What do you think?
Rate this book
Le voci della sera
Il senso delle storie familiari, la presenza dei vecchi, e il venir su dei giovani, quel loro crescere dolorosamente, diversi da come ci si sarebbe aspettato, e l'allacciarsi e il mutare degli amori, delle amicizie, delle simpatie e delle antipatie, tutte queste cose che la narrativa ha quasi dimenticato, Natalia Ginzburg è forse oggi la sola ad esprimerle, con un amore esclusivo e un'assorta ostinazione possibili soltanto per i beni che si sentono incostuditi, soggetti ad essere devastati e persi. E tutto con quel suo modo di raccontare spoglio, fedele al rigore delle notazioni oggettive, delle battute di dialogo, delle cadenze delle frasi. Della taciturna ragazza che scrive in prima persona, soffriamo le speranze e le delusioni cosí, senza una riga di commento o giudizio o introspezione.
129 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
154 people are currently reading
6514 people want to read
About the author
Natalia Ginzburg
138 books1,574 followersNatalia Ginzburg (née Levi) was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize. Most of her works were also translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and United States. An activist, for a time in the 1930s she belonged to the Italian Communist Party. In 1983 she was elected to Parliament from Rome as an Independent.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 633 reviews
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
September 16, 2024
'Why is everything ruined, everything?'
I’ve always enjoyed metaphors of time as a train, speeding forward along the tracks into the future. People get on, people disembark and—if we are going to get allegorical about it—the various stations are sort of like the events in life that become a hinge between Before and After. ‘Why has everything been ruined,’ various characters ask almost as a refrain in Natalia Ginzberg’s 1961 novel Voices in the Evening, a post-war story set in an Italian town straining with the heavy burdens and debris of the past as it tries to reroute towards the horizons of the future. The novel follows Elsa as she navigates the local society and her mother’s own gossip-ridden narratives, but is also an examination of the local factory owning De Francisci family and how their lives are interwoven with the history of the town to create an abstract portrait of Italian society fractured by the weight of fascism and war. Translated by D.M. Low, Ginzberg writes with lucid precision to create this striking collage of lives scrutinizing how both internal and external forces have connected or isolated them. Here we see the truths on how ‘happiness,’ as one of the brothers states, ‘is like water; one only realizes it when it has run away,’ as Ginzberg brilliantly unburies the ineffable feelings these characters try to hide deep within themselves.
‘There are so many sad things in life. Why read novels? Is not life a novel?’
There is always that question whether the You of today is someone the You of your childhood would have been proud of. I mean, beyond that kid me would definitely tear the aux cord away from me now, it has always seemed like a disingenuous question that discounts the myriad of ways our priorities, interests and avenues of action are constantly reconfigured by the world around us as well as our own internal conversations with ourselves. Unless you grew up to become an astronaut, can child-You really understand the way life is about compromising with the hand you are dealt and making concessions to be able to fight another day? This notion is at the heart of Voices in the Evening, following a family through an amazingly patchworked narrative—presumably recounted to us by Elsa—that juxtaposes the idealisms and eagerness of their youth with the wreckage of the past strewn about in their present. We often first encounter the character through their aftermath before learning their story, like a ghost of the past lingering translucently over the rubble—Nebbia, for instance, is first introduced through the details of his murder during the war much before we see the happiness of his youth as a central figure in friendship (and one instance of failed lover) to most of the De Francisci family.
Perhaps most interesting is Purillo, as his story most dredges up the uncomfortable aftermath of the war as people must pick up the pieces and reconnect as a community with the knowledge that some of their neighbors were fascists and others were resistors (like the sister Raffaella who holed up in the mountains and was a communist). This is an intriguing examination considering Ginzberg’s own husband was executed by the fascists, as here we first learn of Purillo for his role as a fascist before discovering a very different impression of him as he appears as a warm and supportive figure in the lives of his family members. Purillo was an adopted son to Balotta (his nickname meaning ‘little ball’ for his stout features), the socialist patriach of the De Francisci family and factory owner. Despite having reservations over Purillo, he does inevitably give him control of the factory. There is an uncomfortable idea never voiced but always hanging over the narrative as we see Purillo, admittedly a fascist, having kept the town afloat during the war because his party alignment allowed the factory to continue running and also gave him information that saved Balotta’s life. What makes Voices in the Evening so compelling is the messiness of lives as well as the moral complexities of characters.
‘How a place can get one down!’
In the present, the baggage of the past is a heavy burden to carry. But the past is also only accessible through memory, often tainted in nostalgia that delivers an inaccurate replication of reality and spurs a homesickness for a time and place that only half existed, made worse by the chasm wrought by the destructive recent past of fascism and war that has completely upended society. Character’s like Elsa’s mother seem to resign themselves to golden age nostalgia and exist in a present constructed more on gossip than hard truths (amusingly she often refers to Elsa’s friends as the ‘little Bottiglia girls’ despite them all now being in their early 30s seemingly as an indication she can’t let go of the past). But for others, the past is more like a haunting, such as it is for the youngest De Francisci brother Tommasino with whom Elsa has been carrying on a clandestine relationship:
Even if he were to escape from it he knows it will continue to haunt him. While modern novels seem to often hit on themes of generational trauma, I quite enjoyed the way Ginzberg explored the way trauma can send shockwaves through a singular generation. Here the failings of life and love have a traumatic resonance on those around them, such as Vincenzino’s failed marriage reading like a warning to the younger people around him. It is another example of the ways an event reshapes society and culture, with the fallout of these lives shattering faith in even things like the institution of marriage. ‘I have taken to driving my thoughts underground,’ Tommasino says about trying to navigate a society that still attempts to uphold the norms of the past in a present currently in shambles, and Ginzberg makes us consider the cost of silence weighed against the standards of society.
‘Ginzburg did not overdramatise the war in her writing, but sought to integrate it into daily life,’ Colm Tóibín writes in his introduction, ‘it seemed part of normality until it came close and then it tore the lives of her characters asunder.’ This is a wonderfully psychological novel where Ginzberg asks us to consider the ways a communal past can oppress the present as we struggle to find our bearings to move forward. In the forward she tells us the characters and places are fiction but adds ‘I am sorry to say this having loved them as though they were real,’ and one of her greatest strengths in this novel is presenting these characters as so lifelike upon the page that by the end of the novel the reader, too, will have known them as if they were real. Voices in the Evening is a small but heavy novel, asking us if we can ever escape the past and forcing us to consider the concessions we make in life in order to keep living it. A powerful book.
4.5/5
‘We have brought it to the light and it is dead, and we shall never recover it any more.’
I’ve always enjoyed metaphors of time as a train, speeding forward along the tracks into the future. People get on, people disembark and—if we are going to get allegorical about it—the various stations are sort of like the events in life that become a hinge between Before and After. ‘Why has everything been ruined,’ various characters ask almost as a refrain in Natalia Ginzberg’s 1961 novel Voices in the Evening, a post-war story set in an Italian town straining with the heavy burdens and debris of the past as it tries to reroute towards the horizons of the future. The novel follows Elsa as she navigates the local society and her mother’s own gossip-ridden narratives, but is also an examination of the local factory owning De Francisci family and how their lives are interwoven with the history of the town to create an abstract portrait of Italian society fractured by the weight of fascism and war. Translated by D.M. Low, Ginzberg writes with lucid precision to create this striking collage of lives scrutinizing how both internal and external forces have connected or isolated them. Here we see the truths on how ‘happiness,’ as one of the brothers states, ‘is like water; one only realizes it when it has run away,’ as Ginzberg brilliantly unburies the ineffable feelings these characters try to hide deep within themselves.
‘There are so many sad things in life. Why read novels? Is not life a novel?’
There is always that question whether the You of today is someone the You of your childhood would have been proud of. I mean, beyond that kid me would definitely tear the aux cord away from me now, it has always seemed like a disingenuous question that discounts the myriad of ways our priorities, interests and avenues of action are constantly reconfigured by the world around us as well as our own internal conversations with ourselves. Unless you grew up to become an astronaut, can child-You really understand the way life is about compromising with the hand you are dealt and making concessions to be able to fight another day? This notion is at the heart of Voices in the Evening, following a family through an amazingly patchworked narrative—presumably recounted to us by Elsa—that juxtaposes the idealisms and eagerness of their youth with the wreckage of the past strewn about in their present. We often first encounter the character through their aftermath before learning their story, like a ghost of the past lingering translucently over the rubble—Nebbia, for instance, is first introduced through the details of his murder during the war much before we see the happiness of his youth as a central figure in friendship (and one instance of failed lover) to most of the De Francisci family.
Perhaps most interesting is Purillo, as his story most dredges up the uncomfortable aftermath of the war as people must pick up the pieces and reconnect as a community with the knowledge that some of their neighbors were fascists and others were resistors (like the sister Raffaella who holed up in the mountains and was a communist). This is an intriguing examination considering Ginzberg’s own husband was executed by the fascists, as here we first learn of Purillo for his role as a fascist before discovering a very different impression of him as he appears as a warm and supportive figure in the lives of his family members. Purillo was an adopted son to Balotta (his nickname meaning ‘little ball’ for his stout features), the socialist patriach of the De Francisci family and factory owner. Despite having reservations over Purillo, he does inevitably give him control of the factory. There is an uncomfortable idea never voiced but always hanging over the narrative as we see Purillo, admittedly a fascist, having kept the town afloat during the war because his party alignment allowed the factory to continue running and also gave him information that saved Balotta’s life. What makes Voices in the Evening so compelling is the messiness of lives as well as the moral complexities of characters.
‘How a place can get one down!’
In the present, the baggage of the past is a heavy burden to carry. But the past is also only accessible through memory, often tainted in nostalgia that delivers an inaccurate replication of reality and spurs a homesickness for a time and place that only half existed, made worse by the chasm wrought by the destructive recent past of fascism and war that has completely upended society. Character’s like Elsa’s mother seem to resign themselves to golden age nostalgia and exist in a present constructed more on gossip than hard truths (amusingly she often refers to Elsa’s friends as the ‘little Bottiglia girls’ despite them all now being in their early 30s seemingly as an indication she can’t let go of the past). But for others, the past is more like a haunting, such as it is for the youngest De Francisci brother Tommasino with whom Elsa has been carrying on a clandestine relationship:
‘It has a weight of lead, with all its dead. This village of ours, it just get me down; it is so small, a handful of houses. I can never free myself from it, I cannot forget it.’
Even if he were to escape from it he knows it will continue to haunt him. While modern novels seem to often hit on themes of generational trauma, I quite enjoyed the way Ginzberg explored the way trauma can send shockwaves through a singular generation. Here the failings of life and love have a traumatic resonance on those around them, such as Vincenzino’s failed marriage reading like a warning to the younger people around him. It is another example of the ways an event reshapes society and culture, with the fallout of these lives shattering faith in even things like the institution of marriage. ‘I have taken to driving my thoughts underground,’ Tommasino says about trying to navigate a society that still attempts to uphold the norms of the past in a present currently in shambles, and Ginzberg makes us consider the cost of silence weighed against the standards of society.
‘Ginzburg did not overdramatise the war in her writing, but sought to integrate it into daily life,’ Colm Tóibín writes in his introduction, ‘it seemed part of normality until it came close and then it tore the lives of her characters asunder.’ This is a wonderfully psychological novel where Ginzberg asks us to consider the ways a communal past can oppress the present as we struggle to find our bearings to move forward. In the forward she tells us the characters and places are fiction but adds ‘I am sorry to say this having loved them as though they were real,’ and one of her greatest strengths in this novel is presenting these characters as so lifelike upon the page that by the end of the novel the reader, too, will have known them as if they were real. Voices in the Evening is a small but heavy novel, asking us if we can ever escape the past and forcing us to consider the concessions we make in life in order to keep living it. A powerful book.
4.5/5
‘We have brought it to the light and it is dead, and we shall never recover it any more.’
July 11, 2020
Three recent reviews and stories about Natalia Ginzburg:
Vivian Gornick on the Solace and Revelation of Natalia Ginzburg
https://lithub.com/vivian-gornick-on-...
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/bo...
This Italian author is famous for the bluntness of her writing. People spare no punches. The patriarch owns a paper factory in a small town in Italy and thus “owns” the town. As his children grow up and marry they live in the mansions on the hills overlooking the town. The patriarch tells everyone his sister is a half-wit; his brother is a ninny; his sons are not worth a fig. Even his adopted son, whom he chooses to run the factory, when he speaks to him in front of everyone in the factory he says “You, Purillo, are distasteful to me. I cannot bear you.”
