Elena Ferrante's Blog, page 3

‘I love children who lie for no reason. After all, I used to be one’

Sometimes, someone would say: it’s too good, it can’t really have happened. And then I was ashamed…

As a child, I was a big liar; I told all kinds of lies. I lied in order to seem better than I was. I lied to boast about things I would like to have done, but hadn’t. I often got into real trouble, because I was consistent with my lies, confessing sins that I had committed only in a lie. I told anguished lies – painful to remember – improvised in a hurry to avoid some act of violence, usually on the part of boys.

But the lies that I liked best – and I told quite a number of them – served absolutely no purpose. I put a lot into them and did all I could to make them seem like things that had really happened. They seemed so true that even I, as I was speaking, had the impression they weren’t lies. Or maybe it’s the opposite: I would tell lies without considering them lies, so they gave a stronger appearance of truth.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Even when dialogue imposes an ellipsis, I avoid it’

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

There are no works that make a clean break with the past, works that exclude it, truly watershed works

There was a phase – fortunately long past – when I was convinced that a story either had to be absolutely new, comparable to nothing but itself, or it must be discarded. This was a very presumptuous and at the same time naive attitude. It assumed that I was endowed with extraordinary gifts, and that if these gifts were not manifested in works of utter, precious uniqueness, I would have to conclude either that I was betraying myself, out of laziness or sloppiness, or that my assumption was completely unfounded. In other words, what I wrote had to be better than, and at the same time completely different from, the books that I loved and that had inspired my yearning to tell stories.

Today, I don’t have much faith in those who say, “Here is a truly new book.” What is truly new in literature is only our uniquely individual way of using the storehouse of the world’s literature. We are immersed in what has preceded us. I don’t mean the schoolbooks that chronologically order authors, their lives and works, from the beginning to now, nor do I mean the meticulous list of what we have read, starting from the age of seven. There is no before of which we are the after. All literature, great or small, is in that sense contemporary: it crowds around us as we write; it’s the air we breathe.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Even when dialogue imposes an ellipsis, I avoid it’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘I used to devour news. Now, the uninterrupted rain of it feels like chaos’

It seems to me more difficult today than in the past to try to understand how the world is going

I don’t feel desperate to be informed about everything that happens in the world. As a girl, I merely glanced at the newspaper headlines and occasionally watched the TV news.

But a growing interest in politics, which erupted when I was around 20, inspired me to amass information. It seemed to me that until then I’d lived in a state of distraction, and I was afraid I’d go through life without even being aware of the disasters, the horrors around me. I feared I would become a superficial person, unconsciously complicit. So I forced myself to read the newspapers, and then since that didn’t seem sufficient, moved on to books of contemporary history, sociology, philosophy. There was a period when, against my nature, I even stopped reading novels: it seemed like time stolen from the need to live in my own era with eyes wide open.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘I insist on writing things I think I would never put in writing’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘Even when dialogue imposes an ellipsis, I avoid it’

I stopped using ellipses when I became convinced that no discourse should ever be suspended

Some cautious notes on ellipses. They are pleasing. They’re like stepping stones, the sort that stick out of the water and are a risky pleasure to jump on when you want to cross a stream without getting wet. Today, especially in emails and texts, they have such power of suggestion that we distribute them by the handful. The canonical three dots are no longer enough; there are four, five, even six. “I’m here… I’m in anguish…. I wonder where you are….. I’m thinking of you…… I would like to see you again but…….”

They’re very communicative and indicate many things: anxiety, embarrassment, timidity, uncertainty, the mischief of saying and not saying, a moment when we were about to exaggerate and then let it go, or even just a pause.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Writing while smoking was a deceptive pleasure’

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Elena Ferrante: Matteo Salvini seems persuasive – until he bangs his racist fists

I’ve never voted for Five Star: its muddled, sometimes naive, sometimes banal language is alien to me

I’ve never been politically active. I’ve never organized marches or demonstrations, or helped organize them. I’ve confined myself to taking part in initiatives that seemed urgent, and necessary for the common good. There have been times when I was truly alarmed, and feared for the fate of democracy in my country. But more often I’ve thought our worries have been deliberately exaggerated.

I’ve never shared the apprehension about the political rise of the Five Star Movement, and find the term “populism” – today applied to all political forces, old and new – to be useless. The Five Star Movement has seemed an important receptacle for the mass discontent generated by the inadequate, often disastrous way – on right and left, in Italy and across Europe – governments have dealt with the economic crisis and epochal changes we are living through.

Related: Elena Ferrante: 'What held me back from having therapy?'

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Elena Ferrante: ‘It is time to eliminate the concepts of winning, losing and failing’

It took me a long time to understand that these classifications are as cruel as they are abitrary

I don’t like the classification of human beings into winners and losers. Or maybe I don’t understand it. I think of the symbols that identify a winner. Money, above all – that is to say, the possibility of acquiring expensive objects, and a taste for displaying them as proof of your superiority. Or the exercise of power, demonstrating by very subtle means that you are high up in the hierarchy. Or the sort of aristocracy that derives from media fame, a blue blood of celebrity ensuring that you don’t have to earn people’s attention every time – you’re recognised enthusiastically, at first sight. Or the permanent mise-en-scène of happiness: someone who has a lot of money exercises power, enjoys the status of a VIP, and therefore must be happy.

