The story of a new name
The story of a new name (original title: Storia del nuovo cognome ) is the second volume of the “Neapolitan Saga” by Elena Ferrante , published in 2012 in the original Italian and in 2017 in the German translation by Karin Krieger .
The novel, part of a tetralogy , encompasses the life span between 16 and 23 of two friends from Naples , referred to in the subtitle as “youth years” , embedded in the historical context of the early and mid-sixties of the 20th century.
With a staff that has only marginally expanded compared to the first volume , the focus is on a summer vacation on Ischia , which both protagonists - Lila Carracci alias Cerullo and Elena Greco - spend together, while their lives before and after are largely separate and increasingly opposite.
content
The first volume ends with Lila's wedding party, the second begins with the wedding night, in which not only the bride, now “Signora Carracci”, but also her friend and narrator Elena are denied a fulfilling “first time”. Lila, indignant about Stefano's disloyalty, refuses to have sexual intercourse, but is beaten and raped. Elena, who was looking for the closeness of her youthful crush Nino at the party and got into an argument with her boyfriend Antonio Cappuccio about it, wants to “keep up” with Lila and lose her virginity, but Antonio blocks it; he wants marriage, not a love affair. For Lila, what she experienced on her wedding night becomes part of her everyday life. She does not accept this; The most visible sign of their resistance is the lack of pregnancy. Elena in turn wants to hold on to the status quo of their relationship; when Antonio finishes her, she bites herself even more into studying. Lila's offer to use a room in her apartment for this makes it easier for her and brings both of them closer to one another in a familiar area. Together they also realize the redesign of a large-format photo that shows Lila in bridal clothes and is to serve as an eye-catcher in the new shoe shop in the center of Naples . Lila, who, as a married woman and business woman, is constantly looking for tolerable compromises, changes it so that the product - the shoe she wears - is highlighted, but she becomes unrecognizable as a person. Finally, the same day the store opened - under the name Solara - she had a miscarriage.
The doctor advises her to take a longer summer vacation by the sea. Her mother Nunzia and her sister-in-law Pinuccia (already pregnant herself) should accompany them. Lila insists that Elena join the group - and Elena, for her part, that it goes to Ischia , she knows that Nino will also be there. In fact, there will soon be daily meetings on the beach. Nino's fellow student Bruno Soccavo, a rather shy sausage manufacturer's son, usually joins Pinuccia, Nino with Lila and Elena. Lila, initially reserved, rediscovers her thirst for knowledge and begins to read again, for which she borrows or simply takes the books that Elena brought along as vacation reading on the recommendation of her high school teacher, Professoressa Galiani, who is also the mother of Nino's friend Nadia . Unlike Elena, who is concerned about harmony, Lila seeks a mental argument with Nino, which in turn stimulates and challenges him. At some point the spark jumps between them, they fall in love, and both confide in Elena (Lila well knowing what her friend feels for Nino). Elena doesn't follow her natural impulse to leave. Instead, she even lets herself be made an accomplice and decorates the lie that Lila serves up to her mother in order to be able to spend 24 hours with Nino. The night in question again reflects important parallel events in the lives of both friends: While Lila purposefully lives out her love passion for the first time, Elena accepts what happens to her and lets herself be deflowered by the man who stubbornly stalked her and who she, as a lover , most violently rejected - Nino's father Donato Sarratore.
Back in Naples, Lila secretly meets with Nino for a year in the new shoe store, which Michele Solara has entrusted to her. She becomes pregnant, leaves her husband and moves into a shabby apartment with Nino. After only 23 days, he takes the first argument as an opportunity to disappear without a trace. Lila's friends persuade her to return to Stefano; Enzo Scanno personally promises her that if he treats her badly, he will be there for her. After a difficult birth, Lila gives birth to a son, Rino. Now a housewife, she devotes herself entirely to raising children, educates herself in this regard, devises educational games for herself and supports her nephew as well as Rino. Your marriage, however, from the first day in trouble, gets deeper and deeper into crisis. Stefano is overwhelmed: the uncertainty about his fatherhood, his affair with Ada Cappuccio, who (expecting a child from him) wants to displace Lila, his fight with the Solara brothers, who increasingly degrade him as a businessman to a puppet - all of this sets him up under pressure that, as a choleric , he becomes a real danger for women and children. Via Elena, Lila turns to Enzo, who, keeping his promise, moves into a small apartment with her and Rino in a shabby neighborhood similar to her Rione . He earns her living by hard physical labor, and soon Lila does the same - in the Bruno Soccavos sausage factory.
