The Friction of Life

Towards the end of the 1950s many of Caccioppoli’s friends, regular guests at Palazzo Cellammare, drinking companions, privileged interlocutors of his torrential conversations, or even simple acquaintances with whom he exchanged a few words, have now left. Naples empties. Journalists, writers, artists. Antonio Ghirelli, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, but also Tommaso Giglio and Franco Rosi leave the city. Anna Maria Ortese and Giorgio Bassani have already left some time before. Then Pasquale Prunas, Ruggero Guarini. Everyone leaves, some to Rome and some to Milan. There is something that drives them out. A need to free themselves, similar to that which animates teenagers who want to leave the parental home. To step away from that caring love with which Naples envelops them and which irremediably leads them to a sort of infantile regression, to find their raison d’être elsewhere.