For me was in France – long before the Paris – Yonville-l’abbaye, eight French miles from Rouen. I remember that I crawled in the name of the town one afternoon when I was not yet fourteen years old, traveled along the pages of ”Madame Bovary”. Through the years it has been followed by a thousand other names of towns and villages, some in the vicinity of the Yonville, and other very far away. But France has remained largely Yonville, as I discovered it one afternoon so many years ago, when I was faced with the metaforskapandets craft and at the same time for myself.
I felt safe again me in Berthe Bovary, Emma and Charles’s daughter, and it made me bowled over. I knew I kept my eyes on the one side, and perceived the words, but still, it felt as if I approached my mother as Berthe tried to approach Emma to grab her par le bout, les rubans de son tablier (”in the end, förklädesbanden”). I heard clearly the madame Bovarys voice when she increasingly irritated said: Laisse-moi! Laisse-moi! Eh! Laisse-moi I give! (”Let me be! Let me be! Oh, let me be!”) and it sounded like my mother when she went up in their chores and thoughts, and I didn’t want to leave her in peace, not wanted to she would leave me. The which angered the cry of a woman who is swept along by his bouleversements, is that everything is so ”disruptive inside her”, like a leaf, as a father against a gatubrunns black holes on a rainy day, made a strong impression on me. The battle came immediately afterwards, a nudge in the side. Berthe – I – all tomber au pied de la commode, contre la patère de cuivre; elle s’y coupa la joue, le sang sortit (”went away and I fell against the office, at the bottom, on the mässingshandtaget; she cut himself on the cheek, it was bleeding”).
Quiz: What do you know about Elena Ferrantes Neapelsvit?
Bovary” in Naples, the city where I was born. I read the original with great effort, on the order of a cool and good teacher. My mother tongue, napolitanskan, the different elements of Greek, latin, Arabic, German, Spanish, English and French, very French. On neapolitan is called ”let me be” làssame, and the ”blood” is called ’o sanghe. It is not particularly surprising that the language of ”Madame Bovary,” sometimes it seemed my own language, the language that my mother used when she appeared to be Emma and said laisse-moi. She also said le sparadrap (but pronounced it ’o sparatràp) on the plaster that needed to be put on the wound I received while I was reading and was Berthe – when I hit the la patère de cuivre.
Then I understood for the first time for me was geography, language, society, politics, and a people’s entire history in the books that I liked and in which I could enter as if I myself wrote them. France was close, Yonville found itself not far from Naples, the wound was bleeding and ’o sparatràp who sat diagonally across my cheek was the skin to tighten. Madame Bovary gave me a lightning fast fist and left bruises that have not gone away. Ever since then, I have all the time suspected that my mother at least once when she saw me, and with exactly the same words as Emma – the same terrible words – thought it, Emma thinks about Berthe: C’est une chose étrange comme cette enfant est laide! (”It is strange what the girl is ugly!”). Laide – to be seen as ugly by his own mother. I have rarely read or heard a more thought out, better worded, and outhärdligare meaning. From France threw himself this sense of me and hit me straight in the chest, and it hits me still with greater force than Emma’s nudge that got the – sheep – the little Berthe to fall against the agency, on the mässingshandtaget.
the Words entered in and step out of me: when I’m reading a book I intend to never on who has written it, it is as if it were I myself. As a child I could not the names of a few authors, all the books seemed as if they were written by themselves, they began and ended, engulfed me or not, got me to cry or laugh. A frenchman named Gustave Flaubert came later, when I had gotten to know a lot about France, had been there not only thanks to the books and not in a so good way as in the books, and when I was able to measure the real distance between Naples and Rouen, between the Italian novel and the French. Now I read Flaubert’s letters and his other books. Each sentence was well written, some were better than others, but no one – no one has ever hit me with the same destructive strength as the mother’s thought: C’est une chose étrange comme cette enfant est laide!
Tv review: HBO’s ‘ My brilliant friend”
in my life I have thought that it could only be achieved by a man, one who had not had children, a choleric frenchman, a loner who sat at home and grumbled, a misogynist who believed that he was the father and mother just because he had a niece. During other periods, I have angrily and with disgust, thought that the great male authors allow their female romangestalter say what women think, say and feel in reality but dare not write. Now, however, I have returned to the conviction from my teenage years. I think that writers are dedicated and industrious printer who put it in black and white according to its own more or less strict order, but the actual writing, what counts, is the readers ‘ work. Despite the fact that Flaubert’s text is written in French have Emma’s laisse-moi neapolitan intonation when read in the Naples, mässingshandtaget may ’o sanghe to drain from the Berthes cheek and Charles Bovary tightens the girl’s skin when he puts on the ’o sparatràp. It is my mother who thought, but in its language: comm’è brutta chesta bambina, what the girl is ugly. And I think she thought it right for that Emma thinks so about Berthe.
Therefore, I have through the years tried to bring out the sense from the French, and place it somewhere in one of my own texts, writing himself the to feel its weight, bringing it over to my mother’s language, put it in her mouth, hear how it sounds then and find out if there is a female opinion, if a woman can really express it, if I ever have the thought, so if my daughters and the other words should be rejected and removed or allowed and processed, taken from the male French text, and transferred to the woman’s-daughter-mother languages. It is the work that actually leads to France and set gender, language, people, time periods, and geographical locations side by side.
The most important parts of the this text was written as a response to the Swedish publisher who bought the rights to the ” Days of solitude”, but after reading the translation, decided not to provide it, with the argument that the main character Olga behave morally towards their children. The text was later published with some amendments, by Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek in Amsterdam in 2004, with the title ”Het gewicht van de pattern taal” (”Language weight”). It has also been published in La Repubblica on June 28, 2005.
the Text is an excerpt from ”Ferrante of Ferrante”, published by Norstedts publishing house in the translation by Barbro Andersson and Johanna Hedenberg.
Link to the graphics
