La Storia. Quella del mondo, dell’umanità tutta che tocca il fondo. Quella di una donna. Quella di una piccola famiglia infelice. La Storia di Ida e Useppe, una madre e un bambinello bastardo, che lottano per restare appigliati a questo mondo. Lottano con la disperazione di chi la vita, tutto sommato, la ama. Combattono insieme, uniti da un legame viscerale, primitivo, per andare avanti, col terrore di perdere pezzi di vita per strada, persone amate, volti amici. Sarebbe inutile ora raccontare qualcosa delle vicissitudini dei due, che prima erano tre con un cagnolino, poi erano due che vivevano in uno stanzone con altre cinquanta persone, e poi erano ancora tre, per poi tornare due più Bella, cane di natura, madre di fatto. Sarebbe inutile perché nessuna parola, assolutamente nessuna, renderebbe giustizia a ciò che Elsa Morante è riuscita a fare. Niente potrebbe anche solo lontanamente avvicinarsi a ciò che lei, scrivendo questo libro, ha regalato all’umanità. Elsa ci ha regalato Useppe. Descrivendo Useppe, partorendolo, facendolo crescere, Elsa ci ha donato l’innocenza, la spensieratezza, la felicità di vivere, l’entusiasmo per qualsiasi cosa, l’amore puro che solo i bambini hanno. E ce l’ha fatto amare. Di un amore sincero, più che mai concreto, che andava via via costruendosi assieme al personaggio. L’ha creato più vivo che mai, più reale che mai, di una tenerezza sconvolgente, di una simpatia contagiosa. Non ho mai letto un personaggio descritto in modo così dettagliato. Non ho mai sentito, prima d’ora, un personaggio così vivo. Vivo e allo stesso tempo terrorizzato di perdere le certezze della sua esistenza: suo fratello Nino, sua madre Ida, il suo primo cagnolino Blitz, la sua seconda mamma/cagna Bella. Pezzi di vita che lentamente si staccano da lui per gettarsi nell’oblio della morte. Visi amici, voci note, che a un certo punto scompaiono. Pecché? si chiede Useppe. Pecché pecché pecché. Domande strazianti. Come si spiega a un figlio che suo fratello è morto coi partigiani e non tornerà più a dirgli “a Usè, che me lo dai un bacetto?” ; Come si spiega a un figlio che il suo cagnolino Blitz è saltato in aria assieme alla casa sotto le bombe, con lui che continua a chiamarlo, tra le rovine di ciò che era e ora non è più, con una voce straziante, piena di speranza e di paura: “bi, bii, biii!!”? Non si può. O almeno Ida non può. Lei che adulta non è diventata mai, lei che negli occhietti azzurri di Useppe vede il mondo. E allora non glielo dice, e inventa per lui una realtà migliore, mentre il suo corpo, come un muro di cemento, si sgretola piano, in silenzio.Così questa coppia strampalata si muove per Roma, alla ricerca di stabilità, guidata da un bisogno primordiale, assoluto, imprescindibile: la fame. "La misera lotta di Ida contro la fame, che da più di due anni la teneva armata, adesso era pervenuta al corpo-a-corpo. Quest'unica esigenza quotidiana: dar da mangiare a Useppe, la rese insensibile a ogni altro stimolo, a cominciare da quello della sua propria fame. Durante quel mese di maggio, essa visse, in pratica, di poca erba e d'acqua, ma tanto le bastava, anzi ogni suo boccone le pareva sprecato, perché sottratto a Useppe."Ma la storia dei due non è finita. E il destino non vuole proprio permettergli di vivere un’esistenza quanto più simile a ciò che viene comunemente detto normale. Useppe è malato di epilessia. Useppe cade quando il Male s’impossessa di lui. E Ida tenta di proteggerlo da quell’insulto, da quell’offesa che lo mette in ginocchio, che lo umilia. Lo affida a Bella che con una tenerezza e un’umanità fuori dal comune lo custodisce, lo veglia, lo copre, lo difende. Un legame, quello di Useppe e di Bella, fuori da qualsiasi logica naturale, e tuttavia possibile, e tuttavia meraviglioso: come se quello fosse per loro l’unico modo possibile d’amarsi.Il libro di Elsa si vive. Con gioia all’inizio, quando Useppe è piccolo e impara il romanesco da suo fratello: superlativi i passi in cui ci descrive il primo contatto col mondo esterno del bambino; con inquietudine nel mezzo, quando i due cercano un posto dove stare e intanto il Male di Useppe si affaccia nelle loro povere esistenze; con paura, quando si avvia alla conclusione. Paura che faccia troppo male. Paura di non riuscire a sopravvivere a quel bambinetto che, dalla finestra, vedeva le ttelle e le dòndini e che, con Bella, chiamava “Aho, Vvavide” fuori dall’uscio del rifugio di quest’ultimo, senza ricevere risposta. Paura di morire un po’ anche noi. Leggendo, chiedevo a Elsa di non essere troppo dura, di risparmiarmi questo dolore, per favore, non ce la faccio.Nelle ultime pagine, mentre Elsa continua imperterrita a descrivere tutto con una precisione e allo stesso tempo con un distacco disumano, il lettore si sgretola, come Ida alla morte di Nino, silenziosamente, inevitabilmente. Era notte fonda, ieri, quando sono morta anch’io. Mi sono ritrovata la faccia bagnata e una morsa al cuore. La Storia mi ha ucciso. E mi ha ridato la vita.