In Elena - meanwhile a scholarship holder of a philology degree in Pisa - this news brings back unpleasant memories of the summer on Ischia. But she succeeds in bringing what has long been repressed, especially the act of defloration, which is now felt to be shameful, in a form that liberates her. In just 20 days she writes a novel, fictionalizing her experiences . Via her fiancé Pietro Airota - a shy, clever fellow student - and his mother, he found his way to a Milanese publisher who wanted to publish it immediately. She returns to visit her hometown proud of what she has achieved, complemented by her degree with top marks. In order to get to Lila, she has to use all her resolve in the sausage factory. Lila is happy; Outwardly drawn, her attitude seems unbroken: She supports Enzo, who has been fighting his way up the second educational path for years, in the evenings while studying for his external computer science degree. The blue fairy - the story she wrote as a child, which Elena gives her with the comment that she is the nucleus of her novel, which has now been written - throws Lila into the fire. When Elena faces her readers for the first time in a Milan bookstore, the first criticism she feared is countered by a young man - Nino Sarratore.
interpretation
characters
main characters
The phase of life referred to in the subtitle as “youth”, which separates the two protagonists even further in the story of a new name , is judged differently by literary criticism. This applies even more to Lila than to Elena. Her attitude as the wife and business woman of the up-and-coming grocer Stefano Carracci is interpreted on the one hand as a "futile rebellion against the narrowness, ignorance, corruption and violence of her environment", as "wasted years", but on the other hand as a respectable test of strength, typical for Lila, who now shifts her "ambition into the material" (she maximizes her husband's profit and at the same time lives on a large scale), who as a woman sees through the "laws of barter" of this world dominated by men, primarily Camorristi , and makes the attempt, " to override this mechanism and define the rules yourself ”.
“In the school of misfortune” is the programmatic headline of a third review and explicitly refers to both young women - to Lila, who is struck by the fact that, after marrying the wrong person, she falls in love with the wrong person as well like Elena, who cannot be certain of her successes. A fourth criticism reverses the principle that for both friends, “every little happiness is reliably followed by a great humiliation”. One, Elena, is constantly plagued by inner self-doubts and fears, but is increasingly developing not only intellectual qualities, but also feminine qualities, as she transforms from "ugly duckling into a highly attractive young woman". Even for purple, the positive is emphasized. The milieu and circumstances of the time did not allow her to think about a divorce from a man "whom, despite the violence he does to her, she does not even hate, but only despises", but from this "trap" she fell into before she experienced it If the actual “youth” was advised, she liberated herself “with great strength for inner resistance [...] until she regained her name”.
Minor characters
Ferrante's art, praised one of the reviewers, shows itself, among other things, in “letting secondary characters suddenly emerge from the shadows and building them up into large figures”. As an example, he cites Enzo Scanno, the “almost silent greengrocer [...] who selflessly helps Lila when she is at the bottom”. What moves Enzo to do this remains largely in the dark, at least so far. It is clear, however, that he is opposing the Camorra , because purple is an economic factor; the lack of their talent and charisma means financial losses. Enzo has to reckon with similar consequences, and more, for himself, as the Neapolitan man knows that he can only succeed materially if he bows to the Camorra. Enzo consciously accepts this and fights openly by revealing his and Lila's new address without being asked.
