A Pure Spirit

“Emma, go with Renato and call the lift.” It is the winter of 1951. Caccioppoli is in Rome to meet Guido Castelnuovo, purged by fascism because he is Jewish, now senator for life and, like Renato, a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. The great mathematician is 86 years old and is seriously ill and will soon die. In his study there is also his daughter Emma, who met the Neapolitan professor several times, becoming more and more impressed by the mobility of his face, by the liveliness of the expression that continually shifts from happiness to sadness, from the mutability of his topics which vary from scientific seriousness to the most banal themes, always treated with the same verve. But this time the old senator looks at his younger colleague with concern and, when at the end of the visit, Caccioppoli takes his leave, worried, he tells his daughter to help Renato get into the lift. “He was afraid,” recalls Emma Castelnuovo, “that he would fall down the stairs. He couldn’t stand up. He was completely drunk.” Once back at her father’s side, she hears him mutter to himself: “I really don’t think he’s going to live very long.”