The speaker addresses someone absent or dead, a thing, a place, or an idea, as if they could hear.
In One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
I assure you, on the contrary, that at the very moment he was politely saying good morning or good evening to me from outside, on the stairs, inside he made me live as a perfect imbecile.
"I assure you" addresses the reader as someone present, who needs to be convinced of a fact that Moscarda only discovered later. The conversational tone turns reading into testimony.
Book II: The reader and the house, Vitangelo Moscarda, on the elderly tenant who lives in his house
And let us hope, for the love of God, that no other close relative has died, for then you too would see all those dear cypresses as a cemetery.
You sent yourself away, that one who is for your old friend, because you felt him to be totally different from what he is, or wants to be, for the new one.
I lost, lost forever, in the eyes of others, my reality and that of all things, Bibi! The moment I touch myself, I find I am missing.
Book V: The vital point, Vitangelo Moscarda, speaking to the dog Bibi in an empty lot
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