To everyone else’s disgust the adopted son sides with the fascists during the war. But his “smart politics” probably saved the factory and even his adoptive parent lives. He was able to spirit the mother and father away one night when he learned their house would be ransacked and his adopted parents would probably have been killed. He put them in hiding in a nearby small town for the rest of the war.
Among the numerous sons and daughters of the founding family, and some relatives and close family friends in the town, there’s a long string of bad marriages. Marriages of convenience where neither man nor woman loved the other. One man may be a morphine addict. There’s a gay man who marries and spends little time with his wife compared to his time with his male servants. There’s a son who brings a German- and French-speaking woman to town who refuses to learn enough Italian to even order her maids around. There is much faithlessness by men and women.
One son dies in car accident. The mother laments two children lost to her through emigration: a son in Venezuela and a daughter in South Africa. Maybe they are happy, but does it matter if they and the grandchildren are not seen again?
One son becomes infatuated with a visiting Brazilian woman. He becomes engaged. But then her family visits and he becomes physically sick when he realizes how terrible this is going to be. His father uses money to buy everyone off and call off the engagement. The son then quickly meets a local woman and “He married her after a complicated and confused declaration of love, and he married her in haste for fear of changing his mind.”
Most of the story is told retrospectively, after the war, thus the title, Voices of the Evening.
But there’s not a lot about the war. Mostly the story is about the lives and loves of this large family -- mostly the loves, mainly unrequited. In fact the main story loosely revolves around a young woman who loves a man her entire life, but he does not love her. They eventually have an affair but he’s emotionless. At one point they even become engaged, but he’s just going through the motions. He cruelly tells her in so many words: I’ve never loved you; I can never love you; I can’t love any woman, but if you want to get married, I’ll do it.
She says to him “There is no change in your life …since the day I came to exist for you.” She breaks it off. She’s 27 when that happens, pretty old to ever get married by Italian standards at that time. Her mother is a constant complainer, a hypochondriac and a constant critic of her daughter. The daughter listens to her criticisms, accepts her complaints, offers sympathy. This has been and will be the daughter’s life.
There’s some good writing:
“Sometimes I watch you go by at the garden gate, and you have a way of walking by which one can tell you are not happy.”
I liked the story. While the main story is that of the young woman who breaks off the engagement (the story begins and ends with that woman) the rest comes off as a series of vignettes – almost like a soap opera. So I’ll say a 3.5 rounded up to 4. I much preferred another book of hers I have read, The City and the House, a story told entirely in letters. In Voices, there’s a lot of local color of a fictitious small town, presumably in Piedmont near Turin where the author (1916-1991) grew up.
Photo of a town in the Piedmont www.rei.com/adventures
Photo of the author from newyorker.com/books
Vivian Gornick on the Solace and Revelation of Natalia Ginzburg
https://lithub.com/vivian-gornick-on-...
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/bo...
This Italian author is famous for the bluntness of her writing. People spare no punches. The patriarch owns a paper factory in a small town in Italy and thus “owns” the town. As his children grow up and marry they live in the mansions on the hills overlooking the town. The patriarch tells everyone his sister is a half-wit; his brother is a ninny; his sons are not worth a fig. Even his adopted son, whom he chooses to run the factory, when he speaks to him in front of everyone in the factory he says “You, Purillo, are distasteful to me. I cannot bear you.”
To everyone else’s disgust the adopted son sides with the fascists during the war. But his “smart politics” probably saved the factory and even his adoptive parent lives. He was able to spirit the mother and father away one night when he learned their house would be ransacked and his adopted parents would probably have been killed. He put them in hiding in a nearby small town for the rest of the war.
Among the numerous sons and daughters of the founding family, and some relatives and close family friends in the town, there’s a long string of bad marriages. Marriages of convenience where neither man nor woman loved the other. One man may be a morphine addict. There’s a gay man who marries and spends little time with his wife compared to his time with his male servants. There’s a son who brings a German- and French-speaking woman to town who refuses to learn enough Italian to even order her maids around. There is much faithlessness by men and women.
One son dies in car accident. The mother laments two children lost to her through emigration: a son in Venezuela and a daughter in South Africa. Maybe they are happy, but does it matter if they and the grandchildren are not seen again?
One son becomes infatuated with a visiting Brazilian woman. He becomes engaged. But then her family visits and he becomes physically sick when he realizes how terrible this is going to be. His father uses money to buy everyone off and call off the engagement. The son then quickly meets a local woman and “He married her after a complicated and confused declaration of love, and he married her in haste for fear of changing his mind.”
Most of the story is told retrospectively, after the war, thus the title, Voices of the Evening.
But there’s not a lot about the war. Mostly the story is about the lives and loves of this large family -- mostly the loves, mainly unrequited. In fact the main story loosely revolves around a young woman who loves a man her entire life, but he does not love her. They eventually have an affair but he’s emotionless. At one point they even become engaged, but he’s just going through the motions. He cruelly tells her in so many words: I’ve never loved you; I can never love you; I can’t love any woman, but if you want to get married, I’ll do it.
She says to him “There is no change in your life …since the day I came to exist for you.” She breaks it off. She’s 27 when that happens, pretty old to ever get married by Italian standards at that time. Her mother is a constant complainer, a hypochondriac and a constant critic of her daughter. The daughter listens to her criticisms, accepts her complaints, offers sympathy. This has been and will be the daughter’s life.
There’s some good writing:
“Sometimes I watch you go by at the garden gate, and you have a way of walking by which one can tell you are not happy.”
I liked the story. While the main story is that of the young woman who breaks off the engagement (the story begins and ends with that woman) the rest comes off as a series of vignettes – almost like a soap opera. So I’ll say a 3.5 rounded up to 4. I much preferred another book of hers I have read, The City and the House, a story told entirely in letters. In Voices, there’s a lot of local color of a fictitious small town, presumably in Piedmont near Turin where the author (1916-1991) grew up.
Photo of a town in the Piedmont www.rei.com/adventures
Photo of the author from newyorker.com/books
August 11, 2024
SOTTERRARE I PENSIERI
Matisse: Les trois soeurs (sulla copertina della prima edizione).
Diversissimo da Caro Michele, l’unico altro della Ginzburg che finora ho letto – e belli entrambi, piaciuti entrambi – pubblicato nel 1961, in una lingua che m’è parsa piacevolmente più antica – scritto quasi a voler imitare una favola, ma per fortuna tutto ammantato con tono di lieve burla – mi ha fatto pensare al Calvino che preferisco, quello della trilogia degli antenati – e forse il buon caro Italo un po’ si è riconosciuto se ha voluto dedicare a queste cento paginette le sue sette qui apposte a mo’ di introduzione.
Felice Casorati: Lo straniero.
Elsa è un io narrante che per la maggior parte della storia sembra onnisciente, ma di sé non parla mai se non attraverso il dialogo, e in generale commenta meno di niente. Vive in un paese che è come un guscio di noce, in città ci va con la corriera, e la città presumo sia Torino.
In molti dialoghi, che abbondano, e sono tutti buffi assai, nei momenti in cui i personaggi fanno “conversazione” sembra di sentire l’eco della Grande Signorina - di cui Natalia è stata grande fan ed estimatrice, insieme all’Alberto da Voghera probabilmente la prima qui da noi - ma l’effetto è meno tagliente, più tenero, “meno pervicace e maligno��.
Felice Casorati
Nel paese c’è il padrone della fabbrica, la famiglia di maggior spicco: ma la pur numerosa prole dura poco e non è mai all’altezza del genitore, socialista in epoca fascista. Quello più pratico e attivo è un trovatello che hanno adottato.
Del rampollo s’innamora la nostra Elsa, ma rimane tiepidamente ricambiata: e il tentativo di fidanzamento s’interrompe prima delle nozze.
E nonostante il chiacchiericcio imperi - più in ambito femminile che maschile - questa è soprattutto una storia di silenzi, di pensieri sotterrati, di gente che volta le spalle alla propria anima.
La poesia è sempre stata questo: far passare il mare in un imbuto; fissarsi uno strettissimo numero di mezzi espressivi e cercare d’esprimere con quello qualcosa d’estremamente complesso.
Baccio Maria Bacci: Pomeriggio a Fiesole (sulla copertina della mia edizione).
Matisse: Les trois soeurs (sulla copertina della prima edizione).
Diversissimo da Caro Michele, l’unico altro della Ginzburg che finora ho letto – e belli entrambi, piaciuti entrambi – pubblicato nel 1961, in una lingua che m’è parsa piacevolmente più antica – scritto quasi a voler imitare una favola, ma per fortuna tutto ammantato con tono di lieve burla – mi ha fatto pensare al Calvino che preferisco, quello della trilogia degli antenati – e forse il buon caro Italo un po’ si è riconosciuto se ha voluto dedicare a queste cento paginette le sue sette qui apposte a mo’ di introduzione.
Felice Casorati: Lo straniero.
Elsa è un io narrante che per la maggior parte della storia sembra onnisciente, ma di sé non parla mai se non attraverso il dialogo, e in generale commenta meno di niente. Vive in un paese che è come un guscio di noce, in città ci va con la corriera, e la città presumo sia Torino.
In molti dialoghi, che abbondano, e sono tutti buffi assai, nei momenti in cui i personaggi fanno “conversazione” sembra di sentire l’eco della Grande Signorina - di cui Natalia è stata grande fan ed estimatrice, insieme all’Alberto da Voghera probabilmente la prima qui da noi - ma l’effetto è meno tagliente, più tenero, “meno pervicace e maligno��.
Felice Casorati
Nel paese c’è il padrone della fabbrica, la famiglia di maggior spicco: ma la pur numerosa prole dura poco e non è mai all’altezza del genitore, socialista in epoca fascista. Quello più pratico e attivo è un trovatello che hanno adottato.
Del rampollo s’innamora la nostra Elsa, ma rimane tiepidamente ricambiata: e il tentativo di fidanzamento s’interrompe prima delle nozze.
E nonostante il chiacchiericcio imperi - più in ambito femminile che maschile - questa è soprattutto una storia di silenzi, di pensieri sotterrati, di gente che volta le spalle alla propria anima.
La poesia è sempre stata questo: far passare il mare in un imbuto; fissarsi uno strettissimo numero di mezzi espressivi e cercare d’esprimere con quello qualcosa d’estremamente complesso.
Baccio Maria Bacci: Pomeriggio a Fiesole (sulla copertina della mia edizione).