Some of his peers try something similar; most are worn down. An example of this is Antonio Cappuccio, the son of the “crazy” widow Melina and friend Elenas. As a simple car mechanic who earns little with honest work, he lives the opposite model to Camorristi like the Solara brothers, and that out of conviction. His dilemma begins with the fact that he wants to avoid military service. What drives him to do this? The fear of losing Elena, apparently, as well as the responsibility that he as the eldest son bears for the well-being of a fatherless family. The latter, he hopes, could be a reason for recognition and wants to reassure himself whether Stefano, also the son of a widow and already retired, has made use of it. Instead of contacting him directly, he asks Elena to ask Lila, who receives confidential information from Stefano's sister Pinuccia that this was only possible through bribery and the intercession of the Solara brothers. The latter, Elena knows perfectly well, Antonio would never want. Nevertheless, in order to put herself in a better light, she asks Lila for a push in this direction, firmly assuming that she refuses. Surprisingly, Lila agrees, because what she has learned from Pinuccia means in her eyes that her husband's "pact" with the Solaras goes back further than the deal with her shoes, and frees her from any loyalty to him. Her appearance in the Solara-Bar causes a stir and a rather humiliating, non-binding promise (only because of Elenas one will try something, Antonio did not deserve it). When he learns of the unauthorized step, he separates from Elena. In this way he restores his dignity, but only in front of himself, not in front of those who know nothing about the background of the petition, which also remains without consequences. Antonio is drafted - and released early. The reason: an anxiety disorder that probably existed before. The result is that he will lose his job and not find a new one. Now he takes a petition himself, and the Solaras line him - a broken man - among those who are “available” for them.
subjects
everyday life
The first-person narrator Elena begins chapter 12 as follows: "The following months were particularly filled with small incidents that bothered me a lot and which I still find it difficult to sort out today." Her opening sentence is indicative of the life of both friends from 1961 to '67 which shows them between the ages of 16 and 22 and which, in "bitter irony", is entitled "Youth Years". In particular, the year that follows Lila's marriage and precedes their vacation together on Ischia is filled with many such “little happenings”.
At the beginning of his discussion of the history of a new name, Ernst Osterkamp poses a new question about the formula for success of Ferrante's novel cycle - and finds a new answer. The pair of friends and their story are so captivating, according to his thesis, "because they are so commonplace"; the adventures that are told are "everyday adventures"; the reader is enabled to understand the conflicts of life “as everyday conflicts, as they can happen to anyone.” - The reason for Ferrante's success, according to Osterkamp, is a vacuum into which her novels have encountered: the proliferation of “imaginary worlds in the Media, in literature and now even in politics ”have made everyday human life“ the most unknown space ”that today's readers are hungry for.
Illustrating his thesis, Osterkamp compares Ferrante with other successful models of the more recent present. In Karl Ove Knausgård, for example, he sees the “male variant” of a “heroic epization of everyday life”, and in the Rione in which Lila and Elena grow up, a Neapolitan linden street “where the reader can learn something from a few families located in a manageable space life is about it. ”Going even further, Osterkamp discovers similarities between current development trends in storytelling and those in the 19th century. At that time, parallel to the trend towards the “fantastic, sensational, extraordinary”, the rise of the realistic novel “with its discovery of the problems of everyday reality” took place. He mentions the Count of Monte Christo and Madame Bovary as representative examples and complementary figures . The comparison between Flaubert's heroine and “Signora Carracci” from the story of a new name is obvious because both cases involve very young women “who marry the wrong man in order to escape the economic and moral misery of their origins . ”In summary, Osterkamp states that Ferrante“ with her commitment to the existential seriousness of everyday life ”is in the tradition of the great realistic novels of the 19th century.
Writing - authorship - title
Writing is eminently important to both friends, Elena and Lila, a vital need. But it is also the field in which they compete most sharply with one another and in which Elena suffers most painfully when she feels inferior. This was also her first reaction when, in the spring of 1966 (five years after their marriage and shortly before their separation), Lila entrusted her with a tin box containing eight exercise books with her long-term intimate notes in order to protect them from being accessed by her husband. Elena vows not to open them and breaks her word without hesitation as soon as she is alone. What amazes and depresses her while reading is the “seductive power” that emanates from Lila's words, her “extremely precise sentences”, the “persistent self-discipline in writing” with which Lila had held on to this passion that was tried out at an early age, and most of all perhaps her “naturalness” - an ability to Lila's similar to what Elena had seen years before, of writing how to speak. After weeks of repeated reading, she has to free herself from Lila's notebooks - more autobiography than diary - and throws them into the Arno . She wants to find her own "naturalness". When writing her diploma thesis, she notices that she is not there yet. She pushes them aside to make room for her own problems to be dealt with. So she writes her first novel. When this is done, she also succeeds in the thesis.
