The Ferrante Letters An
Four women of letters decided one day of writing a book, exchanging their own critical letters through a fertile and absolutely captivating correspondence with the other participants, analyzing a saga of an author that they would have picked up. Choices were immense as you can imagine, but at the end their attention fell on the books written by mysterious Elena Ferrante.
The book is divided in three sections. In the first one you find the correspondence of these four teachers, the second are various essays that I know you will find extremely interesting and at the end in the appendix, letters written by people involved in this conversation about Elena Ferrante and her books thanks to the authors's invitation.
I read recently a book where the author admits that the best of writing is this one: the possibility of re-capture the past, resuscitating it, for setting people free; in a way or in another a writer heals problems, re-putting in the correct order the events of a life-time; this process means sharing informations, feelings, honesty in the narration. It should be all the time in this way.
Sure, these authors articulate, sometimes a writer can be "dishonest." A writer, as also admitted these teachers sometimes can't be loyal: first of all this friend, as Elena is knows Lila so well? She can changes fragments of the story for keeping the novel more interesting.
Is it true the portrait donated us by Elena? It depends; surely is more real than not a tale written maybe by someone who hadn't never met that girl but that had just heard of her.
Friends remain in grade of perceiving, capturing the soul of another person and they can guess, understand, feelings, emotions, and emotive state; why? Because they are "in love" in a completely different way, with and for another soul. What a friend searches in another person is that pieces in grade of completing her/his character. A friend is a discovery, a powerful engine.
Sometimes being friend is searching for someone completely different from us as it happened for Elena and Lila.
Lila and Elena were two different universe, but not because, after all, there was a great difference in their existence; more or less their life, people they met in a daily base were the same ones; but yes, the family of Lila, was more practical and less intrigued by school, education and a possibility of bettering the existence through culture. Lila was very intelligent but no one in her family invested in culture. This one was perceived by them like another language.
Lila at the end will prefer a more practical life, the one every daughter born in that district of Napoli would have choosen because the only possible one.
Elena is absolutely absorbed by the violence, brutal character of Lila, when she meet her the first one and they are little; and she is powerfully attracted by it.
Lila feels the necessity of being strong every second of her existence. Elena is passive regarding life. She is simply an observer, while Lila acts, acts every second of her existence.
To Lila, my point of view, being a prepotent and feareless girl means to her trying to giving back to life the answer to the existence that that same life donated her; her answer to the asperity of an existence that, she understood, wouldn't never been too pleasant.
Errors committed by Lila has been maybe the common consequences of choices she made for trying to stay more happy with a man plenty of money, without asking too much to her existence; but that one will be just the beginning of other tribulations.
The two girls read together Little Women when still at the elementary school, and it was for them a formative book: they imagined a beautiful existence, where they would have been in grade of reading but also writing many books, telling stories. They both fell in love for Jo March, the girl more independent, more free than the rest of the other sisters March. Amy was in love for beauty; Meg was the perfect little woman devoted to the house; Beth the sweetest one.
The authors will write a lot about the idea of disappearance; disappearing without existing anymore is possible? Under many ways, maybe for the person, but not for the rest of people who touched that existence. As you will read the result of this conversation will be absolutely touching.
What we know for sure is that Lila, tormented by her sad past, had a desire: leaving this world for good, every single cell of her body deleted from the stage of life.
An author of this book arranged an interview with mysterious Elena Ferrante, without, after all obtaining a lot of answers. She tried to contact her via the American publishing house, (they declined at first the interview and later, accepted it) via Ann Goldstein American translator of the Ferrante's books.
Personally I discovered the Ferrante's world for case. Ann Goldstein, American translator of all the books of the Ferrante's saga was in Umbertide, at Civitella Ranieri for a meeting two years ago. What attracted me of that lady, so skinny, and with a sweet face when I received the newsletter with the invitation, was just a fact, I confess: she was once a co-editor of the The New Yorker. I read that magazine when I find it, and to me is one of the best ones in circulation. It's a temple of the American Journalism, and I wanted to see who could be a co-editor of that immensity. Personally, I didn't know anything of Elena Ferrante; I didn't know who that italian writer was and obviously when I introduced Anna Maria to Goldstein, from her face I understood I mispelled the name of Elena Ferrante: not having heard that name before I didn't feel any shame.
Beautiful book! For everyone, if you are new at the Ferrante's world this one will be a great introduction. If you read the books it will be a formative reading and a possibilily of seeing the story under many different ways thanks to these authors that won't leave any voice apart.
Highly recommended.
I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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