Football poems by the fan poet Raboni

Whether there is a deep correspondence between the phenomenon of football support and the collective feeling of the people is a question that we find already in the pages of Giacomo Leopardi. A cosmic mystery, it is football’s turn to become, over time, a metaphysical reflection of world history. How can we not think of the genetic mutation that has occurred with the globalization of Italian football to find those cultural, philosophical and ultimately identity-related reasons that are at the origin of the disastrous participation of the Italian national team on the European stage? And perhaps it is the cold arrogance of Mbappé, and with him the entire French team, that reflects the political difficulties that France is experiencing today as if in a convex mirror?

«The sporting passion is a mystery in its purity, devoid of any practical interest. It is therefore close to intellectual passion: with the completion of the “Opera Omnia” in Meridiani, Giovanni Raponi was a poet, among the greatest of the second half of the twentieth century, that is, of that generation which, after Montale and Saba, Ungaretti and Quasimodo were already twenty years old in the early fifties. But he was many other things for Italian culture, Raponi.

His catalogue is rich and varied: he has translated the entire research of Marcel Proust, more than five thousand pages collected in 4 volumes; he was a citizen journalist but also the author of scathing literary criticism. A keen theatre critic, he did not disdain the harshest television criticism in the pages of the weekly newspapers. “I am a football fan” he said; “I am an Inter fan” he added with the pride of someone who knows how to experience the awareness of the greatness of football in the depths of his soul.

How he managed to reconcile his strict intellectual position with the expensive public taste of the stadium, we discover from the booklet just published by Mimesis (140 pages, €14.00), born from the happy idea of ​​his widow, the poet Patrizia Valduga, which brings together his writings on football from 1979 to 2004. It is presented with a long title, placed on the cover like a quotation, a quote that reads like a poem but works like a philosophy: “You are a fan of your team because you are a fan of your own life”. Raboni stresses that the secret of intellectual support for football lies in the gratuitousness of this support. Aren’t fans the only amateurs in a world where, between wages and television rights, everything is measured by the scale of money? The psychopathy of football fans begins at the stadium, which for Raboni “Milan” could only be the San Siro. His “companion” was his teacher and friend Vittorio Sereni, also a poet – the last great poet of hermetic poetry of the time – but above all also a supporter of Inter. If it is true that metaphor is the philosopher’s stone of poetry, then Inter is a perfect metaphor, “the essence of football lived as unpredictable fluctuations”. The gentle Raboni, equipped with a deep moral sense, did not save his team from the fierce extremists. He hated not only the damned Marcello Lippi, but also the legendary Helenio Herrera.

He was very impressed by the young Moratti, Massimo, for his “melancholic temperament”, but he did not like this lack of ruthlessness, which is necessary to manage Inter like a big company. There was a great concern about the departure of Roberto Baggio. I remember that I commissioned him to write a “suitable poem” for the 1990 World Cup, for the weekly “Epoca” directed by Roberto Briglia and of which I was co-director at the time. He was fascinated by the idea. In fact, a few days later, his sonnet on Mozart’s “Ah five players…” and Leopardi’s conclusion on “the immeasurable Baggio”, was the cover story alongside an article on typhus commissioned by Umberto Eco. Who knows, I think Raboni loved this national team that was so unfortunate and inappropriate!

Not only because it goes back to the post-war period, to his memory of the “lost times”, the Inter that Raboni loved was a team of old nobles but a bit worn out, finishing the season at the bottom of the table, one step away from the abyss of relegation. Deep down, he was convinced that winning the championship because you are better and stronger is a trifle in bad taste. Lover of the glorious “bad times” and preacher of the “dark times”, it seemed to him that “not being relegated” was a more noble and satisfying goal than winning the Cup. The living memory of the great Bibbin Meazza was ingrained in his subconscious as an Inter fan, who at the end of the championship in the late 1940s, now a former player, returned to the pitch in the “Napoleon’s Basin in the Piazza”, not far from the Sforzesco Castle, to save his Inter from relegation to the hell of Serie B. And he succeeded. What a success!

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