December 22, 2025
من أجمل ما ترجمت الراحلة أماني فوزي حبشي
نتاليا جينزبورج تحدث أصدقاء عن أصدقاء
هؤلاء الذين لم نرهم ولن نراهم أبدا لأنهم يسكنون مدينة بعيدة في خيالها
هؤلاء الذين نراهم كل يوم لأنهم هنا حولنا في البيوت والشوارع ومحطات المترو والمقاهي
هؤلاء الذين لم نرهم أبدا
لأننا مررنا بهم
وانزلقت نظراتنا على وجوههم
فلم تنطبع في عيوننا ملامحهم
ولم نسجل شيئا من أسرارهم التي يعلنها صمتهم
وتتوه في حكاياتهم
التي يحملها أثير لا موجة له في مذياع
ولا مستقر له في فؤاد
هؤلاء الذين تعلّقت عيونهم بنا ولم نستطع انتشالهم
من الغرق في الوحدة
هؤلاء الذين ترجّتهم عيوننا
ومضوا عاجزين عن تحمّل الصبر
على مشاق المحبة التي لا يطويها رحيل
مصنع صغير وأسر معدودة وطرق متقاطعة
وعادات موروثة يصعب الهرب منها
إلى حرية مطموسة العلامات
حول المصنع تنمو المدينة وتتشابك العلاقات
وتتطور تقنيّات تعاطي الحياة
لسد ثغرات الروح الحائرة
المصانع لا تمدنا بمدار يستوعب وجودنا المؤرق
وخط الإنتاج الصناعي من المستحيل أن ينتج الحب
أو يدعّم كيانه الرقيق
والناس أسرى قيود الحكايات القديمة
التي تعيد إنتاج مآساة عدم وجودهم
فاشية وشيوعية واشتراكية وموت وفرار وحيرة في الاختيار
وطقوس معادة عبر الأجيال
نلتمس فيها نواة استقرار تستند إليها أحزاننا
غير المبررة بمنطق التقاليد
عن عالم لا يشبه عالمنا نبحث
فيه حب وحيد
يستقبل صوتنا المعذّب بالتواصل المعطوب
يلتمس في فضاء المحال لقاء بعيد المنال
يحفظ منطق طائر القلب
كجهاز تسجيل سحري تنطبع فيه الأحلام
نحن مقيدون بأغلال الوقت
التي لا تفهم لماذا لانستسلم؟ والكل يفرح بك مادمت في الحظيرة
مدجنا بقوائم الأسعار وعيون لا تراك
أصوات المساء
لأننا أصوات منفردة تتسرّب في حوار بلا إطار
كل يحكي بإصرار
دون رد والفقد حصار
والمساء حلم آخر اليوم
ورغبة في نهار جديد
نتخفف فيه من أثقال تراكم الأحمال
تقول رضا الحياة ليست رواية يؤدي كل إنسان فيها دوره بدرجة من المهارة
أفهم أن الأم ترى ذلك لأنها نمطية عاشت أسيرة للتقاليد
هناك أناس لا تعيش حياة حقيقية
إن الحياة تطحنهم في الخلاط
بعضهم لديه قناعة راسخة بأنه فعل ما يستطيع
وبعضهم لديه عزاء بأنه لم يجد في القائمة إلا اختيارات قليلة ومتشابهة
هناك أناس يحاولون أن يلتمسوا داخل الحياة نموذجا من إعدادهم
هؤلاء الذين فكروا خارج الخرائط المعدّة سلفا
ولم يبحثوا عن الراعي الرسمي خارج عالمهم الداخلي
إنهم يرفضون الإذعان لمخططات المحيطين بهم
ويدركون تمام الإدراك أنهم سيقابلون من يستمع إليهم وحدهم
من سينصت بمودة لأصواتهم التي لم تختلط نبراتها بغبار المدينة
كم كان صوتها رائعا حينما كانت تتكلّم
نتاليا جينزبورج تحدث أصدقاء عن أصدقاء
هؤلاء الذين لم نرهم ولن نراهم أبدا لأنهم يسكنون مدينة بعيدة في خيالها
هؤلاء الذين نراهم كل يوم لأنهم هنا حولنا في البيوت والشوارع ومحطات المترو والمقاهي
هؤلاء الذين لم نرهم أبدا
لأننا مررنا بهم
وانزلقت نظراتنا على وجوههم
فلم تنطبع في عيوننا ملامحهم
ولم نسجل شيئا من أسرارهم التي يعلنها صمتهم
وتتوه في حكاياتهم
التي يحملها أثير لا موجة له في مذياع
ولا مستقر له في فؤاد
هؤلاء الذين تعلّقت عيونهم بنا ولم نستطع انتشالهم
من الغرق في الوحدة
هؤلاء الذين ترجّتهم عيوننا
ومضوا عاجزين عن تحمّل الصبر
على مشاق المحبة التي لا يطويها رحيل
مصنع صغير وأسر معدودة وطرق متقاطعة
وعادات موروثة يصعب الهرب منها
إلى حرية مطموسة العلامات
حول المصنع تنمو المدينة وتتشابك العلاقات
وتتطور تقنيّات تعاطي الحياة
لسد ثغرات الروح الحائرة
المصانع لا تمدنا بمدار يستوعب وجودنا المؤرق
وخط الإنتاج الصناعي من المستحيل أن ينتج الحب
أو يدعّم كيانه الرقيق
والناس أسرى قيود الحكايات القديمة
التي تعيد إنتاج مآساة عدم وجودهم
فاشية وشيوعية واشتراكية وموت وفرار وحيرة في الاختيار
وطقوس معادة عبر الأجيال
نلتمس فيها نواة استقرار تستند إليها أحزاننا
غير المبررة بمنطق التقاليد
عن عالم لا يشبه عالمنا نبحث
فيه حب وحيد
يستقبل صوتنا المعذّب بالتواصل المعطوب
يلتمس في فضاء المحال لقاء بعيد المنال
يحفظ منطق طائر القلب
كجهاز تسجيل سحري تنطبع فيه الأحلام
نحن مقيدون بأغلال الوقت
التي لا تفهم لماذا لانستسلم؟ والكل يفرح بك مادمت في الحظيرة
مدجنا بقوائم الأسعار وعيون لا تراك
أصوات المساء
لأننا أصوات منفردة تتسرّب في حوار بلا إطار
كل يحكي بإصرار
دون رد والفقد حصار
والمساء حلم آخر اليوم
ورغبة في نهار جديد
نتخفف فيه من أثقال تراكم الأحمال
تقول رضا الحياة ليست رواية يؤدي كل إنسان فيها دوره بدرجة من المهارة
أفهم أن الأم ترى ذلك لأنها نمطية عاشت أسيرة للتقاليد
هناك أناس لا تعيش حياة حقيقية
إن الحياة تطحنهم في الخلاط
بعضهم لديه قناعة راسخة بأنه فعل ما يستطيع
وبعضهم لديه عزاء بأنه لم يجد في القائمة إلا اختيارات قليلة ومتشابهة
هناك أناس يحاولون أن يلتمسوا داخل الحياة نموذجا من إعدادهم
هؤلاء الذين فكروا خارج الخرائط المعدّة سلفا
ولم يبحثوا عن الراعي الرسمي خارج عالمهم الداخلي
إنهم يرفضون الإذعان لمخططات المحيطين بهم
ويدركون تمام الإدراك أنهم سيقابلون من يستمع إليهم وحدهم
من سينصت بمودة لأصواتهم التي لم تختلط نبراتها بغبار المدينة
كم كان صوتها رائعا حينما كانت تتكلّم
November 22, 2022
تَٓبلي الايام و تتشابه الليالي و يتسرب العمر في أحداثِ مألوفة و احاديث تافهة و نفيق ذات مساء و نحن فاقدين لكل ما يجعل للحياة معنى و رونق فبعض الجروح تختفي فقط
لكن الألم يظل حاضر باق
رواية خافتة الصوت باردة الأحداث و الوصف لدرجة نفتقدها تماما في عزلنا المنزلي العالمي الصاخب الذي يكشف لنا أنفسنا و من حولنا..بينما أصوات المساء فيها صفحات كاملة لمن يتحدثون و يردون على أنفسهم؛ تعبيرا عن اغتراب بطلتنا الكامل معهم
ننطلق لقرية إيطالية في مطلع الستينات و نتعرف على ابنة محرر عقود بمصنع و اسرتها و سرعان ما نتركهم لنستعرض حياة بالوتا العصامي صاحب مصنع القماش و ابناؤه الخمسة و ربيبه و اصدقائهم منذ الحرب العالمية
كل أبناء "بالوتا"، لسبب أو لآخَر، الأحياء منهم والأموات، يشوبهم دائمًا نوع من الغرابة ، أفكار غير عادية ، وهم من الباحثين عن التعاسة
تستعرض خيبة امل الإيطالين المعتادة في أبنائهم و ثقة بالوتا في ان ربيبه :البوريللو هو فقط من سيواصل نجاحه
نراقب حسرات العمر و خيباته و مرارته مع بضع انتصارات مسروقة
و بين الفيلات و البيوت الجبلية يتفرق الابناء
حتى نصل لاجمل أبطال الرواية تومازينو و شعاره "عش ما شئت فأنت مفارق" لو اخترت له اسم عربي فساسميه نسيم.. كل هدفه في الحياة أن يعبرها كنسمة او همسة عابرة
ورث معظم الثروة و المسؤلية و لكنه ورث عبء من ماتوا و من يعيشون كالموتي
ا"في لحظة ما لا يرغب المرء في مواجهة أعماقه. لأنه يشعر بالخوف بأنه اذا واجهه فلن يجد بعد ذلك أي قدرة للاستمرار على قيد الحياة"ا
كان تومازينو يحمل على كتفيه أعباء ماضي و مصنع و بلدة و حرب و أسرة معقدة
حتى حبه كان قليلا هشا، كان يعتبر ان ما بينهما هشا لدرجة انه لو ظهر للهواء و النور سيتطاير و يموت
ا*لنصبح مثل الجميع، ولنفعل ذلك الذي يتوقع منا الجميع أن نفعله." ا
فهل ينجح تومازينو في ان يشبه الآخرين؟
أغرب ما في هذه الرواية بعد الترجمة؛و شخصية البطلة شديدة البرود
هو انك ستشعر انك تقرا قصة خجولة تحافظ على مشاعرك لدرجة العبور فوق لحظات الموت و التعذيب و الحب و الخيانة كأنها اخبار تناول الإفطار
لذلك من الصعب أن تتعاطف مع الابطال بإستثناء تومازينو
لم أشعر فيها بايطاليا فهي ليست رواية مكان و لا بحيويةَ و روح الايطاليين سوي في نميمتهم القروية المعتادة و لكنها عالجت عقدة الابن و الابنة الأصغر بشكل متنوع
جاءت كثرثرة منسابة بلا فواصل مطلقا.. و بلا انفعالات حادة و بلا شحنة حياة حقيقية؛ فقط بعض الشجن
تماما كايامنا هذه بشعارها: ابق في بيتك لتبقى على قيد الحياة
و لكن اي حياة؟
لكن الألم يظل حاضر باق
رواية خافتة الصوت باردة الأحداث و الوصف لدرجة نفتقدها تماما في عزلنا المنزلي العالمي الصاخب الذي يكشف لنا أنفسنا و من حولنا..بينما أصوات المساء فيها صفحات كاملة لمن يتحدثون و يردون على أنفسهم؛ تعبيرا عن اغتراب بطلتنا الكامل معهم
ننطلق لقرية إيطالية في مطلع الستينات و نتعرف على ابنة محرر عقود بمصنع و اسرتها و سرعان ما نتركهم لنستعرض حياة بالوتا العصامي صاحب مصنع القماش و ابناؤه الخمسة و ربيبه و اصدقائهم منذ الحرب العالمية
كل أبناء "بالوتا"، لسبب أو لآخَر، الأحياء منهم والأموات، يشوبهم دائمًا نوع من الغرابة ، أفكار غير عادية ، وهم من الباحثين عن التعاسة
تستعرض خيبة امل الإيطالين المعتادة في أبنائهم و ثقة بالوتا في ان ربيبه :البوريللو هو فقط من سيواصل نجاحه
نراقب حسرات العمر و خيباته و مرارته مع بضع انتصارات مسروقة
و بين الفيلات و البيوت الجبلية يتفرق الابناء
حتى نصل لاجمل أبطال الرواية تومازينو و شعاره "عش ما شئت فأنت مفارق" لو اخترت له اسم عربي فساسميه نسيم.. كل هدفه في الحياة أن يعبرها كنسمة او همسة عابرة
ورث معظم الثروة و المسؤلية و لكنه ورث عبء من ماتوا و من يعيشون كالموتي
ا"في لحظة ما لا يرغب المرء في مواجهة أعماقه. لأنه يشعر بالخوف بأنه اذا واجهه فلن يجد بعد ذلك أي قدرة للاستمرار على قيد الحياة"ا
كان تومازينو يحمل على كتفيه أعباء ماضي و مصنع و بلدة و حرب و أسرة معقدة
حتى حبه كان قليلا هشا، كان يعتبر ان ما بينهما هشا لدرجة انه لو ظهر للهواء و النور سيتطاير و يموت
ا*لنصبح مثل الجميع، ولنفعل ذلك الذي يتوقع منا الجميع أن نفعله." ا
فهل ينجح تومازينو في ان يشبه الآخرين؟
أغرب ما في هذه الرواية بعد الترجمة؛و شخصية البطلة شديدة البرود
هو انك ستشعر انك تقرا قصة خجولة تحافظ على مشاعرك لدرجة العبور فوق لحظات الموت و التعذيب و الحب و الخيانة كأنها اخبار تناول الإفطار
لذلك من الصعب أن تتعاطف مع الابطال بإستثناء تومازينو
لم أشعر فيها بايطاليا فهي ليست رواية مكان و لا بحيويةَ و روح الايطاليين سوي في نميمتهم القروية المعتادة و لكنها عالجت عقدة الابن و الابنة الأصغر بشكل متنوع
جاءت كثرثرة منسابة بلا فواصل مطلقا.. و بلا انفعالات حادة و بلا شحنة حياة حقيقية؛ فقط بعض الشجن
تماما كايامنا هذه بشعارها: ابق في بيتك لتبقى على قيد الحياة
و لكن اي حياة؟
August 16, 2022
تَٓبلي الايام و تتشابه الليالي و يتسرب العمر في أحداثِ مألوفة و احاديث تافهة و نفيق ذات مساء و نحن فاقدين لكل ما يجعل للحياة معنى و رونق بعض فبعض الجروح تختفي فقط
لكن الألم يظل حاضر باق
رواية خافتة الصوت باردة الأحداث و الوصف لدرجة نفتقدها تماما في عزلنا المنزلي العالمي الصاخب الذي يكشف لنا أنفسنا و من حولنا.. بينما أصوات المساء فيها صفحات كاملة لمن يتحدثون و يردون على أنفسهم تعبيرا عن اغتراب بطلتنا الكامل معهم
ننطلق لقرية إيطالية في مطلع الستينات و نتعرف على ابنة محرر عقود بمصنع و اسرتها و سرعان ما نتركهم لنستعرض حياة بالوتا العصامي صاحب مصنع القماش و ابناؤه الخمسة و ربيبه و اصدقائهم منذ الحرب العالمية
كل أبناء "بالوتا"، لسبب أو لآخَر، الأحياء منهم والأموات، يشوبهم دائمًا نوع من الغرابة، أفكار غير عادية، وهم من الباحثين عن التعاسة
تستعرض خيبة امل الإيطالين المعتادة في أبنائهم و ثقة بالوتا في ان ربيبه البوريللو هو من .سيواصل نجاحه
نستعرض خيبات العمر و مرارته و انتصارات مسروقة
و بين الفيلات و البيوت الجبلية بتفرق الابناء
حتى نصل لاجمل أبطال الرواية تومازينو و شعاره "عش ما شئت فأنت مفارق" لو اخترت له اسم عربي فساسميه نسيم.. كل هدفه في الحياة أن بعذرها كنسمة او همسة عابرة
ورث معظم الثروة و المسؤلية و لكنه ورث عبء من ماتوا و من يعيشون كالموتي
ا"في لحظة ما لا يرغب المرء في مواجهة أعماقه. لأنه يشعر بالخوف بأنه اذا واجهه فلن يجد بعد ذلك أي قدرة للاستمرار على قيد الحياة"ا
كان تومارينو يحمل على كتفيه أعباء ماضي و بلدة و حرب و أسرة غامضة
حتى في حبه كان قليلا هشا، كان يعتبر ان ما بينهما هشا لدرجة انه لو ظهر للهواء و النور سيتطاير
ا*لنصبح مثل الجميع،ولنفعل ذلك الذي يتوقع منا الجميع أن نفعله." ا
فهل ينجح تومارينو في ان يشبه الآخرين؟
أغرب ما في هذه الرواية بعد الترجمة؛و شخصية البطلة شديدة البرود؛ هو انك ستشعر انك تقرا قصة خجولة تحافظ على مشاعرك لدرجة العبور فوق لحظات الموت و التعذيب و الحب و الخيانة كأنها اخبار تناول الإفطار..
