The funeral of the journalist Enzo Biagi [9.8.20 - 6.11.07] took place in his home village today. A WW2 Resistance hero who later became a TV anchorman and columnist for Corriere della Sera, Biagi so infuriated Berlusconi during the 2001 election campaign that the latter issued what became known as the editto bulgaro [Bulgarian edict] during a press conference in Sofia: Berlusconi accused Biagi and two other journalists of making "criminal use of public service TV" and of course Rai caved in and dismissed all three. Biagi was reinstated under the Prodi government and continued writing his Corriere column until the onset of his last illness.
A brave, kind and tolerant man who was also a tireless unveiler of hypocrisy, Biagi combined all those qualities which are best in Italians. This Italophile, like so many of his countrymen, will miss him.
Here are some of my favourite Biagi quotes:
On fur-trade protesters [and I am one, by the way, but I take his point here]:
"No one that I know goes without [leather] shoes."
On God:
"The best description of Our Lord that I have ever heard came from a child. 'God', he said, 'arrives with the wind.' "
On hell:
Biagi liked this from the theologian Urs von Balthasar:
"Hell exists but it could be empty."
On Sicily:
"Sicily is an island bathed by the sea and by tears."
On old age:
"I have become old without noticing it and without any difficulty... I've underlined this sentence from Guy de Rothschild's Memoirs: 'Old age is a defeat . We must not allow ourselves to get old.' I'm trying."
- All from 'I' Come Italiani, 1993.
