I think it only right to tell you how the idea came about for this month’s “Almanac”. Through the mail, I received the catalogue of an antique book dealer in Turin called “Little Nemo”. The shop specialises in outstanding illustrated and rare children’s books. The attractive coloured cover page showed a young Sergio Tofano, behind whom stood the character of Mr. Bonaventura, waving a white sheet on which was written “one million”. My imagination immediately set to work. Today, Bonaventura could no longer repeat the amusing sketches of the past. The expression “one million”, meaning one million lire, has disappeared from our language. We now think in Euro and consequently the amount corresponding to one million lire is 516.46 euro. A million euro is unthinkable because the sum would be so enormous.
But equally unthinkable would be for the sheet held by Bonaventura to show a figure like 516.46. At this point, the readers of “Almanac” have every right to know more about Sergio Tofano, about how Bonaventura saw the light and why this character has become virtually eternal. Sergio Tofano (Rome 1886 – 1973), a degree in letters to please his magistrate father, but soon to become a theatre and film actor, director, illustrator, writer of fairy stories, who shortened his name to “Sto”, published the first story of Bonaventura in the “Corriere dei Piccoli” on 28 October 1917: “Qui comincia la sventura / del signor Bonaventura / che cogliendo un gelsomino / dalla loggia del vicino…”(Here starts the misadventure/of Mr Bonaventura /who picked a jasmine / from the neighbour’s porch..). It was the troubled time of the retreat from Caporetto. At the time, no one realised that another mask was born and, as is the case with all masks, it was all set to go beyond its destiny. Bonaventura had only to demonstrate what is at the same time the most simple and absurd of theorems: that from outright poverty one can go to equally outright wealth. The “million” as large as a white pillow, like a huge envelope posted by who knows what benign fate, triggers a liberating and inevitable smile. The great Gianni Rodari (1920-1980), the writer of children’s books known as “the Italian Andersen”, wrote: “For half a century, Bonaventura has continued to teach us that there is always a way out, that Barbariccia is a paper tiger; that catastrophes, fires, fierce animals that have escaped from the zoo, brigands, car accidents, restive horses that are out of control are never definitive occurrences. A little bit further on is the million, just like on a rainy day, the sun continues to shine above the clouds”.
It is therefore only reasonable to think, considering that around Bonaventura (as our “Almanac” itself goes to show) reflections and discussions continue, that the secret of this character is in fact tied to his optimism and to the optimism his stories create. In the world in which we find ourselves, optimism is not at home, and its obstinate absence makes it mysterious like the light from some other galaxy. Only in dreams, or in some films, do millions rain down from the sky like swinging leaves; everything else is the greyness, toil and monotony we know.
Consequently if Bonaventura, now he is in the memory of numerous generations, has become the real master of the “happy ending”, we should all demand his return. Unfortunately, the fact of entrusting such widespread magic to a character appears to be an operation devoid of all hope. By insisting on Bonaventura, we risk forgetting that the genius of Sergio Tofano was also revealed in other fields. He also played characters similar to human relics like the unforgettable servant, Firs, in Chekov’s “Cherry Garden”, and did it magnificently. In 1923 he married Rosetta Cavallari who, at his side, was a lively actress, stage and costume-designer. Listing all Tofano’s activities would take too long. But we must not forget that, with the same signature, “Sto” used for Bonaventura, Tofano was the author and illustrator of a book of stories entitled “I cavoli a merenda”, one of the most charming children’s works of the entire 20th century.
These ten stories were published for the first time in 1920 and were reprinted in 1990 by Adelphi. The characters live in an indefinable period which alternates echoes of the Middle-Ages with suggestions of the middle-class age, and in an equally indefinable geographic locality. These kingdoms, these towns, these villages could even fly through the sky like errant clouds. The absurd and the surrealistic are the oxygen of these stories. The higher their rate of presence, the more the cheerful microcosm of Tofano/Sto casts a spell. It becomes almost natural for a king to demand the invention of a cherry without a stone.
Or that the state executioner send a kilo of used soap as a wedding present to grease the rope of the gallows. Tofano thought of childhood as the age when the human pleasure of laughing first appears, the age of the embryonal intuition of the comic.
And right from the very first edition (we repeat, it was 1920), his stories contrasted the 19th-cent. legacy of a tear-filled universe, dominated by the Muse of sadness, inhabited by badly-treated orphans and derelict chimney-sweeps. In the last years of his life, Sergio Tofano used to like spending the summer in a small apartment in Milan.
He liked the city and the heat did not bother him. In the unusual silence of the evenings, with only the sound of the odd tram passing and very little traffic at the traffic lights, Tofano had the impression that the city favoured the tender charm of memories. In 1960, his wife Rosetta died at the age of 58, while he, gloomy but always very lucid, was approaching eighty.
Of those summers, sad evidence remains. The lonely Tofano sent to his friends a portrait of Rosetta, on the back of which a phrase was written taken from Chekov’s “Uncle Vanja”: “Up there we’ll say we suffered, that we cried and that life was bitter. God will take pity on us and finally we’ll rest in peace”. Every time this phrase comes back to mind, I always feel a shiver of deep emotion.
(translated by interpres sas)