Carlo A. Borghi, author of the book “Monologhi impossibili. Le esclusive rivelazioni di 35 mitiche lunàdigas” (Arkadia Editore), introduced in this interview, retraces his family history and his own human and cultural background, telling us of the reasons behind not wanting to have children.

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CARLO: «This is me as a teenager. It would be the artist’s self-portrait as a teenager, that would be me. The good thing is that now that I am over 73 I find myself to share my own experience as a person who chose not to have children.
As a person with no children but above all to share my experience as a monologuist of divas. For divas I mean 35 celebrated female characters. Celebrated in history. Celebrated in art history. In literature, in cinema. Even a cartoon character. Also in religion. So I collected in a book 35 monologues. What did I do? I put myself in the shoes of 35 fantastic and lunàdigas women. Women who had no children in their historical eras. So I impersonated Jane Austen. Just saying. I impersonated Greta Garbo, Zelda Zonk, a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe. I impersonated Gertrude Stein, and his wife Alice B. Toklas. The list would be long. I have also portrayed mythical women. Daphne, Ninfa Eco, Minerva Artemis… Athena and even Lilith, woman who is at the origin of the whole female world.
Now, to speak about me, I can say that since I was a boy I thought that I did not want to bring children into this world. As a teenager I frequently thought that in the year 2000, that of the Millennium Bug, I would have been 51 years old. I reached them, with no kids. And kept on without having them.
In my family, my parents had two children: a boy that would be me, and a girl, my sister. I myself, no children, and also my sister, no children. So I think, and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, that after me, the Borghi line is finished.
Over time, I happened to go through the protests of 1968, to go through… the 70s, the students’ movement of 1977.
And in 1979, I discovered to have retinitis pigmentosa. A genetic disease which involves blindness. So, not being my thing in the first place, or considering myself unsuitable to have children, I said to myself, “Well, now even more I would risk to pass on my genes of ex-sighted to a son or daughter”.
My family was a petty bourgeois family, with their own ideas. I must say that my parents, over time, as long as I lived with them, they never asked me why I didn’t think to settle down and have family and children. Neither my mother, nor my father. I know that equally they didn’t insist with my sister.
So… I find myself in this condition that… as the historical feminists used to say, motherhood, unlike pneumonia, it is an irreversible condition. From another point of view, Silvia Plath said: “Well, it has to be said that research for perfection does not admit children”.
The 35 women gathered in a book called Impossible Monologues, allow those who read it to know a lot about them, woman after woman, but to know everything about me. In the book, the only man included, is Pierpaolo Pasolini, who is totally my point of reference, in my way of being and doing.
My way of being and doing I owe it to women since I came across a photo of the Esquiline Venus. The Esquiline Venus represented Cleopatra. Cleopatra reminds us of Caesar. Caesar venerated her. Cleopatra had a son, Caesarion, and she had three more from Antony. The statue, the sculpture, the Venus never had children.
In any case, to learn more about it, all you need to do is read Impossible monologues Moreover, on November 12, 2022, the eight billionth human being was born. The radio told me.»

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