What do you learn about your novel? Not the title. A few key words about the content (Maronti Beach, Ischia , Naples , Rione ) - enough at least not to overlook references to the present novel. Is your “novel in a novel” the original version of the one that was written more than 40 years later? Is it himself? And finally: Is Elena beyond doubt its author? Apart from these questions, which cannot be conclusively clarified, it is instructive that Elena Ferrante expressed herself in some points very similarly to her alter ego Elena Greco. For example, about the beginning of her writing process, Ferrante says that she needs “a little piece of [herself], a feeling, something that bothers [her]”; about its end, that “the writing I disappears when it has done its work”, and about the claim that she places on her work that it should “be guided by the truth”. Similar text passages can also be found around the creation of the novel, which Elena Greco wrote as a student.
For Ernst Osterkamp, the question of the authorship of Elena's texts is evidence of how cleverly, how “cleverly” Ferrante tells. - Only Lila's authorship is beyond any doubt: The blue fairy , her long letter to Elena in Ischia, her intimate notes - they all certainly come from her pen. On the other hand, it is not so clear about the authorship of Elena's texts. Her unpublished first article, for example, is clearly influenced by Lila, as is another later that Nino publishes under his name. How far Lila's influence extends in both cases can be roughly measured from Elena's descriptions. With regard to their novels (the novel in the novel and the present novel itself), however, such a judgment is not possible. The influence, both on style and content, is likely, its extent, to be speculation. It can be said, however, that before Elena writes her first novel, she spent weeks studying Lila's detailed biography. Although the effect on her is, as usual, a mixture of fascination and frustration (frustration at her own inadequacy), her approach to Lila goes so far that she memorizes all eight notebooks before throwing them away! In view of the above, Elena's authorship of neither of the two novels can be attested with certainty, neither for her first novel, which she wrote in Pisa , nor for The Story of a New Name , which she wrote in Turin . In addition, pieces of evidence for Lila's possible authorship have disappeared forever - one in the water, the other in the fire. Osterkamp sums it up: “In the course of the two volumes […], the complex interweaving of the biographies of Lila and Lenù overrides all traditional concepts of authorship so ingeniously that it remains completely open whether it is not really Lila who is the author of Lenù's novel and the creator of Lenù's style. "
Not only is the authorship ambiguous, the title is too. Much like in Volume 1 , one assumes for a long time as a matter of course that the story of a new name relates to Lila, who mutated into "Signora Carracci", her conflict-ridden marriage history and her arduous struggle to regain her previous name, of course connected with social decline. But shortly before the end, the surprising shift in focus to Elena happens again: What she hoped for from her article at the end of Volume 1 - to create something lasting, to be able to read her name in black and white - is now being fulfilled with her debut novel , even more impressive and sustainable: “In a few months there would be printed paper […], and then on the envelope my name, Elena Greco, I, the breaking point in a long chain of illiterate and uneducated people, a dark name that reflects light would charge for all eternity. "
shape
Narrative
The third part of the “Neapolitan Saga” also begins with anticipation - Lila entrusts Elena with her exercise books - and thus spans a narrative arc that spans 5 years or 530 pages. Its main function is to authenticate what happened to Lila without her friend and first-person narrator being present . Elena explains everything else to the reader as follows, for example: “What I'm telling now, I learned from different people at different times.” She tells what happened before and after this event essentially chronologically; In addition, it seldom breaks the illusion it creates for the reader with a supplementary judgment based on the presence of the narrative (“Today I believe [...]”). Short chapters with numerous cliff hangers , short dialogues and amazing U-turns keep the narrative speed high. Ernst Osterkamp praises that all these surprising twists and turns are well motivated, attributes the tension of the novel to its “psychological density”, but restricts that Ferrante too often yields to her inclination “instead of letting the scenes speak for themselves to deliver psychological interpretations ”.
