I love Natalia Ginzburg so I couldn't turn down a chance to write about her for the site Reading in Translation as part of a special online issue completely dedicated to one of the most important Italian writers of the 20th century.
One of my favorite Italian books -- one of my favorite books, period -- is Lessico Famigliare, and I was even able to review, for the Kenyon Review, the most recent English translation of the book, Family Lexicon, published by NYRB in 2017. The special issue actually features an interview with the translator, Jenny McPhee! I give McPhee the highest praise I can give for her translation of LESSICO: I forgot it was a translation while I read it. That's how smoothly, fluidly it reads.
This time out, I was tasked with writing about two novellas I'd never read before: Family and Borghesia, translated by Beryl Stockman (and with an afterword by Eric Gudas). And what I loved about the assignment was it added to the nuanced portrait of Ginzburg I already carry around in my head. A pioneering woman writer who was nonetheless a traditional wife and mother. Someone who broadcast the interior lives of women at a time when they were completely overlooked and yet someone who made it sound as though she had to scribble lines for a book while stirring the sauce for the pasta.
This paradox, which I wrote about in my essay for Reading in Translation, extends to the depth of loss and loneliness lurking beneath Ginzburg's cheerful veneer. She was able to feed both instincts in lines like this, c/o Stockman's translation: “Pietro
said that, in fact, he had come to a halt with his memoirs some while back. He
only wanted to remember tranquil, harmless, light-hearted things.”
She gives us the line like it was some throwaway thought in a long conversation about other, more important topics, and the final part of this thought contains these words: light-hearted things. And yet the ache inherent in those lines! I ache just thinking about the ache. He'd given up writing his book about his life, this character, because -- sottointeso -- when he thought back over everything that had happened to him, there were too many painful moments. Too many moments that were the opposite of tranquil -- harmless -- lighthearted. Or at the very least, not tranquil, harmless or light-hearted enough.
Isn't that the way?
And I tip my hat to Ginzburg because without being lugubrious, without shouting from the rooftop the inanity of knowing we're all going to die and what's more, we don't know when or how, she's managed to telegraph just how insanely painful and difficult life on earth can be.
I believe that's reason enough to read Ginzburg. And if you do, too, read the essay here:
https://readingintranslation.com/2021/02/22/putting-a-brave-face-on-loneliness-and-loss-natalia-ginzburgs-family-and-borghesia/
And read every other essay in this special issue because our fearless leader and editor, Stiliana Milkova, recruited some heavy hitters, including McPhee, Minna Zallman Proctor and Lynne Sharon Schwartz (pinch me, my old Bennington MFA prof!).
Which is only fitting since Ginzburg was a heavy hitter. A heavy hitter, even though women writers in Italy continue to be overlooked. Even though when I taught a course called Italian Women Writers at the University of Connecticut, a grad student IN ITALIAN, a young guy (!), told me quite candidly he could not think of enough books by Italian women or women authors to make up a whole syllabus. I think he'll get his PhD sooner or later -- bless his heart! -- and yet he seems unaware of Elsa Morante, Grazia Deledda, Dacia Maraini, Sandra Petrignani, Anna Maria Ortese, Anna Banti, Elena Ferrante and of course close to my heart, Mariateresa Di Lascia, who wrote the masterpiece I have the privilege of translating: Passaggio in ombra (the privilege, I should note, even if there's no publisher as yet sharing/sponsoring/honoring the privilege).
All of this to say, you won't ever regret reading Natalia Ginzburg. While it won't always be tranquil, harmless or light-hearted, it will be engrossing and beautiful. The consolation that life -- and literature -- offers us.
