Giorgio Bassani
Dietro la porta

Dear Thomas Von Trippen,

It might be with a slight anticipation that I write you these lines, but we know that time flies and your next three years are just around the corner. High school will arrive, new friendships, new subjects, and perhaps new readings.

"Dietro la porta" by Giorgio Bassani could be suitable for you. It is a "school" story, of male friendship in the 1930s, in the beautiful Ferrara (do you remember that city with the great castle in the center and built low with bricks? Perhaps you more easily remember the cappellacci topped with a mountain of ragù!). It narrates a year of lessons at the city’s Classical Lyceum; in the first person, the author shares his emotions with us, from his limited bourgeois world where the scent of being Jewish begins to be felt (we are not yet at the Racial Laws, but the atmosphere is already becoming heavy). Giorgio Bassani, with his elaborate style and finely crafted prose, takes us back to the school benches in pursuit of the seat closest to the teacher’s desk, the golden report card, the choice of the best companions. Aim for Cattolica, the best in the class, and join his group as a follower or ally with Pulga, inferior to him in every way? Strive for excellence in physics and mathematics or get dragged into the superficial sexuality of minors? Dear Thomas, these are choices that you will sooner or later encounter: which companies to choose, what goals to set, what willpower to oppose to desires and pleasures…

"Dietro la porta" is a classic coming-of-age novel, the adult analysis of a teenage microcosm, a long story of 100 pages written in 1964 and included in the cycle of Ferrara novels. It is a story of transition from the intangible lightness of youth to the seriousness of adult maturity. You will find yourself with the protagonist behind the door eavesdropping on the harsh truth and enduring the meanness of companions. Better to suffer in silence the masked malice or to face reality head-on? Better to delete a friend from the phonebook or pretend nothing happened? Better to let time erase the endured disgrace or better to take life by the scruff and shake it properly? These too are choices, perhaps it won't be a matter of pure will but of temperament and character…

"Dietro la porta" can aid your development, allowing you to better decipher emotions, passions, pains, and the constant discoveries that will evolve your little boy into the man you will become. In a world where youth seems to have become an obligation to be maintained perpetually, the maturity of adulthood should be a goal to reach even with a thousand obstacles to overcome.

The door, sooner or later, you will have to open it and what awaits you beyond, you can never foresee. But you will have to face it, often alone or, better, with yourself by your side.

Choose the best "yourself" possible. A kiss, your dad.