لم أشعر فيها بايطاليا فهي ليست رواية مكان و لا بالايطاليين سوي في نميمتهم القروية المعتادة
جاءت كثرثرة منسابة بلا فواصل مطلقا.. و بلا انفعالات حادة و بلا شحنة حياة حقيقية
تماما كايامنا هذه بشعارها: ابق في بيتك لتبقى على قيد الحياة
و لكن اي حياة؟
لكن الألم يظل حاضر باق
رواية خافتة الصوت باردة الأحداث و الوصف لدرجة نفتقدها تماما في عزلنا المنزلي العالمي الصاخب الذي يكشف لنا أنفسنا و من حولنا.. بينما أصوات المساء فيها صفحات كاملة لمن يتحدثون و يردون على أنفسهم تعبيرا عن اغتراب بطلتنا الكامل معهم
ننطلق لقرية إيطالية في مطلع الستينات و نتعرف على ابنة محرر عقود بمصنع و اسرتها و سرعان ما نتركهم لنستعرض حياة بالوتا العصامي صاحب مصنع القماش و ابناؤه الخمسة و ربيبه و اصدقائهم منذ الحرب العالمية
كل أبناء "بالوتا"، لسبب أو لآخَر، الأحياء منهم والأموات، يشوبهم دائمًا نوع من الغرابة، أفكار غير عادية، وهم من الباحثين عن التعاسة
تستعرض خيبة امل الإيطالين المعتادة في أبنائهم و ثقة بالوتا في ان ربيبه البوريللو هو من .سيواصل نجاحه
نستعرض خيبات العمر و مرارته و انتصارات مسروقة
و بين الفيلات و البيوت الجبلية بتفرق الابناء
حتى نصل لاجمل أبطال الرواية تومازينو و شعاره "عش ما شئت فأنت مفارق" لو اخترت له اسم عربي فساسميه نسيم.. كل هدفه في الحياة أن بعذرها كنسمة او همسة عابرة
ورث معظم الثروة و المسؤلية و لكنه ورث عبء من ماتوا و من يعيشون كالموتي
ا"في لحظة ما لا يرغب المرء في مواجهة أعماقه. لأنه يشعر بالخوف بأنه اذا واجهه فلن يجد بعد ذلك أي قدرة للاستمرار على قيد الحياة"ا
كان تومارينو يحمل على كتفيه أعباء ماضي و بلدة و حرب و أسرة غامضة
حتى في حبه كان قليلا هشا، كان يعتبر ان ما بينهما هشا لدرجة انه لو ظهر للهواء و النور سيتطاير
ا*لنصبح مثل الجميع،ولنفعل ذلك الذي يتوقع منا الجميع أن نفعله." ا
فهل ينجح تومارينو في ان يشبه الآخرين؟
أغرب ما في هذه الرواية بعد الترجمة؛و شخصية البطلة شديدة البرود؛ هو انك ستشعر انك تقرا قصة خجولة تحافظ على مشاعرك لدرجة العبور فوق لحظات الموت و التعذيب و الحب و الخيانة كأنها اخبار تناول الإفطار..
لم أشعر فيها بايطاليا فهي ليست رواية مكان و لا بالايطاليين سوي في نميمتهم القروية المعتادة
جاءت كثرثرة منسابة بلا فواصل مطلقا.. و بلا انفعالات حادة و بلا شحنة حياة حقيقية
تماما كايامنا هذه بشعارها: ابق في بيتك لتبقى على قيد الحياة
و لكن اي حياة؟
April 5, 2023
Qué belleza este libro!!! O no sé si me llegó justo en el momento en el cual lo necesitaba, es increíble la belleza toda de esta historia, como la cuenta, la narradora, todo es muy hermoso. Cuenta la historia de una familia, sus idas y vueltas, casamientos etc. pero no es solo eso lo que la hizo tan especial, para mi hay algo en su tono que me tiene enamorada, porque está hablando de la contundencia de una guerra que atravesó un montón de vidas, pero la cuenta como si hablara de las flores. Es una belleza. Y en el momento en el cual aparece la narradora como personaje, bueno, me llegó al corazón. Muy recomendado. Y si no han leído Pequeñas Virtudes de Ginzburg, les pido que lo hagan, es maravilloso.
Read
September 17, 2019This short novel is a delight from beginning to end.
Voices in the Evening begins with the narrator and her mother walking homewards through their Italian mountain village one evening in autumn. The final chapter repeats that journey one year later.
Initially, the voices of the title seem to be mainly one voice, the mother's, speaking her thoughts aloud as she walks alongside her daughter. Her's are disconnected thoughts, roaming over a variety of subjects, often triggered by houses they pass on the way or people they see, or random thoughts and questions that occur to her. The narrator is the silent target of the mother's monologue, only speaking when the mother expresses her impatience at receiving no response to her questions: Couldn't we sometimes have the miracle of a word from you?
A word is almost all she gets; the daughter's answers tend to be monosyllabic.
What the reader soon realises is that the daughter's reluctance to engage with the mother is because the two are poles apart. The daughter deals in plain facts, the mother in biased judgements based on suppositions and embroidered memories, complete fictions in other words. These two poles become a kind of frame for the stories of the families who've lived in the houses they pass on their journey homewards, and which the daughter recounts to us from the second chapter onwards, filling us in on the 'facts' behind her mother's 'fictions', or at least those facts that are generally known in the community.
Since fact seems to be the daughter's currency, the stories come to us spare and unadorned. But the lives that are revealed are rich with incident and drama. The years of the narrative range from the mid 1930s to the late 1940s. Some of the people in the village are or have been fascists, others are socialists, a few are communists. Some have survived the war, some haven't. Marriages take place and children are born though there is little evidence of any deep love between the people involved even if some of them preserve the fiction of being in love.
However, the most genuine and deeply felt love story happens right under the mother's nose and the reader enjoys the fact that she gets no chance to embellish or distort it. An added irony is that this episode occurs as a result of the narrator's aunt's addiction to novels, an addiction which the mother derides — her household chores leave her no time for indulging in fiction! The aunt's books have to be collected from the library in the nearby town twice a week, allowing the daughter to escape the all-seeing eyes of the village, for a time at least. When the mother finally discovers the affair, her desire to embellish the simple facts of the delicate love story transform it and it becomes another of the embroidered memories she likes to recount while walking home of an autumn evening.
Did I say that this spare novel is a delight from beginning to end?
It most certainly is.
Voices in the Evening begins with the narrator and her mother walking homewards through their Italian mountain village one evening in autumn. The final chapter repeats that journey one year later.
Initially, the voices of the title seem to be mainly one voice, the mother's, speaking her thoughts aloud as she walks alongside her daughter. Her's are disconnected thoughts, roaming over a variety of subjects, often triggered by houses they pass on the way or people they see, or random thoughts and questions that occur to her. The narrator is the silent target of the mother's monologue, only speaking when the mother expresses her impatience at receiving no response to her questions: Couldn't we sometimes have the miracle of a word from you?
A word is almost all she gets; the daughter's answers tend to be monosyllabic.
What the reader soon realises is that the daughter's reluctance to engage with the mother is because the two are poles apart. The daughter deals in plain facts, the mother in biased judgements based on suppositions and embroidered memories, complete fictions in other words. These two poles become a kind of frame for the stories of the families who've lived in the houses they pass on their journey homewards, and which the daughter recounts to us from the second chapter onwards, filling us in on the 'facts' behind her mother's 'fictions', or at least those facts that are generally known in the community.
Since fact seems to be the daughter's currency, the stories come to us spare and unadorned. But the lives that are revealed are rich with incident and drama. The years of the narrative range from the mid 1930s to the late 1940s. Some of the people in the village are or have been fascists, others are socialists, a few are communists. Some have survived the war, some haven't. Marriages take place and children are born though there is little evidence of any deep love between the people involved even if some of them preserve the fiction of being in love.
However, the most genuine and deeply felt love story happens right under the mother's nose and the reader enjoys the fact that she gets no chance to embellish or distort it. An added irony is that this episode occurs as a result of the narrator's aunt's addiction to novels, an addiction which the mother derides — her household chores leave her no time for indulging in fiction! The aunt's books have to be collected from the library in the nearby town twice a week, allowing the daughter to escape the all-seeing eyes of the village, for a time at least. When the mother finally discovers the affair, her desire to embellish the simple facts of the delicate love story transform it and it becomes another of the embroidered memories she likes to recount while walking home of an autumn evening.
Did I say that this spare novel is a delight from beginning to end?
It most certainly is.
September 22, 2021
"What I think about now, I tell a little of it to myself, and then I bury it. I send it underground. Then, little by little, I shall not tell things any more even to myself. I shall drive everything underground at once, every random thought, before it can take shape."
Voices in the Evening is set in a sleepy gossipy judgemental Italian town after the second world war where everyone is expected to slot into their narrow allotted role. It's narrated by Elsa who is twenty-seven and unmarried and begins with her taking a walk with her mother. In a few lines of dialogue the mother evokes all the oppressive smallness of the expectations open to Elsa in the small town. This mother is a gem of a character, one of the best depictions of oppressive motherhood I've encountered. Elsa initially tells us little about herself. Instead, we hear about the town's prominent family, the De Francisci who own the town's cloth factory. How the various members fared during the war. As usual Ginzburg aspires to report fact rather than indulge in judgement. Her prose both masterfully blunt and sharp. Eventually we learn Elsa is conducting an affair with the youngest son of the De Francisci family, on the surface the epitome of a sordid affair. Tommasino (another fabulously drawn character: a cad with layers of depth) isn't though the archetypal cad. He too feels oppressed by the narrow roles offered by the provincial town. He's brutally honest both with himself and with Elsa. By the end of the book we understand Elsa's mother and most of the town are living in a world of fiction. Honesty a luxury few are willing to pay for.
Another thoroughly enjoyable book from Ginzburg. 4+ stars.
Voices in the Evening is set in a sleepy gossipy judgemental Italian town after the second world war where everyone is expected to slot into their narrow allotted role. It's narrated by Elsa who is twenty-seven and unmarried and begins with her taking a walk with her mother. In a few lines of dialogue the mother evokes all the oppressive smallness of the expectations open to Elsa in the small town. This mother is a gem of a character, one of the best depictions of oppressive motherhood I've encountered. Elsa initially tells us little about herself. Instead, we hear about the town's prominent family, the De Francisci who own the town's cloth factory. How the various members fared during the war. As usual Ginzburg aspires to report fact rather than indulge in judgement. Her prose both masterfully blunt and sharp. Eventually we learn Elsa is conducting an affair with the youngest son of the De Francisci family, on the surface the epitome of a sordid affair. Tommasino (another fabulously drawn character: a cad with layers of depth) isn't though the archetypal cad. He too feels oppressed by the narrow roles offered by the provincial town. He's brutally honest both with himself and with Elsa. By the end of the book we understand Elsa's mother and most of the town are living in a world of fiction. Honesty a luxury few are willing to pay for.
