I have been wondering whether I have ever known anyone so difficult to describe as Luciano Foà. After much thought I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no one who quite matches him. Though impeccably amiable, Foà was intensely saturnine in the way he related to others as well as in his own way of presenting himself. Also physically, he resembled an Egyptian scribe, crouched with his tablet between his legs, gazing fixedly in front of him. Like the scribe, he knew his task was to transmit with maximum precision something memorable, whether a list of provisions or a ritual text. No more, no less. He was interested only in getting to the bottom, touching the bedrock (if there was one) of people and things, getting there by probing slowly, cautiously, persistently. And he revealed himself in the same way, gradually and layer by layer. It took some time for me, who knew him when I was twenty-one and at the height of my youthful insolence, to recognize this last peculiarity. But its discovery, once it had dawned on me, gave me an enormous sense of relief and peace of mind.
In more than forty years, I never heard Foà resort to bombast or strong language. Whatever was going on outside the door of the room where we were talking—and I reckon, over the years, we must have spent thousands of hours in this way—I knew with complete certainty that Foà would never be caught up in it. And there were plenty of opportunities—political, literary, religious, editorial, psychological—almost every day during certain times and especially, I would say, in the 1960s and ’70s, which were the most risky and also the most exciting years for us. His decade spent with Einaudi had been of fundamental importance for Luciano and I think he got the best from that place that it could give. But this period of his life also enabled him to determine once and for all what he didn’t want and didn’t like. Adelphi, from the very beginning, had to be something radically different. Between us we never felt the need to talk about a “project,” “institutions,” “programs,” or “guidelines”—nor even “editorial policy.” Our agreement was based on a tacit understanding, a kind of subterranean lake that fed our thinking and choices. We spoke, though never at length, about the way the wind was then blowing, before returning to what most interested us both: sorting out some detail about a book to be published. The golden rule that Foà always applied was that in a publishing house, as in a book, nothing is irrelevant, nothing is unworthy of full consideration. If many readers have found in Adelphi books a surplus of something that elsewhere can be entirely lacking, I think it is primarily this, which can be linked to Simone Weil’s definition of culture: “Education of attention.” I don’t know of any definition of this word that is so short and so convincing.
The clearest memory I have of Foà in Adelphi’s first office, in Via Morigi in Milan, is of a spacious, quiet room where he was sitting at a table—someone happy to be doing what he was doing. At that time Luciano was rereading and editing the already excellent translation of Georg Büchner’s plays that Giorgio Dolfini had prepared for Adelphi. I remember that we discussed at length a point in Leonce and Lena about kisses that “phantasieren” on the lips of a young girl. These were the very early days of Adelphi and I was raring to get a number of things going. But that day I was also taught to understand the vital importance of that invisible scrutiny given to every word of a book that would soon be published.
Luciano did not have that omnivorous curiosity that may seem essential in the publishing world. He admired few writers and knew it would be very difficult to add, over the years, any others that were as close to his heart. In his view, and for his taste, there was only one constellation, whose stars were Stendhal, Kafka, Goethe, Joseph Roth, and Robert Walser. He also obviously admired many other authors. But among these writers, and a few others in his secret constellation, there was for him something akin to the difference he felt between Roberto Bazlen’s approach to life and that of many other figures of varied importance and interest that he had met. His clear choice was in favor of Bazlen, Roth, Walser.
Foà was always prepared to understand and to look for common ground in everyday life. He was just as affectionate toward a wide variety of people, whom he greatly admired, such as Giorgio Colli or Sergio Solmi or Mazzino Montinari. And a solid friendship bound him to such disparate people as Erich Linder or Silvio Leonardi or Alberto Zevi, who would remain closely associated with Adelphi and with Luciano himself until the end.
Foà’s greatness was apparent above all at that most difficult moment of decision-making. He could be mistrustful or even impatient in his approach to certain remarkable books and people, but never once in over forty years did I witness him being won over by anything or anyone insubstantial. He had an outstanding ability to notice the false notes of people and things—those notes that we so often encounter. We owe an immense debt of gratitude to him for having exercised this mastery. If I ask what gave him that unflinching farsightedness of judgment—and here I mean above all in his negative judgment, since before arriving at a positive conclusion Foà always left his options open and played for time—and if I ask what aspect of his highly delicate personal equilibrium it related to, I think I couldn’t but refer to what was perhaps Foà’s secret and almost obsessive concern: grace, in the theological sense of the word, which then incorporates every other meaning. When we went out or met in the evening—often with his much loved and generous wife, Mimmina, who cheered his life, and sometimes with a few friends, who tended always to be the same—on countless occasions I saw the moment arrive when Luciano, irrespective of the matters we might have been discussing that evening, would focus attention on that word grace, unusual in any conversation. It was more important to him than any other word—more than ideas, more than talent or even genius. The true, decisive, and infinitely obscure distinguishing factor lay in being, or not being, touched by grace. This was the only fragment from any theology that struck him deeply. This way of thinking, in its impenetrable singularity, should be enough to understand how Foà stood out, alone, in the world in which he had grown up and in which he took part with every fiber. This ought to be enough to let us understand what a rare and enlightened being has died with him. May his memory remain and transmit to us something of that wise passion that Foà devoted to Adelphi.