With "The agave garden " Salvatore Maria Fares go back to the novel. How would you define this new literary work of yours?
«It is a story that tells the feelings of the protagonists and not just the events that characterize the situations in which they find themselves. In much fiction, situations are told by the authors with the detachment of a reporter and the reader draws impressions on the basis of his own experience. In this novel the protagonists already offer their spiritual condition, therefore moral and not just sentimental. They are not yet in their thirties in the 1980s and 1990s, when young people in the previous decade had already gained independence and developed a certain protagonism to assert themselves. Women became freer, not only to show their bodies and dress freely, with the fashions in vogue. They have acquired a protagonism that no longer makes them, subjected to morality or the traditional conditioning of the past. Someone said that a woman is a fragile vessel from which to draw but not only to take. I would define my narrative as realistic but not as chauvinist as some might think."
Through three female portraits that form the heart of the story, she introduces a sort of autobiography. How did the idea for this book come about and how does it fit into your personal life journey?
«It is not strictly an autobiographical story, although many ideas are taken from real experiences. The three protagonists they are inspired by women I have met but the situations in which I tell them are fictional, therefore partly imaginative. Autobiographical are the feelings that I have felt in some of my stories, from jealousy to detachment and the inevitable selfishness that characterizes everyone and not just Jacopo Lanzer, the protagonist narrator. A psychologist friend of his adds what is missing to his story and can do so because he also knows the three girls who confided in him to better understand their partner and not because they were suffering something unfair. In fact, they are also the causes of the behavior of that man who has no desire towards them for possession or complacent appropriation of their dedication to him, which is often however also distracted. To some the novel appears a bit chauvinist but it really isn't. One of the most famous writers had read it in advance and wrote to me: “I have read your novel. With your words I chased the loves, the escapes, the betrayals, the spells of eros, the tiredness, the nostalgia, the return, the magic of memories. It is a novel that questions the mysteries of love, the secrets of the female heart, as you explicitly say during the story. As far as I'm concerned, I don't believe that women's hearts are different from men's, apart from history which has made what is in women's chests more defenseless and frightened and has made men's hearts more secure and possessive. These are not biological differences but historical ones. However, you are in good company because Freud also thought like you. However, it seems to me that the novel flows and reads well, it seems to me that it is communicative in the right sense."
The non-secondary protagonist of the novel is the city of Lugano. What relationships bind it to the city places that serve as the backdrop to the unfolding of the events narrated?
«Lugano is a very lovable city. I can remember the beginning of the novel, a tribute to our city: “My house on the hill overlooks the lake. In front it has a large stepped garden decorated with flower plants and splendid agaves. They are majestic but have thorns, and can only be looked at. From my balcony you can see the sails and motorboats passing by; they leave white streaks of foam. You could delude yourself into taking between your thumb and forefinger the airplanes that pass and land nearby, they seem so small and close to you. In front of my balcony the seasons change the scenarios with an intensity of colors that you can't find anywhere else. Lugano seen from above appears like a Mediterranean city. Only the mountains remind you that our seagulls are not those of the sea. You see them flying quickly from one boat to another, dodging the dives of predatory buzzards and approaching swans... Lugano is beautiful under the snow. Especially in the evening, with the gulf surrounded by lights, mostly golden, which slide from the white hills to reflect in the lake, forming a double crown of lanterns that shines almost uninterrupted... Under that whiteness rests an opulent, elegant city, and also innocent in its showiness. Bejeweled with banks and large trust institutions, it is crossed by silent traffic developed by industrious people who, thanks also to the countless capital brought by foreigners, have made it very attractive. Equally pleasant girls live there, daughters of the Mediterranean people who meet with those from the North."
You are an attentive observer of the cultural life of Lugano and Ticino. How have you seen the city and the canton change over time?
«Twenty years ago Lugano was of greater cultural interest to the European public, without major invasions however. The large exhibitions were especially attractive and I remember when the queues went all the way to Cassarate to go to Villa Thyssen. I also remember that at their home the Baroness, at the table with President Cossiga and Prince Romanov, said that in Lugano the ladies had never invited her to drink tea. She then preferred the Queen's weekly tea in Madrid and the collection left us. The great exhibitions of the City were very attractive and we had some memorable ones. The concerts are of high quality with prestigious orchestras and soloists, but we should not think that this must necessarily bring tourist flows. The city, which in my book is the agave garden, has changed a lot; construction has transformed it but not only in the suburbs, which in any case are in tune with the growing cities everywhere. The peripheral "containers" have changed but also the center, where some architectural jewels, even new ones, still stand out. The world changes, even here. The current population of Ticino was imaginable in the seventies with the strong flows from Italy which brought stable workforce but also quality in the next generation. In fact, many children of immigrants are today valuable professionals and also high-level politicians."
The need to write is a disease from which it is difficult to recover. Can you tell us what new projects you have in your drawer and which you would like to realize?
«The need to write is a passion and an instinct. After the success of My beautiful lady I could have written more for fiction but I have written poetry and thousands of articles. Working on the radio was already a form of expression and with thousands of programs and meetings it absorbed me and this was my task. I will soon collect my articles dedicated to art and those on culture and customs which appeared above all in the Corriere del Ticino, for which I have been writing for almost forty years. I have brought out the secret dream several times but in vain: a further connotation of internationality could be given to Lugano and the Canton and I am thinking of my project for a European literary prize for fiction, which would bring important writers entrusted to Lugano to the judgment of three hundred of our readers. Great literary figures such as Rilke and Remarque and musicians such as Bruno Walter and Benedetti Michelangeli have lived or stayed for a long time in Lugano and Ticino. Two Nobel Prize winners, Hermann Hesse, who lived here, and Thomas Mann played bowls together in Gentilino. As a child, my son strummed the piano that came from De Chirico's house on the hill. It is never too late and therefore "whoever has an ear should hear". I will continue the annual Lugano conferences of the Nuova Antologia cultural club, which was the first European magazine, created by a Swiss in Florence, with esteemed speakers."
