GIUSEPPE TUCCI 1894 - 1984Reviewed work(s):Source: East and West, Vol. 34, No. 1/3 (Sept. 1984), pp. 10-21Published by: Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29756672 .Accessed: 04/04/2012 10:15

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Macerata, 5 June 1894 - S. Polo de' Cavalieri, 5 April 1984.

GIUSEPPE TUCCI 1894 ? 1984

Public Commemoration held by the President of the Institute Gherardo Gnoli on 7th May 1984

East and West publishes here the English translation of the speech delivered at the Commemoration of Giuseppe Tucci that the President of the IsMEO held on 7th May 1984 in the seat of the Institute in Rome.

This commemorative speech was pronounced a month after the death of Giuseppe Tucci, which occurred on 5th April 1984 at S. Polo de} Cavalieri, and the original Italian version was published apart in July 1984, in a special book? let edited by the IsMEO.

The commemoration, organized by the IsMEO, was held in the presence of the President of the Republic of Italy, and was attended by the highest auth? orities of the State and numerous members of the diplomatic Corps of Asian countries.

With Giuseppe Tucci the IsMEO has lost its founder, its sure and resolute

leader, a scholar of incomparable talent, a wealth of experience, and a source of

vitality. A month has passed since he died. The emotion of the 5th April has been

replaced by a constantly growing awareness of the immense void he has left. Those of us who were fatherless were twice orphaned by the loss of a master.

And this is a loss that is not easy to bear. On the contrary, perhaps it gives the greatest and keenest sorrow. We may feel alone, bewildered, naked before

the mysteries of life and death, we may waver in our efforts to give a sense

of nobility to our lives.

Every commemoration may have something false in it, as if it were an

obligation or a duty: or else it tends to evoke the memory of persons who have

already died a second, more terrible death, the death of oblivion 'in which time conceals most of those who have lived'. These words were spoken by

Giuseppe Tucci twenty-nine years ago in commemorating a deceased friend.

But we, who are well aware that time will not let future generations forget

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him, wish to commemorate Giuseppe Tucci not out of a sense of obligation or

duty but because of our love and devotion. We who have come together here

in memory of him wish to acknowledge together the great worth of the gifts that he has left us, what he has meant to us and what he continues to mean to

his ? and our ? Institute, to Italy, and to the countries of Asia to which he

devoted his amazingly active life. And we shall see, I am sure, that in recalling together the figure of Giu?

seppe Tucci to our minds, one image of him will come to the fore: not that of a brilliant scholar or an enterprising organizer, but the image of a strong and

noble man, to whom whoever had the good fortune to be near him felt bound

by ties of love and devotion. Because this is the first thing we must admit:

Giuseppe Tucci was a man who certainly did not leave one indifferent, whose

eternally youthful and fresh enthusiasm gave him a remarkable fascination. His

eyes, lively and transparent, often filled with child-like ingenuity, were the reflection of a mind that always aimed at reaching higher goals, either through the study of inedited manuscripts, or through the exploration of places hitherto unreached: in either case through an intensely felt spiritual experience. This enthusiasm never failed him, nor did it weaken, not even when his tired and

fragile body began to be painfully and relentlessly consumed: his eyes were still as lively as ever, the expression of a sparkling wit and an unyielding spirit.

This enthusiasm took up his whole being and made him fully a man.

Significantly, he had no great esteem for intellectuals and did not care much for those who spent too much time bent over their books and kept too far from the poetry of nature. He recalled with manifest pride his experience as a soldier in the first World War. And, above all, he did not fail to boast of his nomadic life as a traveller and explorer. In a lecture he gave for the Roman

Campers' Club in May 1956 he said, 'If science has driven me on to the arduous and difficult routes of Asia, there can be no doubt that the spur of science com?

plied with my inborn desire for escape, an instinctive love of space and freedom, the whim of fancy and of dreaming that can only be' fulfilled far from human

society, when one is alone between earth and sky, here today and there tomor?

row, in a scenery that changes with each day, amongst new people who, how?

ever, have their roots all over this ancient land, where the men of today, too, are the unconscious creation of an age-old tradition, and the traces of the past tell whoever knows how to speak with them of the dramas of past events, vain dreams or everlasting hopes'.

