Everyday Stories #12
Fragile friends
Tribute to Fabrizio De Andrè
Fabrizio De Andrè
18 February 1940, 11 January 1999
This is just a tribute
to a songwriter
that has accompanied me since I was a child
on anniversary of his death.
I will not tell his life,
elsewhere
there are already more or less wonderful articles.
Please note, quotes of De Andrè are enclosed in quotes.
You will forgive me the improvised translations.
Just a personal anecdote.
After a two hour concert,
I got in line for the autograph.
When we met,
I asked him what he thought of mystical anarchy.
I was sixteen,
I lived in an orderly way,
I read and thought in a disordered way.
Maybe even now, yes.
And despite my age and nescience,
the late hour,
the security staff who invited me to leave my seat,
with verbal language and not,
Fabrizio took the question seriously.
And as long as it was possible,
in that limited spacetime,
we conversed.
I therefore understood
that his attention to the other
was not only in his songs.
His hometown, Genoa, is a seaside city.
From the port,
along the caruggi,
the narrow wet salty alleys
where the sun barely reaches,
Fabrizio had the opportunity to meet humanity
in its shades
of color, ethics, misfortunes, love.
Fragile friends.
They will be the characters of his songs.
Imperfect, often victims,
yet sometimes poetic witnesses to the fact that
“dai diamanti non nasce niente, dal letame nascono i fior”
nothing is born from diamonds, flowers are born from manure.
“Amico fragile”, fragile friend,
is a song by De Andrè,
perhaps the only one in which he talks about himself.
Sometimes we have fragile friends for a while, to take care of.
Sometimes we are fragile friends, we need attention and love.
I am a fragile friend of what I believe.
I am a fragile friend of myself.
I am a fragile friend of God.
The last lines of the last song of the last album…
“Smisurata preghiera”, Boundless prayer.
“Per chi viaggia in direzione ostinata e contraria
Col suo marchio speciale di speciale disperazione
E tra il vomito dei respinti muove gli ultimi passi
Per consegnare alla morte una goccia di splendore
Di umanità di verità”
For those journeying in stubborn and opposite directions
With its special mark of special despair
And among the vomit of the rejected takes the last steps
To deliver to death a drop of splendor
Of humanity of truth
