“After high school [and after the Brazilian experience, at Carrefour] I moved to Paris where, after a year at Sciences Po [Political Science], I enrolled at the Sorbonne. I graduated in history in June 1986.
For my thesis, I conduct research on the South Tyrolean question after the Second World War, working on material held in the archives of the French government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The effort I made allowed me to obtain the dignity of publication. The ministry reported the thesis to the Italian government and the work was published by Franco Angeli Editore, with three reprints. A small success. My studies fascinated me and I was tempted to continue with university. (…) At that time, however, I did not feel a real vocation for teaching and I was uncertain. For me, dedicating myself to historical research would mean doing something purely theoretical. The doubt comes to me: do I want to stay among books and archive documents, alone, without seeing anyone or almost anyone, for long days? Or do I want to work confronting the real world every day?” (p. 129).
These were the doubts of Franz, the university professor in M. Kundera’s novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, published just then (1982):
“In hindsight I will realise that I should have put up more resistance in the face of our father’s insistence, which I did not do. I regretted it. I realised too late, when I had already been with the company for some time, that I would actually have liked teaching. So I gave in and went to work at Esselunga (…). All in all, though, taking stock ex post, despite the negative things that have happened to me since 2004, I am glad I chose the world of work and supermarkets. Esselunga has been a great passion for me” (p. 132).
On the cover: in Paris with Patrick Charignon and Nadege de Peganov. Below: Patrick and Alexis Nabokov, Soraya Ferchichi and Clémence de Béville who are still part of my life since they entered it in the 1980s.
In Paris, I also met another friend whom I remember with great pleasure : Marco Della Seta