The spur of science and the desire for escape led him to land, in November 1925, when he was just over thirty years old, in Bombay. Thus began the com?

munion of his spirit with India: a tie that was never severed, to which both were always inwardly faithful. He was working, before his death, at a study on Eros and Thanatos in India, and I ? who was actually in India, in the

attempt to carry on his work, when he closed his eyes for ever ? I can as

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sure you that India, after having conferred upon him the Jawaharlal Nehru

Award for International Understanding seven years ago, mourned for him today as one of her beloved sons. I said India, but of course we must understand

the Indian subcontinent when we speak of the great passion that inspired Pro? fessor Tucci in his long, fervent and fruitful scientific and spiritual adventure.

After that, the events of his life as a scholar and as an explorer are too

well known for us to dwell upon them here. They have been spoken of in the press, although sometimes with little knowledge of the facts, and we can? not take up all the short time we hr.ve to recall in detail the stages of a journey that was so rich in experience and had such extraordinary results.

We shall sum it up briefly. Six years, from 1925 to 1930, were devoted to the teaching of Italian,

Chinese and Tibetan in the Universities of Shantiniketan and Calcutta, during which he worked on exemplary critical editions of Buddhist texts and had his first significant meetings with the giants of modern India. With Rabindranath

Tagore, of whom he was to declare himself a disciple, and with Gandhi, whom he met for the first time in Tagore's house, to mention only the greatest.

1929 marked the beginning of the Tibetan expeditions, which were to go on until 1948: eight famous expeditions in the often unexplored central and western regions, where he succeeded in collecting an enormous amount of docu?

mentation and of literary and artistic material. The works published by the Ac cademia d'ltalia, the Libreria dello Stato and the IsMEO date to this period. In particular our thoughts go to the seven volumes of Indo-Tibetica (1932 1941) and to the fundamental three volumes of Tibetan Painted Scrolls (1949), to this day an unsurpassed monument of teaching that, by unanimous inter?

national consent, makes its brilliant author the greatest authority on Tibet. From 1950 to 1954 six expeditions in Nepal extended his activity in the

great Himalayan region and brought to light buried kingdoms and cultures, in which the encounter between India and Tibet was the predominant theme.

And so the twofold incitement of science and freedom, as he himself declared, took him fourteen times on to the very roof-top of the world and in the neighbouring regions, from Sikkim to Karakoram, Assam, Nepal, the In? dian Jungle, and to Lhasa. In his words: 'Eighteen thousand kilometres on foot in one of the most fascinating lands in the world, where man, made humble by the immenseness and the silence, imagines or suspects divine presences every?

where, unseen but certain. And almost eight years spent under canvas, without

counting the many weeks spent in the open air in the Indian lowlands, on the slow pilgrimages to the holy places of the religious tradition, wandering in the

tropical heat along the winding banks of the paddy-fields: and, when the air was too scorching hot, journeying at night by moonlight and resting by day in the wide shade of the mango trees, in that absolute flatness of the Indian land, as smooth as a petrified sea, in a straight and perfect union of earth and sky'.

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In 1955 in Pakistan, in the Swat Valley, the long season of archaeological investigations began, which were shortly to be extended to Afghanistan, in

1957, and to Iran, in 1959, and which have lasted up to this time, except in the last two countries where recent political and military events have so far

prevented the continuation of the IsMEO's activities.

