Elena Ferrante's Blog, page 2

This is a great time for writing by women – so why are we still considered second-rate?

The cliche dies hard: women are emotional; we please

Do men learn from women? Often. Do they admit it publicly? Rarely, even today. Let’s stick to literature. No matter how hard I try, I can’t think of many male writers who have said that they were in any way indebted to the work of a woman writer. Among Italians only one comes to mind, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of The Leopard, who wrote that he had benefited from reading Virginia Woolf. I could list quite a few great male writers who either belittle their female colleagues, or attribute to them a capacity only to write banal, trifling stories – of marriage, children, love affairs; cheap romances and sentimental novels.

Recently, things have been changing, but not very much. For example, when some renowned male writer says in private, or in public, that we women writers are good, I would like to ask: are we as good as you, better than you, or good only within the context of books written by women? That is, have we broken out of the literary women’s space we are confined to (and not only by the market)? Or have we overturned literature in general and its values?

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘People who are enemies for no reason fascinate me'

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Elena Ferrante: ‘I devote myself to plants. Is it because I am afraid of them?’

Plants are prisoners, yet they extend, twist, creep their way in

I love plants. Maybe even more than animals, more than cats, which I adore. I like everything about plants, but I always feel as though I know nothing. I buy them at the nursery, I distribute them on balconies and in every room, I plant them in the ground in the garden. I learn their names, including the scientific ones, and I write down in a notebook how much to water them, when to give them hormones, whether they need a lot of sun or a little.

And not only that: I study the types of soil, the time for pruning and the techniques. I worry about late freezes as if they were earthquakes or tidal waves.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Is there a formula for a lasting relationship? A friend, married for 48 years, says there is

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Elena Ferrante: ‘Maggie Gyllenhaal is filming one of my books. It’s her story to tell now'

It’s important for me – for her, for all women – that her work be hers and turn out well

I would never say to a woman director, “This is my book, this is my perspective. If you want to make a film, you have to stick to it.” I wouldn’t say anything, even if she systematically betrayed my text, even if she wanted to use it simply as a launch pad for her own creative impulse.

That’s what I thought when Maggie Gyllenhaal, an actor I love, announced that she would adapt a novel of mine, The Lost Daughter, for the screen. I’m attached to that book in a particular way. I know that, with it, I ventured into dangerous waters without a life preserver. And part of me would like the story in Gyllenhaal’s images to adhere faithfully to my story, to never go outside the perimeter I drew.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Is there a formula for a lasting relationship? A friend, married for 48 years, says there is

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Elena Ferrante: ‘People who are enemies for no reason fascinate me'

How did the hostility start?

I’ve had enemies and still do. I’m sorry about it, but that’s how it is. How enmity begins I don’t know; every generalisation seems arbitrary. I have a hard time crediting the theory that enemies are indispensable to the way we define ourselves, that they reinforce our identity through a sort of permanent war. I’ve never felt that need: enemies have never given me anything but anxiety, and I would gladly go without them.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt that the history of the human race is a history of enmities, and one can’t eliminate the problem with a shrug. Enmities that can be ascribed to a particular motive frighten but don’t excite me: the possession of a spring, of oil wells, of a region – those end in murder, war, slaughter and inspire horror.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Beauty triumphs in childhood photos, along with charm, joy, happy laughter’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘Is there a formula for a lasting relationship? A friend, married for 48 years, says there is

A friend, married for 48 years, says there is

The relationships of couples are an effective embodiment of the precariousness of our lives. If we meet someone we haven’t seen for several months, we hesitate to say: “Tell Franco hello from me.” It’s better to find out first, through circumspect questioning, if the relationship with Franco is still on, or if he has been replaced by a Gianni or a Giorgio, because even the most long-term relationships can end suddenly, and no one – today more than in the past – knows the formula for ensuring a marriage will last.

A very old friend of mine, who has been married for exactly 48 years, to a good man, says that in fact there is a formula: you just have to love each other. The problem, she adds in an amused tone, is that loving each other for a lifetime is really arduous.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Solaris is not Tarkovsky’s best film, but it made the greatest impression on me’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘I have never given an interview, but journalists have helped me make sense of my life’

Against the face-to-face encounter, I have preferred – because of my own limitations – a written correspondence

I am not very good at speaking, in public or private. If it’s a matter of recounting facts, I manage more or less to bring them to a conclusion. But if I have to explain my reasoning, argue rigorously, I get agitated, confused – everything seems to fly out of my head. Things go badly in particular if I’m dealing with people who I think have some authority. I have everything clear in my mind to start with, and yet it’s as if, after a few words, something gives way. I lose faith in what I wanted to say, the taut thread of the argument I had in mind breaks, I keep repeating: “I’m sorry, but I can’t explain.”

