Alive as You and Me

Abstract

Laughing with the Dead «Only one boy was capable of laughing while Derossi was declaiming the funeral oration of the king, and Franti laughed.» We must be aware of this: our remembrance of Umberto Eco risks bringing back Franti, who laughed at the funeral of another Umberto, killed in Monza by Gaetano Bresci. Of course, it’s not exactly the same thing, because Franti was laughing at the dead man, or at least at the obsequies, and maybe at Derossi and his way of expressing them, while we are t...