An enormous amount of material, of study and research was the result of

this last long phase of his work: publications of his own and his colleagues and pupils, in history, archaeology and philology, have made an immense con? tribution towards the widening of our knowledge about the vast areas of the

meeting between East and West, and the eastward march of Alexander the

Great, as well as about the interference areas of the great civilizations of Asia

and the spreading of Buddhism from India towards China, Tibet and Central Asia. The main series of publications of our Institute, the 'Serie Orientale Ro?

ma', which has now reached its fifty-second volume, and the 'Reports and Me?

moirs' of the Centro Scavi e Ricerche Archeologiche in Asia, of which nineteen numbers have already appeared, have printed these results and spread them

throughout the world of international science, thus giving Italian Oriental stu? dies as a whole one of the foremost places, and in some fields a real primacy.

In this period his work was also extended to other spheres of activity in favour of the conservation and appreciation of the immense artistic and cultural

heritage of the countries of Asia, and it is particularly outstanding for the great works of restoration of the most prestigious centre of ancient Iranian civilization,

Persepolis, and of the chief Islamic monuments of Esfahan, in particular Ali

Qapu, Cehel Sotun, Hasht Behesht, that were to win for the IsMEO a longed for recognition of international standing: the Aga Khan Award for Architec? ture, that was conferred upon the IsMEO at Lahore in October 1980. Nor should we forget the contribution to the setting up of the Swat Museum at Saidu Sharif in Pakistan and, in Afghanistan, the help given in the re-ordering of the Islamic collections in the Kabul Museum and in arranging the collections of the Museum of Islamic Art of Ghazni in the Mausoleum of Sultan Abd ul

Razzaq at Rauza, that was restored and adapted for use as a museum by our

experts, as well as the contribution to the construction of the Ghazni Museum,

unfortunately still unfinished, and to the beginning of the restoration of the minarets of Mas ud III and Bahram Shah, all part of an organic restoration

project which has not been able to be fulfilled. All these are the outward

signs of a cultural sensitivity and a cultural policy that are quite remote from

prejudices of a colonial type, and that do honour to Italy in the first place, as well as to our Institute.

In this great scientific work, that was supplemented by a constant produc? tion of non-specialist works ? San? e briganti nel Tibet ignoto (1937), Italia e Oriente (1949), A Lhasa e oltre (1950), Tra giungle e pagode (1953), La via dello Swat (1963), to name just a few of them ? Giuseppe Tucci, the author

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of hundreds and hundreds of scientific contributions that have appeared in vari ous editions and have often been published in different languages, on an amazing variety of subjects and topics ranging from the history of ancient Chinese phi? losophy to the history of Indian philosophy, to Buddhism, and the religions of Tibet, emerges undoubtedly as the greatest Oriental scholar of our time: the

greatest expert of things Tibetan, one of the greatest experts of Buddhism and Hinduism, a philologist of extraordinary capacity, a scholar with an extremely vast humanistic background and a remarkable knowledge of the religions of the East and not only of the East, and lastly, an historian with a keen insight that inspired and directed him with splendid results in his archaeological studies

which lay, we might say as he himself did, outside his profession. The international recognitions he received speak for themselves. He was

an honorary, regular or corresponding member of the most important acade?

mies and learned societies in every part of the world, from Paris to Tokyo, from London to Buenos Aires, from Berlin to Calcutta, from Zurich to Tehran,

from Madison, Wisconsin to Budapest. He held a doctorate honoris causa in

the Universities of Kolosvar, Delhi, Leuven, Tehran and Kathmandu. He had conferred upon him the highest awards of Japan, Thailand, Iran, Pakistan, Af?

ghanistan, Indonesia, Nepal, and of India with the famous Nehru Award, of which he was particularly fond, perhaps because of the ties of friendship that had bound him to the great Indian politician; and recently the Balzan Prize for

History. Nor did he lack recognition in Italy: he was a fellow of the Acca demia d'ltalia, he had won the Grand Cross for Distinguished Service, as well as being, amongst others, a fellow of the Accademia delle Scienze of Turin and of the Accademia Nazionale di S. Luca, an honorary fellow of the Societ?