Except that all these symbols of the winner’s position soon reveal themselves to be less than genuine and, above all, precarious. Money, power, fame, glory, happiness – all are quick to show cracks. And every time this image of the winner collapses, and the appearance of victory turns to failure, the idea of the loser collapses, too; that category of people who have no expensive possessions, no power, no fame, only a sense of unhappiness resulting from their impression of having failed.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Writing while smoking was a deceptive pleasure’

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Elena Ferrante: 'What held me back from having therapy?'

The idea of telling an unknown person everything that passed through my mind felt like giving in to blackmail

I have never undergone psychoanalytic therapy, but I’ve always been on the point of doing it. What pushed me? Often a feeling of inadequacy. More often a feeling of excess, one that made me feel as if I had drunk so much water that I was drowning in it. And then a sense of permanent discontent, always stifled by my habit of good manners. And then the tendency to distance every desire that wasn’t consistent with the idea I had of myself. And finally, a faint unhappiness that wouldn’t go away – like minor joint pain that one learns to live with.

What, on the other hand, made me hold back? The idea of telling an unknown person, someone with no weight in my life, everything that passed through my mind. I had no wish to. It seemed like a violence that I was agreeing to submit to – devoutly paying for it. I felt I would be giving in to blackmail. I took for granted a sort of mute speech by the prospective analyst that went like this: I have the power to help you, but if you want me to exercise that power, you have to provide for me, at a fixed time, and in exchange for money, memories, thoughts, beliefs, everything, even the lies you tell.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘If you feel the urge to write, there’s no good reason to put it off’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘At 30, I began taking sleeping pills, but slept only four hours a night’

Today, I don’t get much sleep at night, but I get enough in the early afternoon

Long ago, I used to read and write as I waited for the moment of sleep. Soon I had to stop. Reading led me to a state of overexcitement: usually, one reads a few pages to fall asleep more easily, but the more I read, the more sleep passed me by. And it wasn’t a question of the quality of the books. Mediocre books, great books, novels, essays: sleep eluded me. Reading brought on a desire to write, and writing brought on a desire to read. The night passed without me closing my eyes and the next day was wasted. I was in a daze, I had a headache, I couldn’t do anything.

It took me a long time to resign myself to the idea that, after eight o’clock at night, I shouldn’t open a book, and I shouldn’t write. It seemed a serious limitation, but it was necessary – not sleeping took away the desire to live. So I gave in, and for a while things improved. But during periods when I was writing for almost the whole day, my insomnia returned, and in a way that frightened me. I was sleeping, but had the impression that I was still writing, words and words.

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Elena Ferrante: ‘Writing while smoking was a deceptive pleasure’

Cigarettes, alcohol and cocaine give users the illusion of coping with reality better

The only dependency I’m familiar with is tobacco: I started smoking when I was 12. I was curious about taking other drugs, but not tempted. I wanted to write, and it didn’t seem that doing so under the influence of alcohol or other narcotics could help: I was afraid of losing myself. Of course, quite a number of writers have obtained great results thanks to whisky or other substances, and my fear of letting go depressed me. What sort of writer could I be, if I didn’t use substances that would disrupt me?

But in fact I already had my stimulant: tobacco combined with a lot of coffee. How much caffeine, how much nicotine I’ve absorbed over time. I stopped drinking coffee, but for decades there was nothing in my existence that wasn’t accompanied by a cigarette. Pure joy for me was writing while smoking, smoking while writing. I knew it was a deceptive joy, I knew I should stop, I knew I was hurting myself and others. And at regular intervals I’d try to break out of that bondage; I’d proclaim it from the rooftops. But then I’d start up again, in secret – a clandestine passion that has more power than most, precisely because it’s clandestine.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘A woman friend is as rare as a true love’

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Elena Ferrante: ‘If you feel the urge to write, there’s no good reason to put it off’

When writing is our way of being in the world, it continuously asserts itself over the countless other aspects of life: love, study, a job

If you feel the need to write, you absolutely should write. Don’t trust those who say: I’m telling you for your own good, don’t waste time on that. The art of discouraging with kind words is among the most widely practised. Nor should you believe those who say: you’re young, you lack experience, wait. We shouldn’t put off writing until we’ve lived enough, read sufficiently, have a desk of our own in a room of our own with a garden overlooking the sea, have been through intense experiences, live in a stimulating city, retreat to a mountain hut, have had children, have travelled extensively.

Publishing, yes: that can certainly be put off; in fact, one can decide not to publish at all. But writing should in no case be postponed to an “after”. When writing is our way of being in the world, it continuously asserts itself over the countless other aspects of life: love, study, a job. It insists even when there’s no paper and pen or anything, because we’re worshippers of the written word and our minds dictate sentences even in the absence of tools with which to set them down. Writing, in short, is always there, urgent, and distances even the people we love, even our children who ask us to play.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘God didn’t make a good impression on my teenage self’

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