Bruno Vespa
Nel Segno del Cavaliere

Already in my debut essay on this site, written now a year ago, I dealt with the figure of the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, reviewing, for the use of the readers, a collection of political speeches in which the Leader of the Italian moderate front and the People of Freedom had outlined, back in 2001, his political message and his Government program.

The essay, welcomed with lively criticism from the site's users, probably had the limitation - which intellectual honesty compels me to recognize today - of indulging in the description of Silvio Berlusconi from an "internal" point of view, that is, in light of the speeches and writings that the same Political Leader had elaborated to justify his intentions, and to persuade the electorate of the greater effectiveness of his political action compared to that of the left-wing opposition.

Reflecting on the users' observations, it is not surprising that many of them evaluated both the work and the essay presenting it on Debaser in a critical way, considering that it was not a historical work, but, as rightly noted at the time by the courteous Swiss user Kosmogabri, a work which the same reviewer had not casually classified - if one has the patience and care to read what I write and as I expressly state - as a "propaganda" work.

A year after those pages, I therefore retrace my steps, reflecting once again on the figure of Silvio Berlusconi in light of the recent work of Bruno Vespa, a leading journalist of Italian Radiotelevision and, for some years now, a punctual historian who, following the example of classical authors like Tacitus or Livy tries, if I may, to narrate in real-time the most important events of contemporary times.

This, both for the use of his present readers and, as I imagine, for the use of future generations who, in the decades to come, will have the intellectual curiosity to understand, with hindsight and after Hegel's Owl of Minerva will have risen over the wide skies of Italy, the reasons for the entrepreneurial and political success of a Person who - unique in the world - has managed to weave with the electorate a relationship based on trust, shared feelings, and iteration of desires and ambitions, such as to make him one of the most long-lived Leaders of the democratic era.

Vespa the historian's style is incisive and sharp like Vespa the journalist's, based on a faithful and objective reading of the fact, on its reconstruction also in light of backstage information included in his frequentation of the Roman world, and on an equanimous evaluation of the individual events that involved Silvio Berlusconi and, within it, Italy itself.

The plot is tight, logical in its intensity, fascinating in its evolution, especially for those who have witnessed certain events directly and see them returned by the Author in the immutable plasticity of the Historical Event, now sculpted in stone like the military campaigns depicted on Trajan's Column or the Arch of Constantine.

The Author effectively dwells on the entrepreneurial and political biography of Berlusconi, retracing his deeds, vision, mistakes, and setbacks, in a chain of events that are known to many, and that many will learn by reading the book.

The aspect on which to focus, beyond the evaluations that can be given of the Prime Minister as a political subject, is the undeniable charge of vitality, tenacity, moral strength of the Man Berlusconi - and perhaps of the Berlusconian Man, the eternal faber fortunae suae - which, in certain traits, echoes the Prince foreseen by Machiavelli and emerged from the Italy of the economic boom, the risk of enterprise, the courage to bet on individual activity, and the capacity to dream that only a Kennedy or a Luther King, throughout the '900s, have demonstrated to the masses.

From Vespa's pages, it emerges how Berlusconi, like any other individual, can make mistakes, but, unlike many, he has learned from his mistakes to transform himself from the mere successful real estate entrepreneur of the '70s to the tycoon of information and entertainment of the '80s, and, further, to the brilliant President of a football team like Milan, which, more than any other in history, has imposed a lifestyle model where the game was created by pressing Life and Spaces before the opponent pressed and cornered even the most talented player.

These are events which have paved the way for the brilliant intuition of building, on the ashes of the Christian Democracy and the Socialist Party, in that year 1993 that later proved crucial for Italy's recent history, that mass liberal party which captured the Zeitgeist of the times, showing the electorate the way to assert themselves as individuals, after the end of the misleading ideologies of the '900s and the collectivism that they had inspired in the people.

Therefore, from the same pages, a Berlusconi emerges who knows how to react first to the economic crisis of his companies in the early '90s, later to the cancer that struck him when even political success seemed to have turned its back on him, who knows how to boldly reaffirm his innocence concerning the various indictments suffered over the years, who - uniquely in the recent history of our country and democratic systems - knows how to forge an entire historical era in his own image and likeness.

This is a Subject capable of transforming the lives of those who see themselves reflected in him, or see him as a model to imitate or a Demiurge able to fulfill the dreams of the majority of people, but also and especially of his own adversaries, in the name of the logic simul stabunt, simul cadent, for they exist only because they have Berlusconi as the enemy against whom to exercise their polemological art, well knowing that without Him their own political proposal would be deprived of an indispensable prerequisite, a common premise of an electorate that cements itself on being "against" Berlusconism, rather than "in favor" of something real and concrete, be it an Idea or an economic program, rather than a development proposal.

Here, then, is that the greatest merit of Vespa's book is to depict Silvio Berlusconi as - and forgive the play on words - a reactive subject rather than a reactionary one.

The difference compared to past leaders and some contemporary leaders is, indeed, in the same attitude of the Man to realize the dream of an Icarus without Hubris, that is, the ability to use his talents, his techniques, his resources for achieving a goal, for the realization of a renaissance project, regardless of the judgment that can be given of such a project, beyond compromises and beyond the conditioning of the past, of experience.

And it is ironic, paradoxical, certainly symbolic, that Berlusconi himself, in Vespa, becomes a historical character, being a Man who, almost by definition, lives "beyond" his own story, beyond the temporal continuum that leads from the past to the present and then to the future, to live, rather, in the aoristic dimension of entrance actuality, where everything seems possible and within reach, achievable, reachable.

By exemplifying for the users who do not know the aorist - the mode of classical Greek that describes an action free from horizons and temporal limits - I point out how it exemplifies the moment when everything gains momentum, like, in a plane journey, the moment when the aircraft, engines revved up, gains speed on the runway. Or the moment when the lips of one's beloved part for the first kiss and our Existence approaches a limitless Being.

Only by reasoning in these terms, and overcoming the fences of ancient coinage, is it then possible to understand not only the Man Berlusconi and his Message but also Berlusconism as a moral and Spirit category.

Let me conclude with a brief autobiographical note: while walking through Sesto San Giovanni, on a pleasant late spring evening when breezes of warm wind arrived from the Brianza plains, and observing the sharp lines of the surrounding buildings, the orthogonals of the streets, the glimmers of the flickering traffic lights, the constructions sites and roundabouts, the green trams, the multiplex cinemas, and the shopping centers, I reflected on how these areas might have been in the past before Man dominated the land, built, created, transformed: in a word, acted.

I imagined a young Berlusconi dealing with an Urban Development Project, and with a Dream.

Suddenly, I understood the titanic effort and commitment needed to transform the Project into Reality, the Program into Act, and I stopped in a silence filled not so much with admiration, but with respect: respect for a Man who acted while, in the same places, of the Ideals of the left remain only the street names.