«La verità non è a galla del mare, è nel fondo»

«La verità non è a galla del mare, è nel fondo» is the image Massimo Alberti uses in a letter to Donna Fedele to express a crisis that is at once religious and personal. The sea metaphor does not resolve his doubts: it gives them depth and direction while leaving open whether the ground he seeks will restore his faith, or whether he is still sinking through unstable waters.

The Letter’s Crisis of Faith

Massimo places the phrase within a frank account of death, religious practice, and his changing beliefs. He imagines that, if he were to die, he would ask for a priest and receive the sacraments—not to pretend to a faith he did not possess, but out of a need for sincerity and humility before death. He distinguishes the Christ he once hoped to follow from the procession of ecclesiastical offices and garments that, in his view, now stands before people. The passage makes his criticism of the Church’s visible hierarchy part of a larger uncertainty: he says that his former beliefs have begun to waver and admits that the thought of no longer believing in God horrifies him.

The letter also frames death through Massimo’s relationships. He says that only two friends would grieve for him: Donna Fedele and Don Aurelio. He imagines that Don Aurelio might regard a peaceful death accompanied by Catholic rites as fortunate, while Donna Fedele would mourn him more, although he suspects she does not greatly value earthly life. These reflections help explain why he addresses his spiritual uncertainty to her, rather than presenting it as an abstract argument.

The Sea’s Surface and Depth

The phrase turns on a contrast between what can be seen at the surface and what may lie below it. Massimo has just referred to the image of someone sinking and crying out to be saved; he tells Donna Fedele that, although he may have cried out and may be being saved, the process is not happening as she imagines. The claim that truth is in the depths therefore resists an easy account of rescue. It suggests that the meaning of his experience cannot be read from its visible signs alone.

He extends the water image by describing himself as still in unsettled waters, struck by winds and currents. The feelings that once carried his faith may still be moving him, but he expects rest only in deeper, solid ground. Even there, his image remains troubled: he imagines that the voice of Christ addressing a person of little faith will no longer reach those depths, and that one day the church dignitaries he has described will also descend there. The metaphor joins a longing for something firm to a fear that neither religious authority nor familiar language can reach the final truth he seeks.

That tension keeps the phrase from functioning as a declaration of certainty. Massimo compares what he believed a year earlier with what he believes now, then wonders whether he will still believe in God the next day. The light of his spirit, once steady, has begun to flicker. The depths promise solidity, but the letter does not confirm that he has arrived there or knows what he will find.

Faith, Love, and the Desire to Live

Massimo explicitly refuses to make religious doubt alone the reason for his desire to die. If that were all, he says, he would want more intensely to live: to stop dwelling on religious questions and denials, serve poor people as a father, brother, and friend, and seek a companion he could love in body and soul. This imagined life gives the phrase an ethical as well as a theological setting. His alternative to institutional conflict is not indifference, but a humble life of care and love.

He then names the cause of his renewed despair: the fever he calls Lelia has grown worse and is consuming him. His account thus distinguishes uncertainty about God from his anguish over love, even as the two pressures converge in his wish to die. The metaphor of depth belongs to this divided confession: Massimo is searching for a truth beneath appearances while admitting that the immediate force shaping his life is his attachment to Lelia.

Lelia reads the letter and is overwhelmed by its declaration of love. With a bundle of rhododendrons in her lap, she presses the flowers to her face and kisses the words, imagining a life in which she and Massimo love one another and live simply together. Her response gives the letter—and the phrase within it—a consequence beyond Massimo’s private struggle: his self-disclosure changes how Lelia understands their relationship. It does not, however, settle the religious question the phrase carries. The search for truth in the depths remains an image of yearning, not proof that Massimo has reached a final answer.