Geografica Italiana, Emeritus Professor of the University of Rome in 1969, after having taught there for more than three decades the religions and philo? sophy of India and the Far East, besides having been appointed in 1931 to teach Chinese at the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples. As long as he lived he remained loyal to the Accademia d'Italia, which he had entered at the age of thirty-five, and this was certainly not only because of the sincere friend?

ship that bound him to its President Giovanni Gentile, who was also our first President. Indeed, he maintained that its dissolution, after the return of demo?

cratic rule, was due to a moment of political passion ? the very same thad had

made him the victim of a brief and unjust expulsion ? which had not allowed

a calm judgement to be made and which had deprived our country of an effec? tive means of showing the world that Italian culture was still alive and fighting.

In any case, Giuseppe Tucci was as far from academic vanity as he was

seized by the desire to actually do things, to promote and organize study, to

carry out investigations and lead them himself over the paths of Asia that had

always remained dear to him, to use the instrument that he had created in 1933, this Institute, the IsMEO, as the most suitable means of carrying out far

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reaching scientific projects which required the co-operation of many diverse skills. To this end he considered the university

? he made a magnanimous ex?

ception in the case of the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples - as a

completely inadequate instrument, ill-connected remnants of nineteenth-century traditions' which was declining to give way to a new structure of which ?

these words were spoken ten years ago ? 'the first whimpers, or rather the

bangs' could be heard: the bangs ? we might add ? of a fictitious and fal?

lacious reform because it did not appreciate the essential place of young people by kindling new interests in them, rousing in them a lively curiosity, leaving them free to choose, stimulating their intelligence. Reminiscing about his ex?

perience as a student, he used to say: 'With a good grounding in Latin and Greek and, in addition, a good knowledge of Sanskrit and Old Persian, I found

myself foundering in the swamp of the Rome University. To begin with, I

honestly admit that I was deeply disappointed in both mind and spirit. If we read the Latin and Greek classics, it was a constant dwelling upon other

people's opinions, the transformation of the immortal beauty of the poetry into

pale, unconnected fragments and a sacrilegious dissection of the sublime limpidity of the original, the humiliation of having to repeat these worn-out quotations

according to the codification of the lecture-texts, which gave me a great dislike

of the university. I, who had expected of the university new light and pro? found thought, or the challenge of vast and stimulating problems, had the

impression of being lost in the intricate maze of wan scholarship, of coming to my senses, as it were, in a deserted village square on Ash Wednesday'.

And, if this was his opinion of the old university, you may well imagine how severe his criticism was of the present-day university, bureaucratic, corporative, a welfare organization. His outright condemnation of cases that he considered

beyond the pale of human decency is well known to those of his disciples who have stayed on in the school of Oriental studies of the Rome University, and to me, too, since he often confided in me with vexed indignation.

And so it was that he devoted himself entirely to our Institute, not only with extraordinary enthusiasm and energy, but also with ideas and projects that

placed him in the forefront of research policy. Indeed, he succeeded in organiz? ing a real and effective convergence of different qualifications on common aims, from archaeologists to philologists, historians, students of religious and philoso? phical thought, and, in archaeology, an active co-operation of the so-called auxili?

ary sciences, both naturalistic and anthropological, so that the IsMEO has in fact become the first archaeological centre of international standing in Italy, if not one of the foremost in the world, that has made coherent and organic use of the contribution of the natural sciences. And the archaeology that he pro? moted, organized and even led in the field himself did not have chronological bounds, but extended ? and still does in the IsMEO's present-day work ?

from prehistory to ancient and mediaeval history, that is to say, in the case of

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most of the regions where work has been done and is being continued with

alacrity, Islamic history. His work as a fervent promoter and organizer did not stop at his Institute,

which he provided with the most suitable structures and means to pursue its aims and carry on its activities: first, with a library which he enlarged, almost

doubling it at the time, by donating his own personal library ? more than

20,000 volumes and the richest collection of Tibetan manuscripts in the world outside the People's Republic of China; the documentary and photographic re? cords of the expeditions in Tibet, of immense historical importance (these are now being catalogued and arranged by the IsMEO); a Centre for excavations and archaeological research in Asia; a Centre for restoration; Centres for re?

