Friends like Vanni Scheiwiller are well aware of this. He met Annalisa in a rather accidental manner. In 1967, be went into the Galleria Cavour, in Milan, to take a look at an exhibit by a well-known female painter. He was attracted by the lunar, fiery landscapes and most certainly by the artist’s photograph, printed in the catalog.
The painter was Annalisa Cima; she was surrounded by a court of friends, painters and critics.
Scheiwiller writes: “There was an adolescent-like quality about Annalisa. She was mischievous and witty, her eyes had a faint sadness which revealed that she had suffered. In short, she was a blend of melancholy and cheerfulness. Maybe that’s why Montale had called her “bitter-sweet” in a poem he dedicated to her in 1973.
Back then, my relationship with Ungaretti was slightly strained (he was upset about the epigram written by my friend Giacomo Noventa), so I decided to appease him by sending Annalisa Cima as a “messenger”. Not only did Ungaretti reconcile with me but he also allowed Annalisa to dedicate a booklet to him, ‘a magic eye’, entitled Allegria di Ungaretti. He also gave her three unpublished poems to be included in the booklet. The photos had been taken by Ugo Mulas in Venice. I realized that Annalisa Cima was capable of turning an ‘irritable’ man like Ungaretti into a benevolent grandfather, initiating friendships with others besides Palazzeschi and Montale, who were already open to friendship. Annalisa Cima had qualities which transcended normal standards. “The sign / which transcends humans” - writes Montale in his Diario postumo. In thirty years we had many terrible arguments, but our differences never damaged our friendship. We both dream of another ‘golden age’ for the arts and we live our lives searching for those who share our objective: As a publisher, that’s all I know how to do, and Annalisa Cima does it, too, first through painting and then through poetry. We have built a hermitage of true friends, where one can find refuge from noise and high society, always in search of otium literarium, which is actually “vita activa”, full of anxiety, problems and disappointments.
This in the key to reading the long friendship between a poetess with a difficult character, who always speaks her mind and a publisher who is as assertive and strong-willed as she is. ‘Friends for life’, as Palazzeschi would have it, or ‘everlasting kids, always ready to joke around’, as Umberto Eco told me on the phone the other day, joining in”.
As I have already said, it was Scheiwiller who had Montale and Annalisa Cima meet in 1968. One morning in 1969, Annalisa went to Montale to pay him a visit and, as usual, she sat facing the De Chirico hanging on the wall. She had brought him a gift, a copy of Terzo modo, her first book of poems published by Vanni Scheiwiller. The following day, when she returned, Montale said to her: “Read this and tell me if you agree”. It was such a laudatory article about Terzo modo that Annalisa was breathless. Montale said that he wanted to have it published in the “Corriere della Sera”. Annalisa asked him to let her stand on her own two feet and added that, however grateful she was, she wanted to keep her poetry to herself; that would be their secret. From that day on, Montale was sure that theirs was a disinterested relationship based on equality.
“He would often talk to me about my poems, saying that they were disquieting but clear. His favorite poems were the last four in my booklet: ‘The Form’, ‘Conversation’, ‘Third Way’, ‘Objection to the System’, the same poems that Marianne Moore also liked. I told him that “Objection to the System” had been translated by Allen Ginsberg, so he wanted to read the English translation.
“Although he agreed not to publish his article in the “Corriere”, he insisted on presenting my book, with Scheiwiller and myself, at the Cortina bookstore in Milan”.



Marisa Bulgheroni, Cesare Segre,
Annalisa Cima, Silvio Riolfo e Gianna Paltenghi
alla presentazione di Ipotesi d'amore a Lugano


Da sinistra :
Giuseppe Caldara (l'autista),
Giovanni Battista Cima (padre di Annalisa),
Lisetta Steffanoni Pandini
(cugina di Giovanni Battista)


Vanni Scheiwiller ed Eugenio Montale, Libreria Cavour di Milano, presentazione
di Terzo Modo di
Annalisa Cima, 1996


Annalisa Cima alla Galleria
Kasper, Lausanne, 1964