Who are the Italians who – anticipates on the cover Aldo Cazzullo – “saved” a country where until 1919 women did not have the legal capacity and until 1946 the right to vote? A country that waited until 1975 to admit that imposing “marital authority” on wives was unfair and senseless, 1981 to cancel the honor killing that justified the murder of alleged adulterers (the opposite case was not contemplated) and even 1996 to clarify that rape is not a crime against morality but against the person? A country, Italy, which has always been slow to change, still frightened by that liberation of energy and possibilities that the loosening of the ties would bring – finally – with it. A country that remains “male chauvinist, in the heart of a Europe dominated by women” to resume the synthesis of the author of this passionate, intense, committed bright orange volume, The Italians, to be published by Solferino publisher.
Germany could go to Angela Merkel in September to a green chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, forty; Ursula von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde are looking for a common route to cross the most serious health and economic crisis that can be remembered; Finland, which confirms itself as the happiest state in the world, is led by Sanna Marin, still in her mid-thirties. It’s Italy? In Italy there is a lot to do. Now less in terms of laws (even if the rules that regulate people’s rights often appear out of time with respect to the speed of society), but still and infinitely in terms of awareness, of widespread and shared culture. For all this, Cazzullo’s journey among the Italian women is fundamental: the centenarians, the girls, the actresses, the singers, the women of their word, those of power, the saints, the heroines. Fundamental above all for the youngest, to whom reading the stories of those who have not stopped will give a vision – and the strength – to never allow themselves to be locked up again in the commonplace of the weaker sex.
Cazzullo writes: «We are all indebted to our women: grandmothers, mothers, sisters, wives, companions, daughters, grandchildren. We all have something to learn from how they overcome the difficulties that are imposed on them by being women. ” If this is the ideal spark that lights up the narrative, the beauty of The Italians it is then that in our hands we find a great story, a navigation off the coast of lives, not a treatise. Over the years, the author’s desire – you can see it, feel it – has been to listen to the voices in a chorus colored by generations, professions, different destinies to the point of amazement and yet never dissonant.
It is impossible today not to open the sequence of some of the more than fifty quotes possible with Franca Valeri who says: «For me my youth began on April 25, a belated youth. But it was beautiful. In that Italy everything seemed possible ». And Franca, when the war was over, couldn’t wait to find her father to run up to him and announce that she would be an actress. Close to her is Chiara Ferragni, capable of influencing the world, who also talks about feminism: «I feel it is very much my topic. Like the analysis. I have been doing therapy for years ». Without fear of stigma. And so Monica Bellucci, whose beauty – when she arrives in the Parisian restaurant where the interview with Cazzullo will take place – induces those present to stand up in an instinctive gesture of admiration. It is no coincidence that, speaking of herself no longer a girl, she reflects: «I could have passed my high school diploma sitting on a velvet chair; I have decided to stand up, to take risks, and I feel that it is and must be. I’m not afraid”.
With the actresses, in particular, the writer starts a game of mirrors. Meet them to reach out to the women they’ve played in a movie or TV series. Vittoria Puccini to finally stop the blue gaze of Oriana Fallaci, who never forgave him an article in «La Stampa» – not very reverent, with the best of intentions – and escaped any subsequent attempt at an interview. Sonia Bergamasco to understand the intelligence and opacity of Margherita Sarfatti, who saw the squadron violence of the fascists, the death of Matteotti, and ended up crushed by the same system of power that she had helped to build.
Dacia Maraini’s friendship with Piera degli Esposti, nourished by history and laughter. The timeless charm of Elvira Sellerio. Gianna Nannini’s father who discovers what the album alludes to America, with a vibrator held by the statue of Liberty on the cover, after reading an article in the Corriere della Sera and forces her daughter to use a pseudonym (Patrizia Nanni, but it didn’t last, how could she ?!). Iva Zanicchi who is not afraid of Mina: «When I was offered a duet with her on the Lido of Venice, I immediately accepted. She refused. I was replaced by Claudio Villa ». Mara Venier indicated to the reporter as the “pilot fish” to follow in order to understand where Italy is going. The pages of the interview with Inge Feltrinelli, Fernanda Pivano, Vittoria Leone are extraordinary. And with Franca Ciampi waiting in the parvis of a church in Santa Severa, on the Roman coast, the day after the election of her husband at the Quirinale. May 1999: «We were born in 1920, we are elderly … I don’t think we will get to the end …». Finally, the surprise, between saints and heroines, of Giò Stajano, the first Italian to become a woman at the beginning of the 1980s, in Casablanca, with the final stage of an adventurous existential journey in the Turin convent of the nuns of Betania.
The names, the stories, the battles, the images overlap and complete. The effect is of a collective work: a national novel that sews past-present-future with a strong thread. But is it an advance? Or are we now setting the pace? Knowing who we have been and are, re-reading ourselves like this, all together, will help us breathe and smile in this time of mist. It will help us to continue, counting on our DNA and on the best of Italians.
April 24, 2021 (change April 24, 2021 | 21:27)
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