As a chaplain, a hospice trainee, and a bereavement counselor, I have always taken comfort in the ideas of Viktor Frankl - that no matter how bleak the circumstances, no matter how intolerable and cruel the situation, as long as it is possible to find "meaning" in suffering, redemption is possible. In cases where I have attended a death or have had to announce a death to a grieving family, I could avoid being swept away by bitterness because there was always something I could do to comfort "someone," there was always some specific action I could take in order to ease "someone's" pain - even if there was nothing to be done for the person who had just died.These are my deepest values. I have never before had occasion to question them.But in reading Morante's account of the misfortunes of Ida Mancuso and her two sons, I was forced to confront the meaning of my "Work" and also puzzle over my role and responsibilities as a reader. What was the author trying to tell me? What did she hope would be my reaction to her message?I was unable to find any interviews with Morante to explain her motivation in writing the book. Given her years as a fugitive during WWII, it would appear natural for her to draw her material from this period of her life - as expiation of survivor guilt, or simply in memorium for those who perished. Perhaps, though, these reasonable explanations are a bit naive. As Frankl says of his fellow survivors, "We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now."Maybe this is why I detect a sense of detachment in "History," a kind of subtle numbness in the language. While there is intimacy between the author and her characters, there is an odd lack of identification with them. I don't have a sense that any one of the personalities is meant to represent the substance of Morante herself. The writing isn't "journalistic" - it doesn't claim to be objective in any sense. But neither is it emotional or polemical - there are no tirades here, except near the very end of the book where a drugged and drunken character holds forth with a passionate speech, a lecture he delivers to an audience who may very well feel pity for him, but who cannot possibly understand him.I wonder if this is a projection of Morante about her own readers, a kind of mild spitefulness - Morante knows, for sure, that we will be mystified by Davide's oration and also that we will be annoyed with her for including it and letting it go on and on and on for so long. No, I did NOT "understand." And, yes, I was irritated..... in other words, my reaction TO the book was re-enacting the events IN the book.Morante also includes another inexplicable device when she insinuates herself as a conversational partner with us, within the story, speaking directly to the reader. She never reveals her identity. She will suddenly recount details of a character's inner thoughts or try to resolve conflicting details of a particular episode - it is a deliberate break in the tone of the narrative, and it served to frustrate and perplex me. But then I suddenly realized that the real effect of the strategy is to locate the READER within the story as well: what Morante is saying to us is that WE are just as much a part of "the history" as she is, as much as Ida is, as much as Usseppe is. And we are just as powerless as the author to change, mitigate, soften, champion, mentor, or SAVE the people we come to care about as we read the book. And the people we come to care about are powerless to change or save themselves.Yet Morante is not one to demand "attention must be paid!" She seems to make few specific demands upon us at all - except that we stand as witnesses to the suffering. She leaves it up to us to find our own "meaning."
What do You think about History (2000)?
On the back of my edition of this book, Alfred Kazin blurbed in Esquire:One of the few novels in any language that renders the full horror of Hitler's war, the war that never gets into the books... Morante brings the war back in scenes of a whole neighborhood including its children and domestic pets, scrounging for food, life, and the air itself inside bomb shelters and deportation trains. She brings it all back by emphasizing the intense love between members of the same family, between a child and a dog, the connection between the happy daily sacrifice for those we love and our inability to save by love those caught in the other daily machinery that is called history.I'm not sure I could improve upon this description.This book touched me in ways I didn't expect, which is probably why it has a place on this 100 Most Meaningful Books of All Time list. I had a little difficulty getting into the story at first, but in retrospect I think that had more to do with everything else I was reading at the time and the lack of attention I was able to devote just to this book. Once I focused on it, it rocked my world.This is a beautiful story, in all its heartbreaking glory. I cried a few times, and let it be known that I'm not much of a crier when I read. It's not just the people who are affected by war, and Morante actually touches upon that here by writing of animals and pets with such heart and compassion.The story focuses primarily on timid Ida and her two sons, Nino and Useppe, but they are merely characters in a larger play of war. They could be anyone, they were anyone in Rome during the war. This humanity makes it easy to relate. Additionally, each chapter (which actually is each year between 1941 and 1947) begins with a quick (1-2 pages) breakdown of what happened that year in the war, around the world, etc. This is a sometimes glaring reminder that even though this is a story, it is based on all-too-real facts. These things did happen. No matter how involved one gets in reading the story, Morante comes back to remind us not to forget the reality.The story continues after the war, and it's debatable that the story changes significantly in theme and mood. It's not quite as evident as the difference between the first and second season of Twin Peaks, but it is there. Much like Twin Peaks, it didn't really bother me. It's still all connected. It's still important. One could argue that all the talk of anarchy and revolution, particularly the heavy-handedness, that takes place after the war in this story is a chore to read, but that's one of the areas where my Nerditude kicks in and I have a good time.There are so many layers to this story that I wish I could pick apart forever, but the more I talk about it, the less meaning it gives to it all. Highly recommended with a big fat LOVE sticker stamped across the cover.Incidentally I found that Lily Tuck wrote a biography of Morante a few years back (Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante) that looks incredibly exciting. She was married to Alberto Moravia, whom I have not had a chance to read (yet), but already I know that must have been a fascinating relationship.
—El
A tragic and incredible tale which only someone of Morante's mastery could pen. A perfect contrast of the personal (her)story against the backdrop of World War II. While the Great Powers are busy divvying up the world in violent conflict, a woman's life intersects with a soldier who rapes her and creates a child. This is a novel of the poor and dispossessed writ large in juxtaposition to the happenings of the war; a personalization of the lives of the masses who are the social and moral casualties of the powers at play, and ultimately the despair which attends these souls.
—Sean Hoskin
