Given the death of Francisco Rico I need to express a feeling of gratitude. My relationship with him was sporadic, since I have not dedicated myself to literature, which was his realm, but I received support from him, unnoticed at the time, which I have been able to value later in my university career.
Paco Rico was a value in the world of Romanist philologists, his work disseminated in Spain as a Cervantist, in European humanistic geography as a Petrarchanist, his intelligent, as well as erudite, approach to the works he attended to, provides new lights with which continue reading and analyzing them.
He used his high capacity for synthesis to maintain a daring and even insolent speech; with self-confidence he sometimes played at being cynical; He liked that they maintained the level of ingenuity that he wielded, that that level was not lowered; His always incisive conversation encouraged his fellow members and demanded ingenuity in his responses, these qualities that explain his achievements as a teacher, as a trainer of young people.
His death is another casualty in that group of teachers who found refuge in the university and who today search for them without finding them among so much information that is received. I experienced his loyalty to the students who had listened to him; It is worth remembering that trait today when many of those who passed through its classrooms will remember everything that marked them.
As an academic, in addition to his work as an editor, he will be remembered as an excellent prose writer; there are pages of his that deserve to be in the pages of the Spanish morceaux choisis. First Quarantine and General Treatise on Literature, an excessive title that does not leave readers dissatisfied with the scant five pages it occupies, is written in a state of grace for those who like to value the rhythm of prose. It’s from exactly forty years ago, at the height of Rico’s life career. I collect one of the quotes from Byron’s Don Juan that frame that little book, because of my wish that it had been like this:
“…But the fact is that I have nothing planned
Except perhaps to be a moment merry.”