Book in Italian.

Paperback. Size: 16.5 x 24 cm. 406 pages.

For once, and this exception is fitting to the occasion, the daily toil of a scholar has not been dedicated to a qualified or “professing” expert or - as we say nowadays - a career, but to a simple operator, or - an even better term - worker in the field of philology and editing. All those shared in his work experienced his care and passion and the friendship that flourished through working together. Amor libri unti nos. The only analogy possible, though it is very apt, is with the gift given to Raffaele Mattioli on his seventy-fifth birthday; Antonini was the most direct interpreter of his editorial work. The difference is the deliberate modesty of the product, consistent with the birthday boy’s attire, and its obvious but inevitable defect: the fact that it didn’t pass through his hands first (but the seal and the well-loved brightness of the Printworks that gave life to the Ricciardi editions is not lacking). It was the only way to avoid the gift arousing the jealousy of the gods and to make it in the truest sense up to the standards set by Antonini in his silent and civilised commitment to producing enlightened literature by our side and to say, avoiding any hint of festivity, how much we owe him, how much his example counts and how much his service has been and still is, as it should be, a real education.