2023-08-10 23:26:20
In Michela Murgia’s smile joy and anger prevailed over the pain. Everything she had foreseen happened: she always got married with that defiant smile on her lips
The writer Michela Murgia died today. She was 51 years old. He had revealed her illness, stage four kidney cancer, in an interview with Aldo Cazzullo last May (“Cancer isn’t something I have; it’s something I am”, she said on that occasion to Courier). On 11 June, Murgia announced his withdrawal from public meetings. In mid-July she had married “in articulo mortis” Lorenzo Terenzi (1988), actor, director and musician. With her best known novel, «Accabadora» (Einaudi, 2009), she had won the Campiello prize. Her latest book, «Three bowls. Rituals for a year of crisis» (Mondadori, 2023), immediately entered the top of the charts of best-selling volumes.
Someone argued that it wasn’t that serious and could be saved. Someone wished her to die soon. She was more angry with the former than with the latter. She would rather be hated than pitied.
Not that the hate didn’t weigh on her: she said she had vomited for months, not because of the treatments but as a reaction to the hatred she felt for herself. But she would not have forgiven herself for silence, for remaining silent and indifferent in the face of what she considered injustices.
Many, after reading her interview, cried, wrote to her, tried to contact her on social networks.
Of course, the secrecy that once surrounded disease has long since been broken. But those who talk about their illness usually confide: I’m sick, and I’m struggling. Or he reveals: I was sick, and I am healed. Nobody says: I’m sick, and I’m dying.
When I read the drafts of Michela Murgia’s latest book, Three bowls, I saw that it spoke of an illness in the last stage. Inevitably I began the interview by asking her if there was anything autobiographical. She answered curtly: «It’s slavish. It is the story of what is happening to me. Diagnosis included. It was a very hard conversation, in which both happened to be moved. Yet in Michela Murgia’s smile on the pain joy and anger prevailed.
Joy for the very strong bond with loved ones: his family, which he defined as “queer”, united by non-predefined ties; and then the various rings, the increasingly larger circles that surrounded it, and did not abandon it until the end. Anger because Michela Murgia’s was a political interview, for at least three reasons.
The first reason was Sardinia. The writer was convinced that hers was a land colonized by the Italians. She had also run for president of the Region: the program was independence, and she had won 10% against all parties. The rebellion against the military servitude imposed on the Sardinians was one of the causes of his famous polemic against General Figliuolo, the idea that entrusting the vaccination campaign to a soldier represented a violation of freedoms.
The second reason was Giorgia Meloni. “I only hope to die when he is no longer prime minister,” she said. Meloni replied: «I really hope that you will be able to see the day when I will no longer be Prime Minister, because I aim to stay doing my job for a long time to come. Come on Michelle.”
The third reason was rights. Michela Murgia hated the expression “rented uterus”, while she claimed the expression “foster uterus”. Motherhood for her was not a biological fact but an emotional one. She demanded more rights for love, and more rights for death. She said she had decided to get married, and only by chance had the choice fallen on a man instead of a woman: the State is not satisfied with a relationship, it asks for a role, and Michela Murgia had wanted a husband so that someone could implement her will , avoid therapeutic obstinacy, establish the right moment to leave: «I can bear a lot of pain, I cannot bear not being present to myself». She hated the rhetoric of the fight against evil, of the warrior, of the battle: «Cancer is part of me; it’s not something I have, it’s something I am.”
She kept her word. Everything that Michela Murgia said would happen happened. She got married. She and she died, always with a defiant smile on her lips: «A certain expectation has arisen, if not blunt in a short time it seems rudeness…». She had the time to do what she wanted, to accustom herself and the people close to her to the transit; «A time to think how to greet the one you love, and how you would like her to greet you».
He said he had no regrets, that he had lived a life that was not long but intense. She had worked in a call center, inspiring the film by Virzì with Sabrina Ferilli, Whole life ahead. He had delivered tax returns, taught religion – he was a very believer -, directed the administrative department of a thermoelectric plant, brought dishes to the table, sold timeshares, worked as a night porter at the Perego hotel, at the antipodes of his Cabras: at the top of the Stelvio, the only glacier where you can ski even in summer. Now those who claimed it wasn’t that serious will be careful not to apologize.
Some of those who wished her dead will say that Meloni won the challenge.
Those who loved her will have appreciated her courage to die in public, exercising her form of power to the last, that over souls, without giving up her harshness, always preferring to be hated than pitied.
August 10, 2023 (change August 10, 2023 | 23:24)
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