The Two Photographs

None of the two photographs lying on Caccioppoli’s desk are of “grandfather” Bakunin. They are portraits of two beardless faces. The still childish face of the mathematician Évariste Galois, who died at the age of 20, and one who resembles a girl, a very young Arthur Rimbaud. I wonder why he arranged them on full display like this. What message does Renato want to send to anyone who enters his living room? The impression of many visitors on seeing those two old images is the immediate identification of the houseowner with them. But it’s not that simple. What are, I wonder, the actual points in common that the professor shares with the two French teenagers, rebellious geniuses, present like domestic Lares in his apartment in Palazzo Cellammare?