To the literature of Domenico Starnone it is anything but accommodating. With precise mechanisms of mastery, he strips away the details of the everyday, masked in the dense fabric of human relationships, and an uncomfortable mirror emerges.
“Literature is not consoling, if you want something that calms you down, buy it at the pharmacy. Books have to remove and destabilize”he points out, citing his idolized Kafka, “for me this writer is like a god”, he affirms vehemently.
The task of the novelist is break the shell of the obvious”, always from personal experience but without “sweetening” and without moralizing, he rounds off.
Valued as one of the Italian masters of letters, Starnone treasures the most prestigious awards like the Strega (Via Gemito2001), is the playwright of dozens of texts, columnist, and has consecrated his reverence for language by teaching classes for more than 40 years.
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The writer has presented his latest book in Spain Mortal and immortal life of the girl from Milan (Lumen). A short story of rite of passage as exciting as rawin which a Neapolitan boy falls in love with a mysterious girl, “La Milanesa”, who dances gracefully on the balcony.
The little boy longs to become a poet cradled by the unwavering affection of his “nonna”. A grandmother battered by life and frozen in memory of her husband who died in his youth whose story drifts into myth, driven by the child’s imagination.
“Love in any form is a lifesaver. When we live with anguish, falling in love with another human being or that of the grandmother with her grandson it immediately gives a purpose to our existence. The promise of love is galvanizing and the lack of love is depressing.”
“We must not oppose changes in the language”
Of the connected universes that distanced by the invisible language barrier that works as a metaphor for the social elevator: from the “cultured” Italian of the Milanese, who the child admires, to the Neapolitan dialect of the workers that the “nonna” uses in their daily jargon.
“The voice of the dead lives on in language. Grandma’s is loaded with history and generations that have used that dialect and carry that experience speak through it. They have loaded it with emotional force and they have brought it to us”, develops the professor Starnone who hones in on the nuances that knead the language and its inputs generational.
“I think you have to look at the changestry to rule them but never oppose them in any way because it doesn’t make sense.”
Courteous, energetic and passionate at 80, the writing of Domenico Starnone It has arrived rather late in Spain but in return it has added a more than applauded landing.
In 2018 it was published restraints (Lumen), The incisive autopsy of a decaying marriage that has been taken to the cinema by Daniele Luchetti with the title of tiesand has an acclaimed theatrical version.
“I think that in the end when someone writes something valuable it ends up appreciating over time”, he points out, returning to the short creative life of Kafka, and adds that the Spanish novelists who disturb him are Javier Marías, “heart so white it is a small work of art” and Javier Cercas, “I think his books make you reflect and talk about things”.
The Neapolitan has also been linked for years with the enigma of the identity of Elena Ferrante. An investigation attributed his wife, the translator Anita Raja, to being behind the pseudonym of the successful creator of the wonderful friend and even a four-hand authorship with Starnone himself was considered.
The writer has categorically denied it: “It’s just nonsense”he responds by shooing away the idea and leaves resolutely through the streets of Madrid where he blends anonymously into the crowd without wasting a drop of his mystery.
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