Another thoroughly enjoyable book from Ginzburg. 4+ stars.
September 8, 2023
A short and rather melancholy novel, which I can best describe as a window on the lives of a group of interrelated characters (mostly from a single extended family) in a small Italian village. The time period is from about the 1930s to about the 1950s. Reading some background on the author, her first husband was sent into internal exile from 1941-43, to a remote village in the Abruzzo region, and the author accompanied him. I can’t be sure but I feel this village was the inspiration for the one in the novel. The main characters are all drawn from the middle and upper class inhabitants, the sort who employ others as servants.
As with all villages, this one is a gossipy sort of place. Many of the inhabitants, the male ones anyway, are known by nicknames, again a common practice in small and self-contained communities.
The author was well-known as a political activist, but though politics is mentioned in this novel, it plays a minor role compared to the relationships between the characters. Personal relations also take priority over politics. One character, nicknamed “Purillo” is a member of the Fascist Party, but tips off his adoptive father, a socialist, that the fascists are planning to murder him. After the war Purillo is initially fearful and ashamed of his past allegiance to the fascists. He speaks to a woman called Raffaella, who was with the communist partisans, and tells her he is thinking of killing himself since he had blundered so badly. She scoffs at him with the comment “You were not the only Fascist. Italy was full of them!”
Mostly though, the relationships that develop between the book’s characters are strained. This applies between parents and children, siblings, and married couples. Many of them seem to have a sense of the village as an oppressive place, where they are forced to conform to the expectations of family and society, rather than follow their own wishes. The characters have a tendency to be brutally honest with each other.
The story is skilfully told, though this isn't a plot driven novel. Despite its qualities, I didn’t entirely warm to it. Many of the characters are distant from one another, and I think that led me to feel distant from them as well.
As with all villages, this one is a gossipy sort of place. Many of the inhabitants, the male ones anyway, are known by nicknames, again a common practice in small and self-contained communities.
The author was well-known as a political activist, but though politics is mentioned in this novel, it plays a minor role compared to the relationships between the characters. Personal relations also take priority over politics. One character, nicknamed “Purillo” is a member of the Fascist Party, but tips off his adoptive father, a socialist, that the fascists are planning to murder him. After the war Purillo is initially fearful and ashamed of his past allegiance to the fascists. He speaks to a woman called Raffaella, who was with the communist partisans, and tells her he is thinking of killing himself since he had blundered so badly. She scoffs at him with the comment “You were not the only Fascist. Italy was full of them!”
Mostly though, the relationships that develop between the book’s characters are strained. This applies between parents and children, siblings, and married couples. Many of them seem to have a sense of the village as an oppressive place, where they are forced to conform to the expectations of family and society, rather than follow their own wishes. The characters have a tendency to be brutally honest with each other.
The story is skilfully told, though this isn't a plot driven novel. Despite its qualities, I didn’t entirely warm to it. Many of the characters are distant from one another, and I think that led me to feel distant from them as well.
June 13, 2025
Cenas da vida na aldeia. É basicamente isso que define esta obra de Natalia Ginzburg, que segue um leque de personagens ligadas a quatro famílias, antes, durante e após a Segunda Guerra Mundial.
- Como pode pesar, uma aldeia! –disse. – Tem um peso de chumbo, com todos os seus mortos! Como me pesa esta nossa aldeia, tão pequena, um punhado de casas! Nunca posso libertar-me dela, não posso esquecer-me dela!
É mau sinal quando termino um livro, por mais pequeno que seja, sem uma única frase marcada, mas foi precisamente isso que aconteceu em “As Palavras da Noite”, onde a tradução ridiculamente colada ao original e a revisão displicente (a desenvolver posteriormente, só para quem quiser mais do mesmo), só veio tornar mais atabalhoada uma escrita já por si baça, com frases curtas e abruptas que raramente aprecio.
Na primeira parte de “As Palavras da Noite”, as várias personagens que são apresentadas alternadamente por uma das moradoras, Elsa, crescem, casam, têm filhos, divorciam-se, morrem e, enfim, isso é a lei da vida e não me dá propriamente tempo para criar ligação com nenhuma delas. Numa fase mais adiantada do livro, percebe-se que todas essas cenas descritas são um preâmbulo para o vínculo que Elsa criou com um dos rapazes da aldeia e o peso que isso tem na ideação e na concretização do seu relacionamento, o que salva o livro do descalabro.
- Tinha imaginado tudo, com demasiada clareza. Tinha-nos imaginado, a ti e a mim, aqui, nesta sala, nesta casa. Tinha imaginado tudo, com uma tal precisão, até ao mais ínfimo pormenor. E quando se vêem as coisas futuras com tanta clareza, como se já estivessem a suceder, então, é sinal de que não devem suceder nunca. Porque já sucederam, num certo sentido, na nossa cabeça e não nos é mais consentido experimentá-las a sério.
É o quarto livro de Natalia Ginzburg que leio e só “Foi Assim” me impressionou verdadeiramente.
[Há pouco tempo, o responsável da editora Relógio d’Água veio a público insurgiu-se, com toda a razão, contra a utilização de inteligência artificial na tradução literária, mas, ainda que reconheça que alguém tem de pôr um travão nisso, o que de momento me preocupa mesmo é a inteligência humana. Se ninguém em editoras de renome quer saber como chega uma tradução às livrarias, pergunto: é preferível pagar 5 euros por um livro traduzido às três pancadas por IA ou 15 euros por um traduzido e revisto por duas alminhas sem brio, que nem notas de rodapé se dão ao trabalho de incluir? Se os leitores portugueses não se interessam pela qualidade da transposição para português, apenas com a história, e digo-o porque vejo pouca gente a barafustar, a resposta, num país onde comprar livros é um luxo e as pessoas não têm dinheiro para casa e comida, parece-me óbvia. Como disse o outro já nos idos anos 90: “It’s the economy, stupid!”]
- Como pode pesar, uma aldeia! –disse. – Tem um peso de chumbo, com todos os seus mortos! Como me pesa esta nossa aldeia, tão pequena, um punhado de casas! Nunca posso libertar-me dela, não posso esquecer-me dela!
É mau sinal quando termino um livro, por mais pequeno que seja, sem uma única frase marcada, mas foi precisamente isso que aconteceu em “As Palavras da Noite”, onde a tradução ridiculamente colada ao original e a revisão displicente (a desenvolver posteriormente, só para quem quiser mais do mesmo), só veio tornar mais atabalhoada uma escrita já por si baça, com frases curtas e abruptas que raramente aprecio.
Na primeira parte de “As Palavras da Noite”, as várias personagens que são apresentadas alternadamente por uma das moradoras, Elsa, crescem, casam, têm filhos, divorciam-se, morrem e, enfim, isso é a lei da vida e não me dá propriamente tempo para criar ligação com nenhuma delas. Numa fase mais adiantada do livro, percebe-se que todas essas cenas descritas são um preâmbulo para o vínculo que Elsa criou com um dos rapazes da aldeia e o peso que isso tem na ideação e na concretização do seu relacionamento, o que salva o livro do descalabro.
- Tinha imaginado tudo, com demasiada clareza. Tinha-nos imaginado, a ti e a mim, aqui, nesta sala, nesta casa. Tinha imaginado tudo, com uma tal precisão, até ao mais ínfimo pormenor. E quando se vêem as coisas futuras com tanta clareza, como se já estivessem a suceder, então, é sinal de que não devem suceder nunca. Porque já sucederam, num certo sentido, na nossa cabeça e não nos é mais consentido experimentá-las a sério.
É o quarto livro de Natalia Ginzburg que leio e só “Foi Assim” me impressionou verdadeiramente.
[Há pouco tempo, o responsável da editora Relógio d’Água veio a público insurgiu-se, com toda a razão, contra a utilização de inteligência artificial na tradução literária, mas, ainda que reconheça que alguém tem de pôr um travão nisso, o que de momento me preocupa mesmo é a inteligência humana. Se ninguém em editoras de renome quer saber como chega uma tradução às livrarias, pergunto: é preferível pagar 5 euros por um livro traduzido às três pancadas por IA ou 15 euros por um traduzido e revisto por duas alminhas sem brio, que nem notas de rodapé se dão ao trabalho de incluir? Se os leitores portugueses não se interessam pela qualidade da transposição para português, apenas com a história, e digo-o porque vejo pouca gente a barafustar, a resposta, num país onde comprar livros é um luxo e as pessoas não têm dinheiro para casa e comida, parece-me óbvia. Como disse o outro já nos idos anos 90: “It’s the economy, stupid!”]
December 6, 2019
***1/2
Natalia Ginzburg's elegant and spare novel centers on a cozy Italian village where there looms a tight atmosphere that reflects its residents' attachments as they cope in differing ways to the gradual changes in life brought about by fascism and by modernization. It it's core, we have Elsa, the narrator, who is an old fashioned romantic and begins a love affair with Tommasino, who is the son of the family whose aging cloth mill factory dominates the town. She is the child still at home, with little sign of finding a partner until this clandestine relationship blooms. Ginzburg, whose writings have effectively integrated the war or postwar period into daily life without over dramatising events, starts with Elsa out strolling through the Italian countryside while her hypochondriac mother bickers on about her health grievances and reflects on the comings and goings of their neighbours, so we learn early on that the novel has a close-knit feel to it in capturing the simple daily occurrences that bind people together. In the fashion of a quiet evening conversation, Elsa, recounts the lives of the villagers, who one way or another seem politically divided, while her love affair remains below the surface until the novel's finale. Hidden almost as effectively from us as from her parents. Through Elsa we are introduced to members of the The De Francisci family, who have a fare share of colourful characters, headed by Old Ballota, whose children are described in order of seniority to us in Ginzburg's sharply amusing pen portraits.
There is Gemmina the eldest daughter, friend of Elsa who travels to Switzerland to escape the war, Mario who is married to an obscure Russian, Xenia, the adoptive son Purillo who likes to sleep around, the unhappily married Vincenzino, the tomboy Raffaella who joined the partisans, and the youngest son Tomassino. We are only lightly taken through their lives, yet Ginzburg still manages to get across in well under two hundred pages their assertions, hopes and ambitions, their quarrels and restlessness, and their puerile longings. There is strong sense of homesickness for the past as Ginzburg weaves her story, and overall I found Voices in the Evening to be a pleasant enough read, however, when compared to the two other Ginzburg novels I have read (All Our Yesterdays, The City and the House) this just wasn't quite on the same level.
March 28, 2021
رواية جميلة.. آسرة تستولي على مكان بقلبك لامحال ...
لقد وقعت في حب شخصياتها وكنت مستمتعة بحكاياتهم وتناهى إلى مسامعي أصوات أفكارهم الدفينة، تلك الأصوات التي تغور عميقاً وبعيداً....
لقد وقعت في حب شخصياتها وكنت مستمتعة بحكاياتهم وتناهى إلى مسامعي أصوات أفكارهم الدفينة، تلك الأصوات التي تغور عميقاً وبعيداً....
December 22, 2022
في الحياة كثير من الأشياء الحزينة. لماذا نقرأ الروايات؟
أليست الحياة نفسها رواية ؟!
أليست الحياة نفسها رواية ؟!
October 13, 2017
جميلة :) رواية جميلة ... ثرثرة ممتعة
تفاعلت مع شخصيات الرواية وتعجبت من قدرتي على الصبر على ذلك السرد الذي كان ممتعا ولذيذا في واقع الأمر وساعدت الترجمة السلسة والغير متكلفة على ظهور السرد بهذا الشكل الممتع
التقلبات في الطباع والأفكار والتأرجح في المشاعر وإلحاح الأمهات هي سمات الرواية وجزء من أساس السرد
لربما تأثرت كثيرا بـ رافاييللا :) تلك التي تغيرت قناعاتها وأفكارها بمجرد الزواج والانجاب ... وتأثرت بـ تومازينو وأفكاره أيضا ... كان رومانسيا رغما عنه وحتى مع نفيه لذلك :)
أحببت هذه الرواية الهادئة ... تخيلت أنني عندما تركتها لانشغالي بمذاكرة أطفالي أنني لن أعود لها ولكن مع عودتي لقراءة سطورها إلتهمت تلك السطور بنهم شديد 🤗 ... ممتعة :)
تفاعلت مع شخصيات الرواية وتعجبت من قدرتي على الصبر على ذلك السرد الذي كان ممتعا ولذيذا في واقع الأمر وساعدت الترجمة السلسة والغير متكلفة على ظهور السرد بهذا الشكل الممتع
التقلبات في الطباع والأفكار والتأرجح في المشاعر وإلحاح الأمهات هي سمات الرواية وجزء من أساس السرد
لربما تأثرت كثيرا بـ رافاييللا :) تلك التي تغيرت قناعاتها وأفكارها بمجرد الزواج والانجاب ... وتأثرت بـ تومازينو وأفكاره أيضا ... كان رومانسيا رغما عنه وحتى مع نفيه لذلك :)
أحببت هذه الرواية الهادئة ... تخيلت أنني عندما تركتها لانشغالي بمذاكرة أطفالي أنني لن أعود لها ولكن مع عودتي لقراءة سطورها إلتهمت تلك السطور بنهم شديد 🤗 ... ممتعة :)
August 10, 2024
E anche tu finirai col sotterrare i tuoi pensieri?
