Artibano is many things :

• An artist, a genuine troubadour, who can turn into a ruthless businessman at a moment’s notice;
• A demanding boss, an indefatigable trooper, prepared to down tools and defend the less fortunate in the streets;
• A true Italian Pater Familias who has somehow managed to hang onto to his adolescent dreams;
• Someone who thrown out the door one minute appears miraculously through the window the next.

He can be objectionable, irritating and really get to you. However, when the chips are down, his tenacity and generous spirit will win you over. There’s no denying his love for his fellow human beings. You can feel it, so of course people make allowances.

In short, “Arti” is “larger than life” – no question.

How to encapsulate the life of this fellow who grew up in Manage before spreading his wings in La Louvière? What of his colourful personality that has been known to verge on the caricature? During the day he chats to his friends in Walloon dialect. In the evening he puts the world to rights and speaks of Freud and Lao Tzu until dawn. Jonathan Duvivier, the author of this book, has solved the dilemma by transforming Artibano into this fabled hero because that’s what he really is. No one but Arti would have the nerve to don robes of the legendary King Arthur; or to put it another way, how the story’s protagonist, the unassuming son of peasant stock, overthrows the wicked and symbolically named King Itzawmyne, set against a intricate backcloth of chivalrous ideals.

As I said, “over the top”. And yet, in real life this miner’s son has fuelled all his energies into just this. He has fulfilled his artistic dreams to the full, being author, composer and singer by turns. The bête noire of influential producers, he has put the spanner in more than once, ever determined to forge his social vision of society by devising a system whereby the “well intentioned” homeless can become the owners of their own homes. He has been accused of many things ranging from idealistic dreamer, through a person of impervious naivety to a disreputable salesman of the impossible…

So, in the final analysis, who is Arti? There is no answer to this question. However, by delving more deeply as you read this Don Quixotic saga fuelled by the milk of human kindness, perhaps you will reflect on the way you lead your life. After all, was this not the raison d’être of the King’s Fool?

Arti, you’re a genius!

Martine Pauwels
Journalist at La Nouvelle Gazette (Sudpresse)
La Louvière, August 2008.