He is sitting in front of me. Among the shelves of a library. With the gaze of those who have traveled through centuries of literature to return to tell us an ancient and brand new story. Pier Paolo Di Mino, Romano, born in 1973retains the calmness of those who know they have accomplished a titanic company. Finalist of the Sila Prize, in the dozen 2025I meet him In Cosenza, where he presented “The splendor – Hans’s childhood”first of seven novels. Of an epic.
Berlin, 1911. In a suburb of the German capital, while Europe slips towards the abyss of the Great War, Hans Doré was born. The “true king”, the one who could save humanity from the “machine of necessity”. But who is Hans really? It is the question that crosses the novel, where the reality of experience is confronted with what of Mino calls “real reality”, the symbolic plot hidden in the heart of events.
While speaking, of Mino Gesticola with their hands as a writer, hands that have woven a narrative capable of drawing both from modernist tradition and from the depths of kabbalistic wisdom. “The Zohar, the book of splendor – explains – is one of the sources of inspiration, but also Cervantes and Sterne”. What a mixture: Jewish mysticism with the most irreverent romance experimentalism. In an era dominated by the US stories, Di Mino chose the path of literary ambition. He chose to write a novel that is also popular epic, daring adventure, metaphysical investigation. A novel that, as happens for the great books, seems to have been written in a forgotten language that however we recognize as ours. But he himself tells me about his journey through “the splendor”, a blue book made of words that, like the visionary one of his narrative, guides us towards a light that we thought lost.
The novel has its roots in the modernist tradition, but also feeds on biblical, kabbalistic and alchemical narratives. How did you work on this intertwining of sources?
“I didn’t start working to write a novel. It is a long story of reader, enthusiast, scholar. But I’m not a scholar who precedes writing. I discovered it inside me, that this novel existed. And then I would have written it ».
Hans is described as the “true king”, destined to save the world from the “machine of necessity”. How does this messianic figure dialogue with the great literary and religious archetypes of literature?
“In truth it is quite obedient to that archetype. But Hans has its own individuality, as it happens to all of us. It was born on a specific date of modernity and has a good opportunity – human – to face something that we know well. The ambiguity of man. He can be the real king. It will probably be to see if this occasion will do good ».
The blue book, a visionary and almost magical object, is central to the narrative. Can you tell us genesis and meaning?
«The blue book – so it is described – is made only of images, or rather, the words are images, a bit like in Renaissance painting. And not everyone saw something to us, many people see us white pages. Others see a figure. Still others different things. Gustav, for example, sees the whole world to us. Because inside this absolutely changing mirror, which completely reflects the splendor and the entire novel, at a certain point you see the story that the characters are experiencing and therefore in some way it is also their soul. It is a bit like when Dionysus is mirrored and sees the world. It is a book that does not exist, that we have made exist for this reason ».
From the comedian to the tragic, from parody to sacred. How did you manage these tone changes?
«I hope with great naturalness, because our lives are stories and every story has its own rhetoric, so everyone, anyone often has extremely comic, fairy, horror, tragic moments. So I tried to give people to people thanks to rhetorics but I also reached these rhetoricals by giving voice to these people ».
In the novel there is a strong tension between necessity and freedom, destiny and choice. How important is free will?
“Very, very much. We do not choose where to be born, how to be born, in what fitness, what taste to have. Nobody chooses if he likes apple instead of pear. But we are all free to choose what to do with ourselves, what an inclination to decide to make our life take, towards the splendor or horror ».
You have often worked with other authors. How has this shared writing experience influenced the construction of such a stratified work?
«It was important, because knowing how to give voice to many characters means dialogue with other real people. Now I do it with a little less material people. And in some way this experience continues again because a part of the project includes a constant dialogue with Veronica Leffe that builds the images ».
What do you hope to stay in the reader after finishing “the splendor”? Is there a message or an image you would like to sedimize?
«A message is not there. There is an image that I would like to remain, the image of splendor, of how beautiful this story is that we live and that is called life ».