Delicatezza e potenza.
La Ginzburg in pochissime pagine, usando dialoghi ridotti all'osso oltre che ad un linguaggio semplicissimo, ricostruisce una saga familiare.
La cosa sorprendente sono proprio i dialoghi. Così realistici, così vicini alla mia esperienza personale (es.dialoghi, o meglio, monologhi della madre rivolti ad Elsa, narratrice) che la sensazione è di stare lì dentro, di essere parte di quella vita lì e quelle dinamiche lì.
Riporto le parole di Calvino, in prefazione perché non lo saprei dire meglio:
"Le voci della sera è una storia di persone che cercano di sotterrare i pensieri, d’identificarsi soltanto nei gesti che compiono e nelle parole che dicono e finiscono per ritrovarsi strette in una morsa di assurdità e di dolore."(*)
La protagonista, Elsa "è una donna che mai ci dice nulla di sé, delle sue speranze e delle sue delusioni; non solo, ma questa donna che ha sotterrato i pensieri ci rappresenta un uomo che ha sotterrato i pensieri lui pure, che pare non abbia mezzi per esprimere la sua insoddisfazione e sfiducia. Attraverso una narrazione tutta dialogo, Natalia Ginzburg ci racconta la storia di due silenzi che si sovrappongono, che cercano di sommarsi, che si contrastano."(*)
L'essenza del libro in un passaggio spietato e dolente:
"– La Raffaella, – disse, – certo non pensa d’essere infelice. Ha sotterrato tutti i suoi pensieri. È infelice, ma fa in modo di non dirselo, per poter vivere.
– E d’altronde, – disse, – si finisce sempre col vivere cosí.
– E anche tu, – dissi, – col tempo, andando avanti, finirai col sotterrare i tuoi pensieri?"
E quel tu del dialogo tra Elsa e il suo quasi futuro sposo, esce dalla pagina per parlare a chi legge.
Altra cosa stupefacente, che sinceramente non ricordavo essere così presente nelle altre cose che ho letto di suo, è il sense of humor, crudele e caustico. Sta lì, in sordina, tra l'esplito e l'implicito, pronto ad essere colto, più di una volta mi strappato un sorriso ovviamente amarissimo.
Poco da fare la Ginzburg sempre un gran leggere.
Attingere dall'elenco di libri presenti su Alta Voce si è rivelato un ottimo spunto per leggere bene se non benissimo.
(*) Prefazione Calvino edizione Einaudi
Delicatezza e potenza.
La Ginzburg in pochissime pagine, usando dialoghi ridotti all'osso oltre che ad un linguaggio semplicissimo, ricostruisce una saga familiare.
La cosa sorprendente sono proprio i dialoghi. Così realistici, così vicini alla mia esperienza personale (es.dialoghi, o meglio, monologhi della madre rivolti ad Elsa, narratrice) che la sensazione è di stare lì dentro, di essere parte di quella vita lì e quelle dinamiche lì.
Riporto le parole di Calvino, in prefazione perché non lo saprei dire meglio:
"Le voci della sera è una storia di persone che cercano di sotterrare i pensieri, d’identificarsi soltanto nei gesti che compiono e nelle parole che dicono e finiscono per ritrovarsi strette in una morsa di assurdità e di dolore."(*)
La protagonista, Elsa "è una donna che mai ci dice nulla di sé, delle sue speranze e delle sue delusioni; non solo, ma questa donna che ha sotterrato i pensieri ci rappresenta un uomo che ha sotterrato i pensieri lui pure, che pare non abbia mezzi per esprimere la sua insoddisfazione e sfiducia. Attraverso una narrazione tutta dialogo, Natalia Ginzburg ci racconta la storia di due silenzi che si sovrappongono, che cercano di sommarsi, che si contrastano."(*)
L'essenza del libro in un passaggio spietato e dolente:
"– La Raffaella, – disse, – certo non pensa d’essere infelice. Ha sotterrato tutti i suoi pensieri. È infelice, ma fa in modo di non dirselo, per poter vivere.
– E d’altronde, – disse, – si finisce sempre col vivere cosí.
– E anche tu, – dissi, – col tempo, andando avanti, finirai col sotterrare i tuoi pensieri?"
E quel tu del dialogo tra Elsa e il suo quasi futuro sposo, esce dalla pagina per parlare a chi legge.
Altra cosa stupefacente, che sinceramente non ricordavo essere così presente nelle altre cose che ho letto di suo, è il sense of humor, crudele e caustico. Sta lì, in sordina, tra l'esplito e l'implicito, pronto ad essere colto, più di una volta mi strappato un sorriso ovviamente amarissimo.
Poco da fare la Ginzburg sempre un gran leggere.
Attingere dall'elenco di libri presenti su Alta Voce si è rivelato un ottimo spunto per leggere bene se non benissimo.
(*) Prefazione Calvino edizione Einaudi
May 23, 2021
A person at a certain moment will not look his own soul in the face any more. Because he is afraid, if he looks it in the face, of not having the courage to go on living any more.
If you enjoy novels where the true story appears sparingly in dialogue, this short Ginzburg novel is the one for you.
Lately, I've found myself revisiting authors. I recently read and loved All Our Yesterdays and I needed to try another Ginzburg read.
This novel is short and cryptic. I would recommend the version with the introduction by Colm Tóibín for his close reading and explanation of this intricate novel. The novel begins and ends with a conversation between mother and daughter. The dialogue, however, is uniquely structured and occurs like a monologue. Part of this is to show the estrangement of the daughter from her mother's way of thinking, her mother's customs, the customs of the small village. The hypochondriac mother loves that she can boast of children who are married and live in various parts of the world, yet she has this daughter who refuses to marry or live on another continent. She fears her daughter will become an outcast.
If you dislike dialogue as subtle as this one referenced, you won't enjoy this novel. In some ways it reminded me of a play. In other ways, it was reminiscent of abstract art. Abstract art bothers most, yet I'm a fan of the art form for the many ways it can be both subtle and bold. I only wish Elsa and Tommasino were a focus in this novel. Instead, they appear among a slew of characters with various entanglements emerging postwar . They appear as snippets, as representatives of their families, post WWII. Sure, there is a section dedicated to them, but mostly, so many other characters in the town are introduced, some so swiftly they're forgetful. These characters appear as voices in the evening: the closed-door voices of families in Castello, the whispered conversation of friends, the gossip of the town, the pained, but brief dialogue they exchange.
If you enjoy novels where the true story appears sparingly in dialogue, this short Ginzburg novel is the one for you.
Lately, I've found myself revisiting authors. I recently read and loved All Our Yesterdays and I needed to try another Ginzburg read.
This novel is short and cryptic. I would recommend the version with the introduction by Colm Tóibín for his close reading and explanation of this intricate novel. The novel begins and ends with a conversation between mother and daughter. The dialogue, however, is uniquely structured and occurs like a monologue. Part of this is to show the estrangement of the daughter from her mother's way of thinking, her mother's customs, the customs of the small village. The hypochondriac mother loves that she can boast of children who are married and live in various parts of the world, yet she has this daughter who refuses to marry or live on another continent. She fears her daughter will become an outcast.
If you dislike dialogue as subtle as this one referenced, you won't enjoy this novel. In some ways it reminded me of a play. In other ways, it was reminiscent of abstract art. Abstract art bothers most, yet I'm a fan of the art form for the many ways it can be both subtle and bold. I only wish Elsa and Tommasino were a focus in this novel. Instead, they appear among a slew of characters with various entanglements emerging postwar . They appear as snippets, as representatives of their families, post WWII. Sure, there is a section dedicated to them, but mostly, so many other characters in the town are introduced, some so swiftly they're forgetful. These characters appear as voices in the evening: the closed-door voices of families in Castello, the whispered conversation of friends, the gossip of the town, the pained, but brief dialogue they exchange.
October 31, 2025
Deceptively light because the delicate, soft bits get buried deep so that breathing can continue and a step can be taken, one after another. But if the soft bits are buried, what is left? The stories created a la’ the narrator’s mother? Are these stories fiction or truth or a mixture.
Ginzburg gives us the perspective of a narrator who is dry and factual and her mother who needs her stories to be full and rounded, to have each character tied up neatly with a bow ready for consumption.
After giving us the facts and the stories of the people living around her, showing how one thing leads to another, Elsa the narrator tries to make her own story, trying it out in her mother’s way but seeing that she cannot as that would mean the death of her facts, her truths. The conundrum is that although yes things can be buried, not to be seen, like poor Nebbia, their ghosts remain and effect the stories and the life.
We can see that the narrator is able to see what’s there in front of her, even the buried soft bits. She is also able to see what happens when the soft bits are not acknowledged but are wedged in to conform within a ‘nicer’ frame. What is she going to do with all this seeing? Can she use it when making out her own frame? Will she go for the surface picture, the nice one? Or for the truer picture with its soft, delicate bits, which not everyone is able to see.
Ginzburg gives us the perspective of a narrator who is dry and factual and her mother who needs her stories to be full and rounded, to have each character tied up neatly with a bow ready for consumption.
After giving us the facts and the stories of the people living around her, showing how one thing leads to another, Elsa the narrator tries to make her own story, trying it out in her mother’s way but seeing that she cannot as that would mean the death of her facts, her truths. The conundrum is that although yes things can be buried, not to be seen, like poor Nebbia, their ghosts remain and effect the stories and the life.
We can see that the narrator is able to see what’s there in front of her, even the buried soft bits. She is also able to see what happens when the soft bits are not acknowledged but are wedged in to conform within a ‘nicer’ frame. What is she going to do with all this seeing? Can she use it when making out her own frame? Will she go for the surface picture, the nice one? Or for the truer picture with its soft, delicate bits, which not everyone is able to see.
September 3, 2023
غريبة بس حبيتها
May 31, 2018
"في الحياة كثير من الأشياء الحزينة.لماذا نقرأ الروايات؟ أليست الحياة نفسها رواية؟"
غريبة وممتعة هذه الرواية
الأصوات فيها كثيرة، والحوارات قصيرة ومباشرة وحميمية، تهتُ قليلاً ضمن شلال الأسماء الإيطالية الغريبة، وتهتُ قليلاً في الربط بين الشخصيات، لكن بعد منتصفها أصبحت واضحة.
"في لحظة ما لا يرغب المرء في مواجهة مافي أعماق نفسه لأنه يشعر بالخوف بأنه إذا واجهه فلن يجد بعد ذلك أي قدرة للاستمرار على قيد الحياة".
"لا توجد بداخلي شحنة حياة حقيقية.هذا هو الشيء الذي أفتقده كثيراً.أشعر أنني لستُ سوى رعشة من الضجر عندما أحاول أن أفعل شيئا. أرغب في أن أقوم بشيء وأصاب بتلك الرعشة شخص آخر ربما لا يُلقي بالاً برعشة مثل هذه وينساها على الفور. أما أنا فأحملها طويلا في قلبي"
الحوار الأخير بين ( إلسا) و(تومازينو) لمسني جداً وجعلني أفكر كثيراً في اختياراتي ورغباتي وقرارتي
نحن نفعل ما يتوقعه الآخرين منا لنكون مثلهم.
محملين بثقل الزمان والمكان والراحلين قبلنا.
لا الذكريات لها قدرة على منحنا السعادة ولا المال قادر على تبديد الوحشة الداخلية التي تأكلنا
لا أدري لمَ أشعرُ بحزنٍ دفين في قصص الإيطاليين وثرثراتهم!
أعجبتني بشدة وأحببتها حقاً وفِي النهاية أردد مع إليسا قولها:
"ولكن لماذا؟ لماذا دمرنا كل شيء؟!"
يبدو أننا نفعل ذلك دوماً دون أن نشعر.
