Elena Ferrante: A Story With No Writer - Originally By: Alessandra Raffaelli - Al-Doha Magazine / July 2016 / Version 105

Elena Ferrante. A Story With No Writer
Originally By: Alessandra Raffaelli.      

     Achilles, the protagonist of the Iliad, when asked by his mother, the goddess Thetis, if he would rather live a long life and be soon forgotten, or live a short one, but ultimately, remains grounded in all's memory, he chose the second option. It is the desire that no body cannot avoid. It is the desire to live in others' memories; which was the reason that impulsed a lot of people, mostly, to write literary works that immortalise their true images, but still transient - undoubtedly - by those dedicated to survive through characters, invented by their imaginations. But the matter is different with Elena Ferrante; one of the most important Italian novelists, whose name echoed through the globe; enough to mention that she is the only Italian literati to be enlisted on the prestigious prize list "Man Poker Prize 2016" and both New York Times, and New Yorker, wrote articles about her that flooded with praise, without anyone to know anything about her identity or real name, till now; that is why her story has turned into a real literary event, published periodically , upon cultural pages of newspapers, with assumptions that caught even the attention of  specialists of Dante Alighieri's literature. What Elena Ferrante states, or whoever person is behind the name, in written-press interviews, is her willingness to retrieve to the book, or the literary work, itself, its value despite its author, ensured that if the story is good, it will, definitely, be read, whoever the writer is.

 

     

      Elena Ferrante writes about women, and does this as if she is a woman. Her last novels, the famous trilogy beginning with "My Brilliant Friend", tells the story of two friends: Elena and Lila, who were born in a neighbourhood in a suburb in Naples, in a post-world-war-II era. Through this epic, the reader follows their two paths, sees them growing, and changing side by side with society's frequent changes, and lives with them the different phases of their lives, from adolescence to elderliness, passing by motherhood. The men here at the novel are losing, depressed, dominant, super selfish features: towards themselves, towards their intimate lives, incapable of comprehending women before them, and surrendering to their superiority. Elena - perhaps - less smart than Lila, but, definitely, more stable and eloquent. She is able to move away from the neighbourhood, and be part of the cultural Italian class at the time, transformed, finally, to be an author. It sounds, here, that it is a presentation of the anonymous author's biography. In real, Ferrante refutes the assumption, assuring, anyway, that her life experiences - exactly - feed the authentic / noble literary innovation with value, indispensable to the author. Indeed, realism that transfers, subsequently, to cruelty, nearly, is a mainstream feature of the four novels published till date. Elena Ferrante doesn't salvage a thing, even her mother town, Naples, which manifests with all its characteristics, and tragic beauty. In that neighbourhood, separating boundaries exist which the two friends find, while still children, difficulty to escape, and remain locked in them the whole life. The neighbourhood is life itself, the place where relations are consumed, with its logic that no one understands, unless one inhabits it. Elena denies it, abandons it, and dumps her colloquial accent while attending university in Pisa. Still, her soul remains suspended there, tangled, with pain and magnificence, with her friend's soul. The rational friend doesn't allow herself to abandon the neighbourhood unless for a little while, and the one thing that grants the chance to avoid that life, described by the novelist as "subverted marginalization", is the moments where Lila loses sensation of reality, and resorts to a parallel world capable of concealing the harshness of reality.
      Perhaps - this world, both cruel and alluring, is one of the main facets that has impressed the foreign audience hugely. The real Italy, without frills, based on stories of interior struggles between the neighbourhood families, and trying - harshly - to free itself from its burdens.
       More importantly, Elena Ferrante's novels have been met with great success on social media websites: on Instagram, multiple pictures of passionate readers overflow, with them carrying her books during daily life moments, while on Tumblr, a series of sayings have been published condemning Nino Sarratore, one of the antagonists in the trilogy.
      The secret - perhaps - resides, simply, in the author's ability to braid an interesting and convincing story. A novel with all its depths, with a choral-like formation where it reminds us of how our lives are - in reality - connected / attached, strongly, to our roots and who we meet, coincidentally, in the street. A story that places us before the contradictions of reality, where it never denies agony, but, ultimately, says that a thing could be changed, that Ferrante's story has the super ability to be alive, to be read, and - probably - that is the main and only purpose of LITERATURE.
Al-Doha Magazine / July 2016 / Version 105