ABSTRACT
Dear friend, we have always confided in each other and told each other everything. Or to put it more extremely yet more accurately, we have never hidden anything from each other because we have always had a degree of understanding that has not required words. Something similar is going to happen in the writing of this piece for your Festschrift. I will have to write in words, even though they might not be necessary. Such an active silence has, for us, always constituted a kind of mutual support and recognition. It has been so for almost 40 years. It is not that often you find two people who are friends in this way, both of them knowing that there is a certainty of discovering a complementarity of thinking leading to a deep understanding. And if, sometimes, we really do not understand one another, we can still reach a high level of discussion and not waste our time – increasingly precious with the passing of the decades – on petty criticisms.