غريبة وممتعة هذه الرواية
الأصوات فيها كثيرة، والحوارات قصيرة ومباشرة وحميمية، تهتُ قليلاً ضمن شلال الأسماء الإيطالية الغريبة، وتهتُ قليلاً في الربط بين الشخصيات، لكن بعد منتصفها أصبحت واضحة.
"في لحظة ما لا يرغب المرء في مواجهة مافي أعماق نفسه لأنه يشعر بالخوف بأنه إذا واجهه فلن يجد بعد ذلك أي قدرة للاستمرار على قيد الحياة".
"لا توجد بداخلي شحنة حياة حقيقية.هذا هو الشيء الذي أفتقده كثيراً.أشعر أنني لستُ سوى رعشة من الضجر عندما أحاول أن أفعل شيئا. أرغب في أن أقوم بشيء وأصاب بتلك الرعشة شخص آخر ربما لا يُلقي بالاً برعشة مثل هذه وينساها على الفور. أما أنا فأحملها طويلا في قلبي"
الحوار الأخير بين ( إلسا) و(تومازينو) لمسني جداً وجعلني أفكر كثيراً في اختياراتي ورغباتي وقرارتي
نحن نفعل ما يتوقعه الآخرين منا لنكون مثلهم.
محملين بثقل الزمان والمكان والراحلين قبلنا.
لا الذكريات لها قدرة على منحنا السعادة ولا المال قادر على تبديد الوحشة الداخلية التي تأكلنا
لا أدري لمَ أشعرُ بحزنٍ دفين في قصص الإيطاليين وثرثراتهم!
أعجبتني بشدة وأحببتها حقاً وفِي النهاية أردد مع إليسا قولها:
"ولكن لماذا؟ لماذا دمرنا كل شيء؟!"
يبدو أننا نفعل ذلك دوماً دون أن نشعر.
April 17, 2022
I could just rate this book and leave it at that—it is not fun writing reviews of books you dislike! Doing so is less of a pain but the wrong approach. The whole idea of the GR forum is for fellow readers to share their views on the books they read. We should help each other find books that fill our individual preferences. What fits one reader may not fit another. For this reason, it is essential to explain why you rate as you do. This is as important for the bad books as the good. I want to help other prospective readers, so here goes.
The main reason why I have not enjoyed this book is that the story is TOLD; little is shown. Dialogs are few, brief and they do not flow naturally. The same can be said for descriptions. Readers are told he did that, and she did that, and then he did that. On and on and on. Or, he said that and she said that—these are not conversations!
The story takes place over one year—October through October of the following year. The story follow a large Italian family consisting of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and each one’s respective e spouse. We are TOLD what they do but little comes across in relation to what kind of person they are. We are occasionally told X is cheerful, Y is melancholy and X smart, but we are given little evidence of why such statements are true. The only person for whom I recognized a character trait is the narrator’s mother. She continually gripes about her health. We are told umpteen times that she has a lump in her throat and that the doctor told her she had high blood pressure, having always had low blood pressure before. Almost the exact same words are used over and over again. In this respect, the writing is repetitive. What we are told about the characters is primarily what they do. In a novel, I want to observe the decisions characters make. This helps me form an opinion about who they are. I like character studies—you do not get that here. There are too many characters and too little information is provided about each. The information provided is told rather than shown.
A final complaint—we are supposed to see this as a book of historical fiction drawing life in Italy during the Second World War with a particular focus upon the detrimental aspects of fascism. I don’t think this comes through at all!
The audiobook begins with an introduction, an author’s note and a translator’s note. These feel like fillers in an effort to make a short story longer. The introduction should be placed at the end. I don’t want to be told what to think until after I have drawn my own conclusions.
The translator of the book is D.M. Low. Could the choppy, unnuanced prose be the fault of the translation? This is of course possible.
I promise you, I am not exaggerating! The “he did this, she did that and he said this and she said that” are impossible to not notice. The prose is dry, stilted, repetitive and without flair.
Rosie Jones narrates the audiobook. Her narration is fine. I do not think it fair to blame her for the unpleasant reading experience. The narration I have given three stars—it is good. There is nothing to complain about here.
The main reason why I have not enjoyed this book is that the story is TOLD; little is shown. Dialogs are few, brief and they do not flow naturally. The same can be said for descriptions. Readers are told he did that, and she did that, and then he did that. On and on and on. Or, he said that and she said that—these are not conversations!
The story takes place over one year—October through October of the following year. The story follow a large Italian family consisting of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and each one’s respective e spouse. We are TOLD what they do but little comes across in relation to what kind of person they are. We are occasionally told X is cheerful, Y is melancholy and X smart, but we are given little evidence of why such statements are true. The only person for whom I recognized a character trait is the narrator’s mother. She continually gripes about her health. We are told umpteen times that she has a lump in her throat and that the doctor told her she had high blood pressure, having always had low blood pressure before. Almost the exact same words are used over and over again. In this respect, the writing is repetitive. What we are told about the characters is primarily what they do. In a novel, I want to observe the decisions characters make. This helps me form an opinion about who they are. I like character studies—you do not get that here. There are too many characters and too little information is provided about each. The information provided is told rather than shown.
A final complaint—we are supposed to see this as a book of historical fiction drawing life in Italy during the Second World War with a particular focus upon the detrimental aspects of fascism. I don’t think this comes through at all!
The audiobook begins with an introduction, an author’s note and a translator’s note. These feel like fillers in an effort to make a short story longer. The introduction should be placed at the end. I don’t want to be told what to think until after I have drawn my own conclusions.
The translator of the book is D.M. Low. Could the choppy, unnuanced prose be the fault of the translation? This is of course possible.
I promise you, I am not exaggerating! The “he did this, she did that and he said this and she said that” are impossible to not notice. The prose is dry, stilted, repetitive and without flair.
Rosie Jones narrates the audiobook. Her narration is fine. I do not think it fair to blame her for the unpleasant reading experience. The narration I have given three stars—it is good. There is nothing to complain about here.
November 30, 2024
Cara Natalia,
mi piace moltissimo, l’ho letto tutto di seguito, è il più bel romanzo che hai scritto.
Questo senso delle storie familiari, l’intrecciarsi delle storie delle famiglie, è una cosa che ormai ce l’hai soltanto tu. E il senso dei vecchi, e del venire su dei giovani, e del come vengono su, dolorosamente. Triste, triste da morire. M’ha buttato giù completamente.
Il pranzo di Tommasino a casa di lei è il punto più bello. Tutto così chiaro, la sofferenza di lei a sentire tutto il dialogo, senza mai che sia detto.
Questa madre che incombe su tutto il libro senza che sentiamo altro che questo suo tremendo parlare, è formidabile.
Tutta la storia del fidanzamento, e quell’addio, così raccontato bene tutto il morire della cosa, solo attraverso le battute del dialogo, senza mai una battuta d’introspezione o commento psicologico. Un modello di condotta narrativa, di un rigore perfetto.
Calvino
“E anche tu non hai mica un bel colore, Tommasino”, disse mia madre. “Sei sempre un po’ pallido. Posso dirtelo, sono una mamma. Sei sempre un po’ pallido. Forse è la vita sedentaria che fai".
“Io son così di colore”, disse il Tommasino.
“No, non sei così di colore. Da bambino eri bianco e rosso, una mela”.
“E allora una delle bimbe Bottiglia è fidanzata?” disse il Tommasino.
“Ah le chiami bimbe Bottiglia anche te?” disse mia madre. “Credevo che le chiamassimo così solo noi, qua in casa. Non sono più delle bimbe, purtroppo”.
“Perché purtroppo?” disse mio padre.
“Purtroppo”, disse mia madre, “perché non sono ancora sposate. Per una donna, il matrimonio, è il destino più bello, un matrimonio felice. Non disgraziato, sennò meglio niente, si sa. Tu, Tommasino, hai avuto la triste esperienza di un matrimonio disgraziato, nella tua famiglia. Il povero Vincenzino”.
“E forse è per questo”, disse, “che ancora non ti sposi. Vuoi riflettere a lungo, hai ragione. Del resto, come uomo, sei ancora molto giovane”.
“Io”, disse la zia Ottavia, “non mi sono sposata, e sono contenta così”.
“Tu”, disse mia madre, “per il matrimonio non eri tagliata. Ti piace troppo fare i tuoi comodi”.
“I miei comodi? e quando mai faccio i miei comodi?” disse la zia Ottavia.
mi piace moltissimo, l’ho letto tutto di seguito, è il più bel romanzo che hai scritto.
Questo senso delle storie familiari, l’intrecciarsi delle storie delle famiglie, è una cosa che ormai ce l’hai soltanto tu. E il senso dei vecchi, e del venire su dei giovani, e del come vengono su, dolorosamente. Triste, triste da morire. M’ha buttato giù completamente.
Il pranzo di Tommasino a casa di lei è il punto più bello. Tutto così chiaro, la sofferenza di lei a sentire tutto il dialogo, senza mai che sia detto.
Questa madre che incombe su tutto il libro senza che sentiamo altro che questo suo tremendo parlare, è formidabile.
Tutta la storia del fidanzamento, e quell’addio, così raccontato bene tutto il morire della cosa, solo attraverso le battute del dialogo, senza mai una battuta d’introspezione o commento psicologico. Un modello di condotta narrativa, di un rigore perfetto.
Calvino
“E anche tu non hai mica un bel colore, Tommasino”, disse mia madre. “Sei sempre un po’ pallido. Posso dirtelo, sono una mamma. Sei sempre un po’ pallido. Forse è la vita sedentaria che fai".
“Io son così di colore”, disse il Tommasino.
“No, non sei così di colore. Da bambino eri bianco e rosso, una mela”.
“E allora una delle bimbe Bottiglia è fidanzata?” disse il Tommasino.
“Ah le chiami bimbe Bottiglia anche te?” disse mia madre. “Credevo che le chiamassimo così solo noi, qua in casa. Non sono più delle bimbe, purtroppo”.
“Perché purtroppo?” disse mio padre.
“Purtroppo”, disse mia madre, “perché non sono ancora sposate. Per una donna, il matrimonio, è il destino più bello, un matrimonio felice. Non disgraziato, sennò meglio niente, si sa. Tu, Tommasino, hai avuto la triste esperienza di un matrimonio disgraziato, nella tua famiglia. Il povero Vincenzino”.
“E forse è per questo”, disse, “che ancora non ti sposi. Vuoi riflettere a lungo, hai ragione. Del resto, come uomo, sei ancora molto giovane”.
“Io”, disse la zia Ottavia, “non mi sono sposata, e sono contenta così”.
“Tu”, disse mia madre, “per il matrimonio non eri tagliata. Ti piace troppo fare i tuoi comodi”.
“I miei comodi? e quando mai faccio i miei comodi?” disse la zia Ottavia.
October 9, 2021
"Le voci della sera è una storia di persone che cercano di sotterrare i pensieri, d’identificarsi soltanto nei gesti che compiono e nelle parole che dicono e finiscono per ritrovarsi strette in una morsa di assurdità e di dolore" (Italo Calvino)
La malinconia governa queste pagine e lo stile asciutto della Ginzburg -poche descrizioni, molti dialoghi, ritmo serrato- favorisce la progressiva immersione nelle atmosfere di paese (piemontese, chiuso, valligiano) dove i vari personaggi si muovono fra i salotti di casa, le strade deserte, la fabbrica del Balotta e della sua facoltosa famiglia.
Attraverso il racconto di Elsa, che consuma in solitudine il suo infelice amore per il Tommasino, sfidando inutilmente le convenzioni sociali, entriamo in contatto con un vociare diffuso e uniforme che rispecchia il pettegolo clima paesano e la mentalità comune a tutti i suoi abitanti.
Da cui si distacca la narratrice, figura femminile tipica: riservata, schiva, portatrice di valori che tuttavia non possono contrapporsi alla forza inerziale della famiglia e del contesto con tutte le sue arcaiche convinzioni.
Ma ogni personaggio viene individuato e circoscritto: ha la sua storia e compie il suo destino che intreccia la storia e il destino del tempo in cui si trova a vivere (il fascismo, la guerra, il dopoguerra), uno sfondo che ha senso solo per come incide e trasforma le vite individuali.
Le voci più consapevoli (Elsa, Tommasino) infine si spengono nella mestizia:
“Stiamo quasi sempre zitti, ora, insieme. Ce ne stiamo quasi sempre zitti, perché abbiamo cominciato a sotterrare i nostri pensieri, bene in fondo, bene in fondo dentro di noi. Poi, quando riprenderemo a parlare, diremo solo delle cose inutili.”
Le altre, invece, continueranno i loro soliti, insulsi monologhi che dileguando nella sera spegneranno via via la speranza di una vita veramente felice.