On the very rare occasions when I have had to speak in public, I spent days preparing a text. I memorised it, so as to give the impression of speaking spontaneously; but I ended up reading it line for line and, naturally, boring the audience, who prefer speakers who improvise and know how to stir the emotions, how to entertain.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘One morning I looked at myself in the mirror and recognised my mother’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘Beauty triumphs in childhood photos, along with charm, joy, happy laughter’

Missing is the distress, tiredness, irritation, fear, tantrums

I don’t have much to do with children these days. Friends and relatives send me photographs and videos of their children. I save this material carefully: I like comparing the face of a newborn with what he or she has become at eight months, at two years, at three. I have no photographs of myself as a newborn; the first image goes back to when I was two. Whereas there’s not a day in the life of my granddaughter that has not been entrusted to the future, thanks to her parents’ mobile phones, which are always within reach.

And thanks to these photos and videos, I could describe in detail how the form of the newborn has become the form of a child. If I were to make a film out of this material, I would get an interminable but impressive documentary on the instability of our bodies from birth – the way they continually take shape and lose shape, how they explore the possibilities in an effort to understand what to become, but never find a fixed form. Not to mention crawling, learning to stand upright, the infinite attempts at language, the manipulation of objects: there is a lot you could do with this abundant crop of family images.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘One morning I looked at myself in the mirror and recognised my mother’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘Solaris is not Tarkovsky’s best film, but it made the greatest impression on me’

Solaris is astonishing because the book that inspired it doesn’t seem to contain Tarkovsky’s film

A film that I watch at least once a year is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris. I’ve loved all of Tarkovsky’s works, even the most difficult. Some I’ve seen in the cinema, others on television. I saw Andrei Rublev at the cinema, and on the big screen it was astonishing, its black-and-white extraordinary: I’ll probably never see it again in a cinema, but I hope that young people will have the opportunity.

I also saw Solaris on the big screen – not Tarkovsky’s best film, but the one that made the greatest impression on me. I remember that it was advertised as the Soviet answer to 2001: A Space Odyssey – a completely misleading slogan. To see in it a cinematic contest between the US and the USSR was as silly as it was misleading. Kubrick’s marvellous film, with its imaginative force, would certainly win. But it doesn’t have even a hint of the desperation, of the sense of loss, that dominates Solaris.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘I love upheaval. As a child, I would rush out into a storm’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘One morning I looked at myself in the mirror and recognised my mother’

For a long time, I felt that to stop loving her was the only way I had to love myself

My mother was very beautiful and very clever, like all mammas, so I loved her and hated her. I began to hate her when I was around 10, maybe because I loved her so much that the idea of losing her threw me into a permanent state of anxiety, and to calm myself I had to belittle her.

Sometimes she seemed to me to be beautiful and clever just so that everyone would see me as ugly and stupid. I couldn’t think any thought of my own; I had only her thoughts in my mind. I felt oppressed, tormented by her mania for order, by her outmoded tastes that suffocated mine, by her idea of just and unjust. For a long time, I felt that to stop loving her was the only way I had to love myself – even to have a myself to love.

Related: Elena Ferrante: I don’t have much faith in those who say, ‘Here is a truly new book’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘I love upheaval. As a child, I would rush out into a storm’

I am convinced that change has a definite positive side. It helps us realize, for example, that we’ve accumulated a lot of useless things

I have never been particularly frightened of change. I’ve moved house a few times, but I don’t remember particular discomforts, regrets, long periods of maladjustment. A lot of people hate moving; some people think it can shorten your life. But first of all, I love the word – in Italian, trasloco, or “across a place” – which makes me think of the momentum needed for a leap forward, a gathering of energy that propels you towards another place, where there is everything to discover and learn.

I am convinced, in other words, that change has a definite positive side. It helps us realize, for example, that we’ve accumulated a lot of useless things: very little is truly of use. We get attached to objects and spaces, and sometimes people; and find that without them, not only is our life not impoverished, it unexpectedly opens up to new possibilities.

Related: Elena Ferrante: I don’t have much faith in those who say, ‘Here is a truly new book’

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