I am definitely doing this reading thing all the wrong way around! I have never read any of Elena Ferrante’s work, yet here I am reading a book of 3 lectures that she gave in 2020.
It was last Sunday morning and we had ventured to Northcote to have breakfast with Kat, Phil’s daughter. She had chosen the café given its proximity to Dixon’s Records. So after breakfast while she trawled through records, I wandered down the street buying flowers and then perusing the titles in the Book Grocer. I was reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, which is also an essay on writing and I saw this book and I thought it would be interesting to read another of this style and substance so shortly after finishing A Room…
Cover blurb:
In these four penetrating essays, Ferrante offers a rare look at the origins of her literary powers: her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer. Her brilliant examination of the work of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Ingeborg Bachmann, and others, sets out a modern canon of feminine talent In the Margins is a subtle yet candid book by one of the great novelists of our time about her adventures in literature, both in and out of the margins.
Review:
So that is what I did. And I enjoyed it, but not as much as Virginia Woolf. Where Virginia explores what it is to be female and a writer, during a time when the concept of the female as an equal is slowly dawning on England, Elena is educated, and was always going to be a writer. The story therefore has a deeper focus on the barriers she faces (not money or a room of one’s own) but confidence, style, what does her voice sound like and how ultimately her writing matures through practice and influence.
I do wish though that in reading both of these books that I had read something of their fictional works first. Her first three books are stories from the perspective of their leading ladies, with a play on genre. She describes three of her books in the following way:
‘Troubling Love is that: Delia, encased in the features of a cultured woman, tough and autonomous, acts with icy determination within the fixed rules of a small mystery story, until everything – the mystery genre itself – begins to break apart. The Days of Abandonment is that: Olga, encased in the features of a cultured woman, a wife and mother, acts with anguished skill within the fixed rules of a small marital crisis, until everything – the ‘scenes from a marriage’ genre itself – begins to break apart. The Lost Daughter, especially is that: Leda, encased in the features of a cultured woman, divorced with grown daughters, acts confidently within the fixed rules of a small horror story, until everything – the horror genre itself – begins to break apart.’
And so I want to understand this concept and be able to nod my head and agree or shake it to disagree, but as I am alas unknowing about her work, I cannot engage with the discussion as one that has read and loved (or hated) her work may be able to and I think that leaves a gap in connection for me.
But I suppose I should take a step back and explore a little more the three lectures and one essay. The lectures were designed to be presented at the University of Bologna on three successive days, open to the entire city. The Eco lectures are a tradition, but a little sporadic and in 2020 Elena Ferrante was to give the town her thoughts on reading and writing. Unfortunately, as a result of the pandemic and lockdowns she never provided them, instead they were read by actress Manuela Mandracchia in November 2021.
The first is Pain and Pen. In this lecture Ferrante takes the reader to the beginning, to our first steps learning how to write, and from there the rules that are applied to the creation of letters, words and pages. How the rules both guide us and hinder us.
Aquamarine is the exploration of writing style and substance. How you express yourself and whether when you play with words whether the meaning is altered. Like Pain and Pen, it is still very rule based and the excerpt above comes from this lecture as Ferrante discovers a love of writing where it breaks a conventional mould. These first three books pave her way forward but they also threaten to limit her. And so the lecture talks about how she then finds freedom from the structure of these stories and sets out into the Neapolitan series.
The final lecture Histories 1, looks at our influences and the inarguable nature of what we have read and what we have experienced will be what will shape and form us going forward. “Writing is seizing everything that has already been written and gradually learning to spend that enormous fortune.”
The last essay was not part of the proposed lectures and is a reflection of Ferrante’s relationship with the work of Dante, called ‘Dante’s Rib’. In this work she discovers what it is to write both with success and failure. I didn’t love this one as much as the first three.
In summary, I think I would have enjoyed this more having read Ferrante’s work and being able to connect to her insights. I have placed ‘My Brilliant Friend’ which is the first of the Neapolitan series onto my TBR list. Sadly that list grows faster than my ability to keep pace. I think this book though, given the complexities of the relationship between the two women that are at the heart of the story, may be a great one for my Yarra Book Club. I only need to wait 7 months for my turn to come around again 😀