search in Oriental studies; Italo-Asiatic cultural Centres for each of the coun?

tries with which active and friendly relations were enjoyed. His work ? as I was saying

? went beyond the IsMEO and left its wide and lasting mark

by providing Italy with a state museum for Oriental art, this museum where we are gathered together now and which, as a sister organization, significantly

joins with us today in the commemoration of a far-sighted man, mindful of the common interest. In 1957 the Italian Government, through the then Direzione Generale delle Antichit? e Belle Arti of the Ministry of Education, understood the importance of founding in Rome the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale

which, by agreement and constantly renewed conventions with our Institute, was to keep and exhibit the objects and collections of artistic and archaeological value belonging to the IsMEO. One of the most impressive collections is that of the pieces of Graeco-Buddhist art of Gandhara from the excavations of our

archaeological mission in the Swat region of Pakistan. And we must also remember ? as I tried to do on a recent occasion, at

the close of the international congress with which the IsMEO celebrated its 50th anniversary

? that all this manifold activity was inspired and backed up by a single fundamental idea: Eurasia, or the historical unity of the Eurasian continent. This is an idea which is the constant theme of Giuseppe Tucci's work as a scholar of Asian civilizations and which closely links his first studies on Buddhism and the first expeditions on the highest peaks of the world to the subsequent investigations along the Swat route or in Afghanistan or Iran.

An idea which is also the central point of the IsMEO's project and which has a significance that surpasses the inevitably restricted scope of studies and special? ists, because it has an immense importance that is capable of reflecting on international relations ?

perhaps not so much on the relations between govern? ments, but on those between peoples and between the younger generations

?

upholding and giving substance to an ideal of human solidarity that is built upon the awareness of a common cultural and spiritual heritage which links Asia to Europe as two parts of a single, indivisible continent.

And this ideal of human solidarity, not as a rhetorical and empty refrain

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but as a living reality of aware minds aimed at the rediscovery of a universally significant humanism, is the ideal which was always at the centre of his scientific and cultural work. This ideal has always been put into practice in accordance with one of Giuseppe Tucci's teachings to which the IsMEO intends to remain

loyal in its continual attempt in every way to carry on his cultural programmes and research projects, also with the countries of Asia in which events of vari? ous kinds and various political stamp would seem not to favour continued re?

lations. The role of a body such as the IsMEO is precisely that of showing by facts that culture can unite even when politics seems to divide, and in this way our Institute ? a national public organization for culture and research under

the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, can be of great help to the

political policy of a country like ours that seeks dialogue, not dispute. On the other hand, Italy has a history in Asia that greatly favours such

a cultural policy. I quote the words that Prof. Tucci spoke on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Institute. These words refer to the situation of the fifties: 'Italy was in a particularly favourable situation: she has not left a trail of ill-feeling in Asia because she has never thought of found?

ing colonial empires there; on the contrary, with an ancient tradition that is

strengthened and enlightened as a result of the long work of travellers, mission?

aries and scholars, she has taken steps to reveal the spiritual compactness of

Asia, to describe its real situation, to spread reliable information there about our scientific thought or the inspirations of our works of art, with the aim of

finding points of contact, not of contrast, and of, sympathizing, not of humiliat?

ing ...', and again 'So it is that our work intends to be the resumption and the

revival, with means that are adequate to the new situation, of the humanistic

tradition that made the Italians disinterested mediators of culture between East and West'. In his scientific and cultural work Giuseppe Tucci always held high the name of Italy.

