Читать книгу Marconi My Beloved - Maria C. Marconi - Страница 5

The pages you find before you reflect faithfully all the intense, fascinating life story of my mother Maria Cristina Marconi, née Bezzi Scali, beside my father Guglielmo Marconi, he who “gave a voice to silence” by inventing the Radio.

The readers of this book will not find just a technical, scientific text, referring only to historic events, but above all an absolutely truthful story in which an intelligent woman in love with her husband brings alive for the present day the experiences that characterized her exceptional life. Consequently, what stands out is my mother’s great joie de vivre and serene happiness during the whole of her unique life with Guglielmo Marconi; in fact, from the first moment he saw her my father had been struck by the sunny nature, blonde beauty and nobility of spirit of the charming Maria Cristina. His union with his beloved wife lasted beyond his lifetime.

My mother wrote down the events of those years in a diary. After my father’s death, in the peaceful moments during the summer when we were at Forte dei Marmi or Sardinia she would gaze at the sea with a thoughtful air and relive the many days she had spent sailing on board the Elettra. She used to write down her thoughts and read them to me. Her words reflected the inspiration of moments sometimes far apart from one another but always illuminated by the vivid memory of her husband; they have been left in their original form so as to offer to the reader all the intensity of the feelings which united her to him.

What my mother makes clear in these pages, apart from their personal feelings, is the genius of Guglielmo Marconi, who dedicated his whole life to the good of humanity, inaugurating a new era. With his inventions he wanted to join the continents, helping to bring peace and harmony between nations.

My mother was always very clear and incisive when she spoke out to defend her love for my father and to respect his memory but she never made any public declarations and very rarely gave interviews because this conflicted with her extremely reserved character. Initially she wanted to leave these memoirs to me as a private memento of my father. As time went by, however, having read inaccurate and sometimes completely untrue information about Guglielmo Marconi, both as a man and as a scientist, she realised that it was necessary and important to let the world know the truth. When she decided to publish her memoirs she also wanted to add, as historic evidence, some of the letters that her husband wrote to her before and after their marriage.

In accordance with my mother’s wishes and to make these pages closer to the young people who want to know and to their elders who remember my father’s greatness, for the first time since the death of Guglielmo Marconi I therefore submit to the admiration of the reader the letters that the Genius of the Radio wrote to my mother. She kept them all her life as tokens of an immense, unique, radiant love.

Sadly, she did not live to see the accomplishment of her wishes; she died in fact in July, 1994 (the same month in which my father died in l937), after 57 years of widowhood dedicated entirely to perpetuating the memory of her beloved husband. Today, as the supreme culmination of their love, my parents lie together in the crypt of Villa Griffone at Sasso Marconi (Bologna), the same country house where my father carried out his first historic experiment which saw the birth of the Radio in the spring of 1895.

My feeling is one of deep gratitude to my mother who kept her diary and wrote her memoirs so faithfully, together with profound emotion for the wonderful and sometimes dramatic experiences of my parents.

After her marriage to my father, my mother grew to know and love Britain; in fact, my father had spent many years there and he transmitted his high opinion of the British to his wife. He was delighted to see how his many British friends took Maria Cristina to their hearts, while she in her turn always spoke of these friends with affection and admiration.

This book, which I present with emotion to its readers, shows in a new and human light the greatness of two exceptional people: my father and my mother.

Rome, September 1995