Enzo Biagi
Enzo Biagi, born Aug 9, 1920, was an Italian journalist and writer. He died Nov 6, 2007.
He began his career as a journalist in Bologna. In 1952 he worked on the screenplay of the historical film Red Shirts. In 1953 he became the editor-in-chief of Epoca magazine.
Active in journalism for six decades and author of some eighty books, Biagi won numerous awards, among which were the 1979 Saint Vincent prize and the 1985 Ischia International Journalism Award. In 1987, he won the Premio Bancarella for his book Il boss è solo, interviewing former Sicilian Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta, who had turned pentito (state witness). He worked on the Italian national TV channel Rai Uno until 2001.
In January 1986 he interviewed Osho on five occasions (twice on Jan 12, Jan 22, 23 & 24) for Rai Uno TV, Corriere della Sera & Il Manifesto.
The images of these meetings were taken by Sarjano who also recalls the meetings in his book When a Real Lion Meets a Real Master (Ch 7) :
- The meeting was in fact extraordinary, and they appeared like two good old friends who hadn’t seen each other since a long time; it was truly touching. Osho had been informed about Biagi’s by-pass operation, and took care immediately to ask him how his heart was, to which Biagi replied laughingly, “The heart is always young!” Then the interview commenced, which by now is history, and in the end they all retired to their rooms to watch the footage that had been shot and to decide if it would be necessary to shoot some more. According to Biagi, it was the case, because the whole interview had happened between two people sitting in a room – since he himself [Throughout the book, Sarjano refers to himself as ‘he’ in the third person] was just sitting in a corner, out of the camera’s way, to translate the questions of the Italian journalist, and all in all the whole shoot looked a bit static. It was decided to have another shoot of Osho in the garden while walking with Biagi, just to give a little more movement and respite to the interview.
- He very much liked the idea that Biagi wanted to have a walk with the Master, even though nobody knew yet that Osho not only accepted the idea, but that when he was in the garden he took immediately the journalist by his hand!
- It was exactly at this moment that something happened to Biagi.
- Since he was a very sensible person, he had immediately realized that he was talking with someone very different compared to all the personalities that he had interviewed in the past, but couldn’t figure out what this difference was… Biagi told him later that he had felt the diversity of this man, his immense charisma, but he was incapable of placing it anywhere! He said further that when the Master had touched his hand, he had felt a great shock inside, and something of him, his most secretive part, had answered to the invitation…
- “But it must have been a dream, an open-eyed vision, an instant of vertigo” – and by saying so, Biagi was confessing that he was denying the whole experience that had befallen him, with all the rationalizations possible and with a massive dose of what we call in psychoanalysis ‘remotion’. When he finally returned to Italy after a few weeks, the program had just been aired and he called Biagi to compliment him for a beautiful job done, but the journalist diminished himself by simply saying, “I just did my job!”
- He asked Biagi if he could at least do something in order to get a visa for Osho, since he had mentioned knowing the Foreign Minister well, but Biagi answered that he was about to leave for another mission, and that he had no time.
- “But as you have met him and know him now, you can at least say to everybody that Osho is not a dangerous individual,” he told him impetuously. “I’ve only seen him for a couple of days; you can’t say that I know him! – replied Biagi almost annoyed. And so this feeling of an absurd ‘remotion’ surfaced again, and he felt even a little pain for this man who had just met a living Buddha, and something inside of him had absolutely recognized him, but he had to deny his experience at any cost.
- Too many things to reexamine, too many certainties to put under judgment…better to forget all about it, better….
- Once he finished the work for which he had come, Biagi went back to Italy. But he decided to stay there with Osho at least a couple more weeks, irrespective of the cost of the hotel, now he had some money in his pocket and he could easily afford it. Italian RAI had given him 15 million of the old lire, for his job of taking Biagi to interview his Master, hence he could have squandered all the money he had just earned, in spite of the fact that this type of old farmer from central Italy had warned him, with his patriarchal wisdom, of not spending all the money that he had earned by remaining any longer in this super-expensive hotel!
- This famous anchorman was really a great guy, and when Osho died a few years later he wrote a loving epitaph called “A Little Flower on His Grave”, which was published in an alternative magazine. In this piece he narrated his trip with Biagi to Kathmandu, of Biagi’s unexpected love for Osho, of his rationalizations and of his escape…
- In reality he would have liked to call his piece “You’ll be back!”, but he was afraid that hardly anybody would understand it!