Franz Haas appreciates the complexity of the novel - an asset that serves very different reception requirements. The "simpler" reader can enjoy the "sovereign filigree swarm of intrigues and hearts, betrayal of friendship and love", while the "initiated" readers discover "learned allusions to Italian literature, cultural and contemporary history". For example, the act with which Elena destroyed Lila's memoirs is deliberately linked to November 1966 and the Arno : At that time, Italy, and especially Florence , was hit by a flood of the century that also washed away irreplaceable works of art and documents; the "flushing in the Arno" (ital .: risciacquatura in Arno ) in turn is a standing phrase in Italian, which goes back to Alessandro Manzoni , the innovator of the novel literature, who only through his stay in the Tuscan Florence and his "bath" in a supra-regional, contemporary language found the final form for his classic The Bridal People .
language
What Maike Albath notes with a critical undertone - the linguistic design of the story of a new name is “rather simple” - explains Karin Krieger , Ferrante's translator into German, as “non-manipulative, pleasantly calm, clear and well thought-out” language, as “very withdrawn, controlled ”style and fundamental“ sobriety in form ”- an attitude that she relates to the advanced age of the first-person narrator Elena, who demands a great deal of discipline in her translation work and which she values highly at the same time.
It was comparatively easy for Krieger to transmit the language that the protagonists speak - mainly because Ferrante avoids dialect or even slang . Although the author mentions which language variety is used at certain points, she only rarely develops the “aggressive, vulgar” Neapolitan dialect. The reason, according to Krieger, is again that he opposes her striving for “sobriety”.
classification
The question of the narrative tradition of Ferrante with her “Neapolitan saga” is answered by literary criticism in broad agreement with the assignment to realism , which only differs in the accompanying attributes: from “tasty” or “dignified, colorful and coarse” to “ brave ”to“ unadorned ”. Some similarly failed justifications differentiate the novel from trivial literature at the same time , such as the fact that Ferrante has neither “black and white painting” nor “moralizing corsets” (Krieger) and that her characters are “not just good or just good are evil, but both, that is, people ”(Osterkamp).
At the same time, Osterkamp praises Ferrante for how she succeeded in “varying a sample of the trivial novel (the great wedding as the end)” at the end of Volume 1, so that the reader - with a quick glance at a pair of shoes - in one fell swoop a disillusionment novel will be added. The detailed list of people preceding Volume 2, combined with brief explanations of what has happened so far, ironically picks up on a structural feature of the photo novel , which is particularly popular in Italy, and, going back further, of the sequel from the 19th century. As a “mixture of marriage and society novel” Maike Albath reads The Story of a New Name as a whole. Both volumes published so far as a whole are most frequently assigned to the related genres of educational , developmental or coming-of-age novels.
literature
Text output
- Elena Ferrante: Storia del nuovo cognome: l'amica geniale: volume secondo: giovinezza . Edizioni e / o, Rome 2012, ISBN 978-8866320326 .
- Elena Ferrante: The story of a new name , translation: Karin Krieger, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-518-42574-9 .
Secondary literature
- Grace Russo Bullaro; Stephanie V. Love (Ed.): The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins . Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-59062-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Christian Bos: Nothing is trivial here. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , January 13, 2017, accessed on August 6, 2017.
- ↑ a b c d e Maike Albath: Elena Ferrante's new book: Joy at double play. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 6, 2017, accessed on August 6, 2017.
- ↑ a b c d e f Maike Albath: Explore women's life in all shallows. In: Deutschlandfunk , January 8, 2017, accessed on August 6, 2017.
- ↑ a b c Franz Haas: In the school of misfortune. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 25, 2017, accessed on August 6, 2017.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Ernst Osterkamp: All men are pathetic. In: Die Zeit , February 3, 2017, accessed July 30, 2017.
- ↑ Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017, p. 77.
- ↑ Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017, pp. 15–19.
- ↑ Exchange with a phantom. Interview with Elena Ferrante. In: Der Spiegel , August 21, 2016, accessed on July 7, 2017.
- ↑ Compare: Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017, pp. 573 and 594.
- ↑ Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017, p. 596.
- ↑ Volume 1 consists of two parts, Volume 2 is identical to the third.
- ↑ Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017, p. 477.
- ↑ Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017, p. 328.
- ^ Lecture series on European novels. Alessandro Manzoni: I Promessi Sposi (The Brides) , University of Kiel, accessed on August 6, 2017.
- ↑ a b c d Elena Ferrante. On the trail of the great hype. Interview with Karin Krieger. In: Buzzaldrin's Books , posted September 19, 2016, accessed August 6, 2017.
- ↑ James Wood: Women on the Verge. The fiction of Elena Ferrante. In: The New Yorker , January 21, 2013, accessed July 3, 2017.
- ↑ Iris Radisch: A great success. In: Die Zeit , September 11, 2016, accessed on July 3, 2017.