But the most important thing for him was always man, and his interest was in a humanism that, by drawing its inspiration from the great traditions of religious and philosophical thought, could be a real answer to the great crisis that is overwhelming the modern world and help to 'break down that barrier that centuries of misunderstanding have built between East and West', thus

undermining 'the presumption that all the greatest adventures of the spirit have come about in our Western world, and in the Mediterranean in particular'. 'Under every sky

? these are also his words ? man has had the same dreams; he is the same creature, painfully suspended between heaven and earth, fear?

fully alone before the mystery of life and death'. It is in this profession of humanism that we must seek the origin of Prof.

Tucci's great passion for the world of religion: a passion that always made him consider man as the subject of religious experience, man, who is always, 'every?

where, under every sky, in every clime' understood as 'the same creature that

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suffers, cherishes hope, is elated, whose greatness is in his combined solitude and sociability, restless and changeable, because the changeability confirms their

continuity, who dies as an individual but lives on in the disembodies immor?

tality that is granted him; I mean the slow construction of his identity and his

culture, continually renewed and as such undying, which survives the weak? nesses or the exhaltations or the shocks of that incurable hysteric that is history ... Sabar upar manush tahar upar naht "above all things is man: nothing is

above him"\

Thence springs his love for Buddhism, the highest expression of Asiatic humanism, which spread throughout the countries of the Middle and Far East, refining customs, art and literature, wiping out misunderstanding and prejudice,

shattering the bonds of caste and promising peace and redemption for all. And thence, too, his conviction that all great and authentic revolutions are religious revolutions: 'political revolutions', he was to declare in a heartfelt and masterly commemoration of Gandhi portrayed as a great moral and religious reformer,

'presuppose a moral revolution, otherwise it is violence that comes from without

and does not burst from irrepressible convictions' and, in an address delivered in India thirty years ago he was to state, thus showing the profound respect that he always had for the message of Jesus, that Christianity had reaped and transformed the heritage of the ancient world, giving unity to the West, just as Buddhism had done for the Middle and Far East. According to him, then, it is religious revolutions that build upon the foundations of intelligence, con? cord and devotion; other movements come, destroy, pass on. Both towards

Buddhism and towards Christianity he always displayed an inward spiritual harmony, beyond every form of confessionalism, and a lively interest, omnipre? sent in his work, in the great and beneficent expansion of their messages of truth, charity and justice in that one continent which is Eurasia.

It is hard to find a scholar more sensitive than Giuseppe Tucci to the phenomenon of religion and more sincerely and inwardly respectful than he of

religious and mystic experience, although extraneous ? almost by instinct I

should say ? to any type of cold and barren confessional rigidity. At the cen? tre of the great constructions of religious systems he always saw man, the

subject of an experience that, in different ways but with similar aspirations and ideals, tends to grasp universal and absolute values, in a concrete, active

and heroic search for truth. Here, too, we may recall his words: 'the Minoan

and Mycenaean and the Assyro-Babylonian cultures, the tormented dramatists

and the lucid thinkers of Greece, Zarathustra, the Upanishads, Buddha and Mahavira, Laotze and Confucius ? immortal suns in the heavens of the apo? theosis of mankind'.

It is for this teaching that we shall remember Giuseppe Tucci, because it is present throughout all his great work as a scholar of religious thought, be? cause it is revealed in almost every passage of his writings, as one of the

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predominant themes and a theme that was not only the outcome of theoretical elaboration but also the result of an intensely felt individual experience.

His humanism also had another side to it which we must mention be? cause it is a part of his personality that is no less important: he instinctively shunned technology, although he did not reject it on a rational level and, on the contrary, even used it, and extensively too, as an aid to study and research.

