Antonio Parretta for PC

I was born in a country house in Ponte di Brenta, a suburb of the municipality of Padua, at noon, while the village bells were ringing and it was snowing. At the age of three months my parents moved to Rome, but my heart always remained directed to the Veneto countryside, where I returned every year with my mother and sister for the summer holidays. I lived my adolescence in a suburb of Rome, so loved and described by Pier Paolo Pasolini, where I spent the happiest time of my life, carried away by my passion for outdoor games, in the courtyards of houses , or in the shadow of the Roman aqueduct. At school I always did very well in scientific subjects, and this inevitably influenced my future life choices. My few poems were thus written in my early youth, influenced first by readings of Leopardi, and then by those of the Hermetic poets and existentialist philosophers. After the wonderful season of '68, and the death of dreams for a different society, my life has been devoted entirely to science. That distant poetic journey has remained suspended, but every now and then I give a drink to that seedling that has decided not to die and to continue bearing fruit.