Elena Ferrante

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Elena Ferrante (* 1943 in Naples ) is the pseudonym of an Italian writer who has made a name for herself as a novelist since the 1990s while maintaining her anonymity . With her Neapolitan saga she achieved her international breakthrough, both on the book market and in literary criticism. The news magazine Time ranked her among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016 .

In interviews, which with one exception were written in writing, Ferrante has given extensive information about her artistic work. She also disclosed a lot of information about her person, including that she comes from Naples and is not a full-time writer. Contrary to their express wish to remain anonymous, there are repeated attempts to uncover their identity, including using unfair and illegitimate methods.

Artistic creation

"Man and author do not agree," explains Ferrante when asked about the motive for her supposed disappearance as an author. “The author is entirely in the work,” she continues, so that the reader is very well present and recognizable whatever she wants. She only wants to "disappear" on purpose as a person; such a withdrawal, she says, could benefit both the writing process and the reading process.

Reasons for their anonymity

Ferrante made the decision to remain anonymous before the publication of her first novel (1992), and she still describes it today as “well-considered and final”, even if her motivations have changed over the years. At first it was a fear of the public, later a certain hostility towards the media, due to the fact that she had the impression that the author's reputation was less decisive for judging a book than the author's reputation. However, she is convinced that the written word - unlike the spoken word - does not need the presence of an author, so that "books only need themselves and that they have to find their readers themselves". This “pact” with the reader is just as important to her as there is another reason for her anonymity: the “emptiness” that arises from her absence as an author opens up a welcome creative space for her. She tries to consciously fill it with the act of writing, so that the “passionate reader” can get a more true picture of her through the text than is the case with conventional media.

Writing credo

“Truthfulness” is one of the cardinal virtues that American literary criticism ascribes to Ferrante's texts. At the same time, it is the literary credo to which the author professes herself. In contrast to the “biographical”, Ferrante describes the truth that she is concerned with as “literary”. This results from finding the right word, the appropriate rhythm and tone, which in turn results in a certain energy that is directly proportional to the literary truth sought. Approaching it is also a matter of practice. It was only late, after many rejected attempts, that she succeeded in creating a text with Troublesome Love that met her requirements, after which another ten years passed before she found a second worthy of publication after days of abandonment .

Writing process

For Ferrante, work on a book usually begins with following up a “small piece” of herself (a feeling, moment or sentence), in any case something “disturbing”, by tracking down other such “small pieces” , Memory fragments of uncertain origin, for which their mother used the word “Frantumaglia”. Ferrante rejects some of them, while others she clings to as a “guarantee of authenticity ”. Either way, when she writes, she draws on what "eludes" her, what is "unsafe" and makes her "uncomfortable". They claim that a work may only be written if it is fed by these sources. For the first draft of a text (the “most exhausting phase”) she uses the computer; if she is satisfied with it, the second step follows - after two, three, at most ten pages - by adding “countless, chaotic notes” by hand, which gives her great pleasure. She does not have any fixed rituals, "a little corner somewhere, at home or when traveling" is enough. The plot develops for her while she is writing; Although she is clear about the cornerstones and also ponders the progress of the plot, she deliberately keep these simulation games in a certain disorder and rather avoid preparatory notes in order not to run the risk of losing tension while writing. In terms of style, her experience has been that she moves best when she starts off with a "flat, dry" tone - that of a "strong, lucid , educated" middle-class woman today - and then moves on at a later point in time to change to another key that allows her to make something visible under the “armor” of well-educated and well-mannered her figure that is different - “rough, rough, wild” . Ferrante strives for a fusion of both style registers in her narrative beginnings - highly praised by Anglo-American literary critics - which she describes herself as follows: “Where the story really begins, I like to place a far-reaching sentence that has a cold surface and, underneath, becomes visible, a magma of unbearable heat. ”When a text is ready, she goes through it again thoroughly. This is a particularly sensitive phase for them, which makes them receptive to every detail of life - a certain light, a plant, a word caught on the street - anything could, at the last moment, still become part of history. All in all, the metaphor of weaving is the one that best describes her writing process.

