Carlo Goldoni, the eighteenth-century Italian playwright who, it is said, invented the Commedia dell'Arte, in his comedy La Pamela wrote ‘He only half dies who leaves an image of himself in his sons.’
But is it really true this Goldoni's adage?
When my daughters were little I think I committed some continued injustices on them, even though those little injustices did not look like injustices when I was perpetrating them. Rather, they looked like little things, superficial things dictated by the exuberance of a father who loved so much their daughters. And they loved me, I believed...But did they really love me or that was just a way of accepting their father in an unswerving and occasionally undiscerning scheme of children who are adapting themselves to the image I had created for them?
I think it was this last case.I used to talk to them about me, my life, my dreams, my problems, my sufferings, my joys, my disillusions...again and again, I was repeating the story of my life, again and again, almost ruthlessly. Like a ruthless storyteller.
I studded my stories with anecdotes, ridiculous nuances, exaggerating the situations, telling more or less depending on situations... I wanted to impress them, to make them believe the vision I had of life, of the world. Without realizing I was trying to shape their lives, their souls I put them in a cage, the cage of my phantasy, of my musings, of my life...the same cage I was in.
And they listened to me. They looked at me as serious and interested little girls. But actually, they didn't look at me - they looked at my emptiness I used to fill their lives with, without ever asking them whether they appreciated the discomfort they were onlookers of.
I was happy that they loved me, because I believed they loved me but instead, I now understand, it was not love, it was the seed of desire to get away from me that I was planting in their hearts.
And I will die one day, but I will die unconditionally alone to the world.
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