A Friendship

Azorin and Miro, aspiring writers not yet 20 years old, meet by chance in Rome and find themselves mirrored in each other. Singlemindedly and with a purely intellectual interest, desiring nothing except to fashion a few phrases a day, they meet, part and meet again with the inevitability of a force of nature. Theirs is not so much a friendship as a symbiosis, disturbed only by their recognition that Miro must return to his village and marry the woman waiting for him. This he does, losing his identity as a writer but not his identification with Azorin, to whom he returns when his wife dies. They then resume their old ways, slipping in and out of the literary society they have always frequented but have remained aloof from. When Miro dies, Azurin is absolutely alone, welcoming the imminence of his own death and the certainty of rejoining his friend in the ""subliminar'' world they have sought but could not, while living, enter together. Cancogni's novella was first published in Italy in 1968; the author of several novels, he is here translated into English for the first time. Although it will not be to everyone's taste, his fable beautifully sketches a narcissism that harms no one and fulfills the needs of the two who share it. (March)