La malinconia governa queste pagine e lo stile asciutto della Ginzburg -poche descrizioni, molti dialoghi, ritmo serrato- favorisce la progressiva immersione nelle atmosfere di paese (piemontese, chiuso, valligiano) dove i vari personaggi si muovono fra i salotti di casa, le strade deserte, la fabbrica del Balotta e della sua facoltosa famiglia.
Attraverso il racconto di Elsa, che consuma in solitudine il suo infelice amore per il Tommasino, sfidando inutilmente le convenzioni sociali, entriamo in contatto con un vociare diffuso e uniforme che rispecchia il pettegolo clima paesano e la mentalità comune a tutti i suoi abitanti.
Da cui si distacca la narratrice, figura femminile tipica: riservata, schiva, portatrice di valori che tuttavia non possono contrapporsi alla forza inerziale della famiglia e del contesto con tutte le sue arcaiche convinzioni.
Ma ogni personaggio viene individuato e circoscritto: ha la sua storia e compie il suo destino che intreccia la storia e il destino del tempo in cui si trova a vivere (il fascismo, la guerra, il dopoguerra), uno sfondo che ha senso solo per come incide e trasforma le vite individuali.
Le voci più consapevoli (Elsa, Tommasino) infine si spengono nella mestizia:
“Stiamo quasi sempre zitti, ora, insieme. Ce ne stiamo quasi sempre zitti, perché abbiamo cominciato a sotterrare i nostri pensieri, bene in fondo, bene in fondo dentro di noi. Poi, quando riprenderemo a parlare, diremo solo delle cose inutili.”
Le altre, invece, continueranno i loro soliti, insulsi monologhi che dileguando nella sera spegneranno via via la speranza di una vita veramente felice.
July 15, 2017
أتعرفين.؟! لا توجد بداخلي شحنة حياة حقيقية. هذا هو الشئ الذي أفتقده كثيرا. أشعر أنني لست سوي رعشة من الضجر. عندما أحاول أن أفعل شيئا . أرغب في أن أقوم بشئ آخر. وأصاب بتلك الرعشة. شخصا آخر ربما لا يلقي بالا برعشة مثل هذه..وينساها علي الفور. أما أنا فأحملها طويلا في قلبي.
March 16, 2019
«Disse: - Ci sono tante cose tristi nella vita. Perché leggere romanzi? Non è un romanzo, la vita?»
September 22, 2021
Exquisite writing style: spare, precise, no-nonsense. Add to that a fascinating story describing, mainly through the relationships involving members of the "leading family", the happenings in an Italian village from the 1930's until well after the war. As good as A Family Lexicon, in my opinion.
See this review, or this superb one for more information. Needless to say, I wholeheartedly agree with the former's conclusion that "this short novel is a delight from beginning to end".
November 19, 2022
قرأتها في يوم بعد كتاب تركته بعدما كتم نفَسي
أثارت تفكيري لأنها لا تلتزم بأي من قواعد الكتابة (التي أعرفها) ومع هذا حلوة
الترجمة جيدة جدا
أثارت تفكيري لأنها لا تلتزم بأي من قواعد الكتابة (التي أعرفها) ومع هذا حلوة
الترجمة جيدة جدا
November 6, 2021
I delayed and delayed writing this review because after reading Happiness As Such - which I enjoyed immensely I was very disappointed with this. Yes - it is beautifully written. It captures human experiences in moments of complete accuracy - which only very gifted writers manage. BUT - and it is a big but - it is so sad. As far as I can see there is no reason at all why reticent lovers Elsa and Tommasino -cannot "get it together" - for lack of a better phrase. It is only one part of the story - the book as a whole reviews the history of Elsa and Tommasino's two families. I suppose we are to understand that these two individuals are powerless within the structures and tradition of their families.
I read this story when I was in love with To - I still am - there are such beautiful moments in this book which capture exactly those fleetingly intense feelings of "being in love". But we all know life is a compromise - we don't live our everyday lives on this elevated plane - but I suppose that is fiction for you. Ginzberg is writing very much in the Romantic Tradition - she's read her Shelley, Yeats, Byron, Flaubert - etc, etc. Probably plenty of Italian writers too - and she lived through the trauma of the Italian Fascist forces during World War II - when her husband was imprisoned and tortured to death. This of course provides a major clash between the high ideals of the Romantics and the modernist horrors of 20th Century Europe -the highs and lows of what humans are capable of. Ginzburg is a true writer because she is aware of the history of writers - she writes as all great writers must from her own individual experience but also from a cultural/historical perspective.
Me - as an individual of 2021 - safely separated from the horrors of World War II, I am much more in favour of Individual Choice. We are able to control our individual destiny with choice. I choose to love; it is possible for me to adapt, to live within the constraints and liberties of my present time.
But I am saddened by this book - and very reluctant to pick it up again.
I read this story when I was in love with To - I still am - there are such beautiful moments in this book which capture exactly those fleetingly intense feelings of "being in love". But we all know life is a compromise - we don't live our everyday lives on this elevated plane - but I suppose that is fiction for you. Ginzberg is writing very much in the Romantic Tradition - she's read her Shelley, Yeats, Byron, Flaubert - etc, etc. Probably plenty of Italian writers too - and she lived through the trauma of the Italian Fascist forces during World War II - when her husband was imprisoned and tortured to death. This of course provides a major clash between the high ideals of the Romantics and the modernist horrors of 20th Century Europe -the highs and lows of what humans are capable of. Ginzburg is a true writer because she is aware of the history of writers - she writes as all great writers must from her own individual experience but also from a cultural/historical perspective.
Me - as an individual of 2021 - safely separated from the horrors of World War II, I am much more in favour of Individual Choice. We are able to control our individual destiny with choice. I choose to love; it is possible for me to adapt, to live within the constraints and liberties of my present time.
But I am saddened by this book - and very reluctant to pick it up again.
November 30, 2019
رواية لطيفة أشبه بثرثرة مسائية هادئة، تمتزج فيها قصص مجموعة من الأشخاص وسرد لحياتهم ومصائرهم وعلاقاتهم ومشاعرهم، ما يشعرون، وما يريدون، وما يفعلون.
June 17, 2021
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It was thanks to Fionnuala’s entrancing review above, that I bought this short novel. I also had the prefect introduction to it in watching the 1963 film, “The Leopard, which is set in Palermo, where Natalia Ginzburg was born. The novel is set in an Italian, or maybe a Sicilian, village.
Twenty-seven-year-old Elsa and her mother are walking home together in the evening. Their relationship in this novel is crucial for the unfolding of the story. The mother’s monologue is presented just like a dialogue; it’s beautifully done. I usually know by the first page of a book whether I’m going to like the style, and this opening left me in no doubt. Immediately we can visualise the years behind these two of unfulfilled expectation, of miscommunication, of the elusiveness of a valid meeting-point; here you have this book.
“She said, ‘Couldn’t we sometimes have the miracle of a word from you?’”
At this the daughter, Elsa, replies to her mother, but it is as if her replies are being dragged from her. At this stage we are left to imagine the effect of their relationship on each, Elsa becoming ever more withdrawn in front of her mother, the mother relying on the comfort of hypochondria. Finely managed; as the short first chapter ends, Elsa begins to speak, but to us, who cannot invade her. It is Elsa’s voice we hear in the narrative, a voice that is silenced in the ordinary course of events by her mother’s volubility and frustration at her reticence.
Elsa begins to tell us of the family, the de Francisci, who own and run the cloth factory in the village. This portrait of the village was, I assumed, the ‘raison d’être’ of the book, and I was puzzled that I was not being given a chance (it seemed to me at that point) to explore more fully these characters. The lightest of narrative touches reveals each of the members of this family, in the background of growing Fascism; as they emerge we observe that they are all surrounded by an aura of dissatisfaction, yearning, and sometimes tragedy. One of them dissolves into bitter tears, demanding of her husband,
“Why have we ruined everything, everything?”
And this is it, the stultifying truth that will assail Elsa, as it has encroached upon them all. Little by little, we realise what has been going on with Elsa, what was only able to happen because she guarded herself from her mother, who is the personification of domestic expectations, of stultifying tradition, of denigration. There is an echo in the story to Elsa’s preservation of her inner self; one of the de Francisci family is also faced with a daily barrage of mundane detail, from his housekeeper; he, like Elsa, withdraws, and these are the first stitches in a delicate tapestry as the story reaches its conclusion.
I was not prepared for the final section of this novel (despite its revelatory chapter titles) and so I can’t spoil it for others by discussing it. It was only when I reached this part of the book that I realised that this novel is just about perfect. The back cover compares this story to Chekhov’s technique of standing back from his characters. By coincidence, thanks to Ian’s recent review, I’m reading and listening to these at the moment, and I agree completely with this. In Ginzburg, as in Chekhov, we are allowed to discern the inner being of each character. Ultimately, though, reconciliation between this and the outer rim, the functional, social layer, is unresolved.
The introduction, by Colm Tóibín, does include spoilers, but I enjoyed it after reading the book. There was only one part where I wished I had the Italian version, just to check the use of the word "evil" on one occasion. I feel sure that the Italian word, like the French 'mal' would offer other possibilities of translation.
It is Elsa’s voice, speaking in resignation, not joy, that should end this review, and it left me with mixed feeings, as it may you. Ginzburg's spare, deceptively simple style speaks volumes.
“I did not know,” I said, “that life could go at a run, with drums beating.”
It was thanks to Fionnuala’s entrancing review above, that I bought this short novel. I also had the prefect introduction to it in watching the 1963 film, “The Leopard, which is set in Palermo, where Natalia Ginzburg was born. The novel is set in an Italian, or maybe a Sicilian, village.
Twenty-seven-year-old Elsa and her mother are walking home together in the evening. Their relationship in this novel is crucial for the unfolding of the story. The mother’s monologue is presented just like a dialogue; it’s beautifully done. I usually know by the first page of a book whether I’m going to like the style, and this opening left me in no doubt. Immediately we can visualise the years behind these two of unfulfilled expectation, of miscommunication, of the elusiveness of a valid meeting-point; here you have this book.
“She said, ‘Couldn’t we sometimes have the miracle of a word from you?’”
At this the daughter, Elsa, replies to her mother, but it is as if her replies are being dragged from her. At this stage we are left to imagine the effect of their relationship on each, Elsa becoming ever more withdrawn in front of her mother, the mother relying on the comfort of hypochondria. Finely managed; as the short first chapter ends, Elsa begins to speak, but to us, who cannot invade her. It is Elsa’s voice we hear in the narrative, a voice that is silenced in the ordinary course of events by her mother’s volubility and frustration at her reticence.
Elsa begins to tell us of the family, the de Francisci, who own and run the cloth factory in the village. This portrait of the village was, I assumed, the ‘raison d’être’ of the book, and I was puzzled that I was not being given a chance (it seemed to me at that point) to explore more fully these characters. The lightest of narrative touches reveals each of the members of this family, in the background of growing Fascism; as they emerge we observe that they are all surrounded by an aura of dissatisfaction, yearning, and sometimes tragedy. One of them dissolves into bitter tears, demanding of her husband,
“Why have we ruined everything, everything?”
And this is it, the stultifying truth that will assail Elsa, as it has encroached upon them all. Little by little, we realise what has been going on with Elsa, what was only able to happen because she guarded herself from her mother, who is the personification of domestic expectations, of stultifying tradition, of denigration. There is an echo in the story to Elsa’s preservation of her inner self; one of the de Francisci family is also faced with a daily barrage of mundane detail, from his housekeeper; he, like Elsa, withdraws, and these are the first stitches in a delicate tapestry as the story reaches its conclusion.
I was not prepared for the final section of this novel (despite its revelatory chapter titles) and so I can’t spoil it for others by discussing it. It was only when I reached this part of the book that I realised that this novel is just about perfect. The back cover compares this story to Chekhov’s technique of standing back from his characters. By coincidence, thanks to Ian’s recent review, I’m reading and listening to these at the moment, and I agree completely with this. In Ginzburg, as in Chekhov, we are allowed to discern the inner being of each character. Ultimately, though, reconciliation between this and the outer rim, the functional, social layer, is unresolved.
The introduction, by Colm Tóibín, does include spoilers, but I enjoyed it after reading the book. There was only one part where I wished I had the Italian version, just to check the use of the word "evil" on one occasion. I feel sure that the Italian word, like the French 'mal' would offer other possibilities of translation.
It is Elsa’s voice, speaking in resignation, not joy, that should end this review, and it left me with mixed feeings, as it may you. Ginzburg's spare, deceptively simple style speaks volumes.
“I did not know,” I said, “that life could go at a run, with drums beating.”
Displaying 1 - 30 of 633 reviews