There is a moment in
A natural size,
by Erri de Luca (Seix Barral), in which the narrator recalls a scene in Naples in the early 60s or late 50s. to the dikes and see a swarm of children in the water calling out to them.
They start a game: the tourists
throw two lira coins into the water and the children dive to rescue them
.
Wasn't there a similar scene in
Èstata la mano di Dio
or in some book by Saviano?
"We were a city from the south. Not from the south of Italy but from the south of the world. There were thousands of American sailors and soldiers who came to Naples to relieve their
sexual and alcoholic withdrawal
," recalls De Luca.
"The local specialty was infant mortality. We had the highest rate in Europe. We also had the highest emigration statistics, so there was a city full of women and fatherless children."
Children and parents fill the pages of
A natural size
, a very special book, difficult to explain and difficult to forget.
At life size, in principle, it is a collection of stories united by the theme of paternity and by
the gaze of De Luca, who has never been a father
.
In practice, the text mixes the author's memories and obsessions: Judaism, the wounds of the 20th century, social classes, the revolutionary struggle of the 70s, Naples, poverty... And yes, fatherhood.
"What led me to write this book was a portrait by Marc Chagall of his father," continues the author.
"In that image there is a moving desire for reconciliation and an expression of pain for the father who did not know how to value his son's art but who allowed him to
become something different
from him. We children relate to our parents from the 'it is not fair"; we detect the dissonance between what adults do and what they say. Then, we investigate that inconsistency and turn it into a total, generational critique. Children disassociate ourselves from parents. And then there comes a time when it happens to us like Chagall in his painting. For that, time and distance are needed.
When Chagall painted his father, one was in Paris and the other in Vitersk
.
It was the distance that allowed her to see him in such a way that he could find peace."
In
Life Size
, Chagall shares pages with Abraham and Isaac, with
a transcript of Adolf Eichmann seen in his daughter's eyes,
and with Erri de Luca's parents.
Return to Naples.
"I had shoes, I had what the children who dived to rescue the coins did not have. My mother made me see it, not as a reproach but as a responsibility.
I had to live up to my privilege
. Education in inequality never quit."
It is well known where that baggage took him: De Luca abandoned "my culture, my city", resigned from the university, joined Lotta Continua, went to jail and, on his return, decided to be a construction worker.
At one point in
A natural size
, De Luca remembers that his father offered him a scholarship,
a salary, so that he could leave his work in the construction sites and could write
, despite the fact that that formal and conservative man could not understand the decisions of his son.
"I did not accept. I had been working as a worker for five or six years and he wanted to free me from that condition. But I could not accept his offer.
I did not want to free myself, it was my life, it was my choice
. I could not depend on my father again when I was already I was an adult. In any case, it was literature that had to get me out of that life and it had to be in a natural way".
-I suppose that if
a psychoanalyst
had treated him at that time, he would have reached the conclusion that if he had decided that life it was as an expression of a conflict with his father.
-That's why I think that psychoanalysis can be interesting but it's not for me.
I never thought that what my parents did would condition my decisions.
I was a guest in his house and a guest cannot reproach his hosts for his way of living
From him.
I do not believe that the faults of the parents fall on the children or that these are the distorted specters of their mistakes.
Parents do what they can and children live their lives and make their own mistakes.
"
I am a man of the 20th century. It is a terrible century to which I still belong
", continues De Luca.
"
I was an anti-fascist, I was a worker and a revolutionary because those were the words that made the 20th century move
, the ones that led to decolonization. The destruction of Europe's Jews is a wound that is continually in me. "I learned Yiddish, the language that they wanted to annihilate before I was born because that was my act of criticism and reparation before History.
I also learned ancient Hebrew to read the Bible in its original language.
As a reader, not as a practitioner."
Life-size
is full of biblical stories.
"Every day I read a page from the Old Testament in ancient Hebrew. In those stories, Divinity manifests itself in the form of words. Divinity says.
Even when it has no one to communicate to, in the six days of creation, Divinity says and then create
. It is the highest point for the word This story has to do with the voice of divinity."
Let's talk about the Bible.
"Abraham is the only figure who is intimate with Divinity. And Divinity, to measure his degree of obedience, asks him to sacrifice his son.
It is not an imperative, he does not order it, he asks for it
. There is something interesting in the representation of that story: the images always show Abrahamen at the height of his strength when, according to the Bible's account, he is a 90-year-old man, facing Isaac who is in his prime and can rebel against his father. and Isaac is not the brutality of the command but the brutality of obedience."
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
literature
Italy