'Between me and a machine, even such a simple one as a camera, there exists

an absolute incompatibility'. Perhaps he had, in this natural incompatibility, felt something in common with Tagore, 'suspicious of the coming advent of

technology'. So hostile was he to every form of depersonalizing technological consumer culture that it made him decidedly condemn even modern systems of communication, as far as people's gaining a deeper knowledge of each other was concerned: 'May it not seem a paradoxical statement if I say that nowadays

communications, rapid and comfortable as they have never been before, do not

help peoples to gain a deeper knowledge of each other; diplomacy needs to be renewed: aloof in the capital cities, inadequately organized, sociable only with a few newsgathering classes in its meetings with journalist colleagues, it lacks the means of understanding the secrets of latent discord, or of sensing the con? tradiction of incompatible customs and opinions, the ideologies and the ideas that come to life beneath the monotony of appearances. It gives a vision of the world that is ideal or hoped-for, not of what it really is. Serious problems have Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Prime Ministers or Presidents to deal with them. Businessmen are intent upon their own interests, tourists admire the

monuments that are pointed out to them like islands that have surfaced all of a sudden in the sea of their ignorance; reporters and writers go shooting past and straightway announce that they have discovered a country: veni, vidi,

scripsi. Everyone judges according to his own inborn likes and dislikes, that

is, in no way at all. But who will piece together a faithful and impartial whole of these contrasting experiences? Who will seek his brother? Where are there now such men as Giovanni di Pian di Carpine, Marco Polo, Pietro della Valle, the Venetian ambassadors, Matteo Ricci? To draw nearer to the spirit of a

people the caravan with its slow bivouacs is much better than the aeroplane'.

I have attempted to cast light upon the main features of a figure who, as you will quite understand, on account of its complexity, hardly lends itself to a faithful commemoration that can be effectively expressed in a few words.

And I have tried to throw light upon the main aspects of a life's work that is so rich and fruitful that it is hard to see how it could have sprung from the

mind of one man alone, however versatile and gifted he may have been. I do not deceive myself that I have succeeded in my efforts to avoid gaps or

oversights, for which I apologize most sincerely. And I realize that there are still some other things which should not be

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omitted: his practice of making rapid and irrevocable decisions, typical of a

straightforward and combative mind; the generous trust he had in young people, whom he encouraged to choose freely and independently for themselves; the continuous tension towards the ideal that was enlivened by a particular poetic

force, apparent in all his writings, that transfigured with powerful individuality every item of material and intellectual reality. It was this tension and this

poetical spirit that made noble his every action: he was never vulgar, never

common, always original without affectation, always simple without displaying ostentation and scholarship. All this gave him a very powerful personality which could never have mingled in an amorphous community, confined by con? vention and custom.

The IsMEO does not intend this ceremony as a conclusion to the com? memoration of Giuseppe Tucci, its founder in 1933, its President from 1944 to

1978, and subsequently its Honorary President. A voluminous collection of international studies is to be published in his honour; it was already being pre? pared for his 90th birthday, which would have fallen in a month's time, on 5th

June. A memoir of him and a complete, up-to-date bibliography of his writings will also be published. Other ideas will soon be considered by the Board of Directors.

Expressions of sympathy have been received from all over the world, from

political, cultural and scientific institutions, from academies, learned societies,

foundations, from sundry universities, from individual scholars and from the most diverse persons, and the Institute is acutely aware that its immense loss

has an importance that far surpasses its own limits.

In me, who, on account of the office I now hold, have the sad and loving task of commemorating him on this solemn occasion ? and I trust you will allow me this final personal note ? the void he has left is filled with anguish, immense is the legacy received, poetic the memory. Though his spirit has been

dispersed in the supreme light ? as he wanted his funeral announcement to

say ? his figure lives on as one who, certainly more than anyone else I

have chanced to meet in my life, knew how to make the most of the virtue and wisdom that a human being can display.

Dear Professor Tucci, you have taught us, your disciples, in the immortal transmission of words that are never final, being constantly renewed ? if I

may use one of your expressions ? to continue 'the indefinite journey, the

forebodings, the intuitions apparently suspended in nothingness but passing over the void of time'.

Today, Master, it is not only I who have evoked the memory of your image before so many persons who have loved and admired you, because it lives on, firmly impressed, in our hearts. It is our serene and loyal friend, showing us the way we must take: we may make mistakes, but be sure that we shall never desert it out of self-interest or cowardice.

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