David North, a socialist intellectual, recently delivered a lecture at PSU on the anti-constitutional measures passed by the current Administration. After the lecture I introduced myself and on hearing of my Italian roots he said "Togliatti". I told him that the reference was particularly relevant to me as I had a direct apolitical connection with the Togliatti family. In fact I took my first engineering exam with Prof. Togliatti, chair of Analytic Geometry at the University of Genova and brother of the legendary Palmiro Togliatti. Palmiro was the head of the Italian Communist Party and had been a bigwig in the Moscow Politbureau, even being at one point Stalin’s secretary.

Prof. Eugenio Togliatti was an austere and awe-inspiring figure. Well over 70, he had a very erect posture, thick white hair and an equally white, long and well kept beard. He would fit the description of the Shakespearean judge ("with eyes severe and beard of formal cut" (As You Like It)). Legend had it that no colleague or student ever saw Prof. Togliatti smile nor he ever made a remark even remotely connected with politics.

For the spring the course schedule included the mathematical treatment of quadrics. Quadrics are 3-dimensional geometric shapes that include ellipsoids, paraboloids, hyperboloids and combinations thereof. A descriptive analogy would suggest eggs laid by dinosaurs affected by genetic dysfunctions.

On the appointed Monday in spring Prof. Togliatti would enter the classroom holding an ellipsoid model made of white plaster. He was followed by the janitor pushing a cart laden with other quadrics. The stern demeanor of Prof. Togliatti was somehow out of character with the large ellipsoid he held against his beard. The image had an inherent charge of humor but the class was a veritable black hole of austerity from where not even a smile could escape.

At the end of the lecture the janitor would ferry cart and quadrics back to the exam room where the samples were kept under lock and key for the other 51 weeks of the year.

The lecture following Analytic Geometry was in Algebraic Analysis and the lecturer had a strikingly different character from Prof. Togliatti. He was a Neapolitan, had the instinctive theatrical qualities of his genus and used profusely hands and arms to enhance his speech.

He started that lecture by opening his arms half-way, while raising and extending his hands and flexing his head slightly to one side – a gesture suggesting benign resignation to the march of time and to the cyclicality of events. "It must be Easter – he said - because I just saw Togliatti with his eggs".

Prof. Togliatti’s brother, Palmiro, was a skillful leader and under his direction the Communists almost won the democratic elections. Had they won the Americans had 2 counter-plans ready, as shown in a document released in 1994 and available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. The document is titled "Consequences of a legal victory by the Communists in Italy". The first plan called for the forced secession of Sardinia and Sicily (presumably with the help of the Mafia) and the heavy financing of terrorist forces acting in the mainland. The second plan simply called for the falsification of the vote.

Yet all this would have been unnecessary and it shows that the Administration never understood the Italians. Indro Montanelli, an old-fashioned liberal, gave the most pointed (and I believe accurate) description of the Italian Communists. "They know – he said – that under a communist regime it’s like living in a convent or a prison. But they still pursue victory confident that, should they win, they will quickly convert the convent into a brothel and the prison into a discotheque".

Back to the mathematical Togliatti - there is one more link between him and my life as I will concisely summarize. Terror is the emotion he induced into students facing the prospect of his exam. At the time grades ranged from 0 to 30, - 18 being the passing grade and 30 the best. He was the only Professor known to grade students below the zero mark, e.g. –5, -10 etc. He truly held the biblical scale whose tilt would seal the fate of a student’s academic and professional life. No further exam could be taken if not passing his.

But… during high school I developed a passion for the American West as embodied in Country and Western music. With customary teen enthusiasm I set myself to become a country and western singer-guitarist. Some time later I began to play in various bands and exhibitions.

On entering college and facing the terror of Togliatti’s exam I thought that if I failed I would quit engineering and take up music full time. But on that occasion the Gods were gracious and I passed. For some years I still continued to play and write songs (very few people in Italy at the time did not write songs). But I considered the activity as an entertaining hobby and a most welcome contribution to the notoriously meager means of the average student.

One or two years before my bout with Prof. Togliatti another singer-musician faced him and failed twice - whereupon he dedicated himself solely to music and became quite famous in Italy. His name was Luigi Tenco. Sadly he committed suicide a few years later for unknown reasons.

As for me, many years later here I am, doing something entirely different than music but in the very country that supplied the imaginary background for my adolescent dreams of Country and West. Which proves once more the unpredictability of life and the immense truth contained in the words of Julius Caesar, "What can be avoided that has been purpos’d by the mighty Gods?"

Jimmie Moglia

Nov 06.

-Shakespeare's Views on the News-

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