers, so to speak, are held. But for mine I would like to ask you about that day it was full to the last place. Many people came, there was a powerful wave of love and sharing from those who lived this story with my father, and they witnessed his being in the front row in a season in which the struggles of men like my father have won many rights, which today perhaps are called into question. Here you are, I am proud to be the son of a man who is in the most painful season for Lotta Continuathe one where it was necessary to decide whether to continue the fight with the tools of politics or with those of terrorism, he did not accept the shortcut of armed struggle». After Genoa, the book will be presented on Wednesday 31 January at the Rizzoli Bookshop, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, at 6.30 pm and then around Italy.
Info: @lorenzotosa, @progettoitaca.
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