The "Neapolitan Saga"

Working on the Neapolitan saga was much different. For the first time, Ferrante saw that “everything was there”. The plot unfolded by itself, the writing went smoothly. Significantly less than usual - only every 50 to 100 pages - she felt the need to re-read. From the beginning she was in a "state of grace" and this has continued. For the first time she had the experience that memory and imagination passed more and more material to her and that, instead of confusing her, it arranged itself ready for use by itself. She would never have thought she could write such a long story; never dreamed of mastering so many minor characters; never believed that the historical changes were so reflected in their characters; never intended to write on topics such as social advancement and class that she had previously been somewhat averse to. But a solution would have been found for everything. So each of the secondary characters would have got their appearance, for better or for worse. The historical circumstances would naturally have entered the thinking and feeling, acting and speaking of their characters. She was particularly vigilant with her two protagonists. The slightest sign of a wrong tone would have stopped her, as she tried to artistically master a phenomenon that she calls “female alienation inclusion ” and describes it as follows: She had the feeling that Lila and Elena were on the one hand excluded from the course of time and on the other would have been part of them in everything they said and did.

When Ferrante began to write in 2009, she had no idea of ​​the future scope of the novel. Only at the end of 2010, after the plot had developed "with all its ramifications" and the text had taken on "a whole new dimension" through its revisions, did she and the publisher make the decision to publish the novel in several volumes. The immediate great success, also thanks to her self-chosen anonymity, did not interfere with her continued work. On the contrary, she “found the pleasure of giving a story a form, which she had already experienced as a little girl in front of an audience of her own age, while an ever more attentive and larger audience wants me to tell more, and on and on. While the readers were reading the first volume, I was finishing and refining the second; while they read the second, I worked on the third, and so on. "

identity

In interviews, Ferrante revealed little information about her person: she was born and raised on the outskirts of Naples . Turin is one of the Italian cities that she also loves. She is the mother of several daughters and is called Elena in real life. Her main occupation is other than writing. She usually answers further questions - for example about her exact main job or her marital status - with: "This question has nothing to do with my books."

What may also be true, James Wood deduces from Ferrante's correspondence with publishers published in La frantumaglia , but also from her interviews and fictional works as follows: Ferrante has a university degree in classical philology , teaches and translates, and has temporarily outside of Italy lived and is currently probably not married.

Regardless of her emphatically expressed and well-founded desire for anonymity , there has been and continues to be speculation as to who might be hiding behind the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. At first, the writer Fabrizia Ramondino was thought to be the wanted person. This assumption became obsolete when more novels by Ferrante appeared after her death. Then the professor of contemporary history at the University of Naples, Marcella Marmo , was traded as a possible candidate by the literary critic Marco Santagata . However, this denied several times. With Domenico Starnone , a male writer was at times also believed to be the author of Ferrante's works, possibly in collaboration with his wife, the literary translator Anita Raja .

The journalist Claudio Gatti announced Anita Raja as the sole author as the result of his research, which he published on October 2, 2016 in four newspapers, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . Gatti's investigations consisted, among other things, in the fact that he had gained access to entries in the land register and the fee transfers from Ferrantes Verlag, for which Raja also officially works as a translator. Gatti's approach has been criticized by some media as sensational journalism and an illegitimate intrusion into the author's privacy.

In 2019 the Swiss author and biographer Nicola Bardola published an additional chapter to his book "Elena Ferrante - my genial author" (Reclam), in which he a. a. compares Claudio Gatti's claims with sales of Elena Ferrante's books. The real estate purchases correspond to an agent's fee and not an author's fee.

plant

Elena Ferrante made her debut with L'amore molesto (1992), a novel that was published in German in 1994 under the title Lästige Liebe and was made into a film by Mario Martone in 1995 . The book is about the young Delia who deals with the death of her mother Amalia, who was either murdered or is believed to have drowned. At the same time, this preoccupation with her mother turns into a confrontation with her own past and her origins from an extended Neapolitan family.

In the ten years up to their next publication, Ferrante had discarded other manuscripts, saying that they appeared to her "overworked" and "without truth". In the novel I giorni dell 'abbandono (2002) she describes a couple living in Turin who are separating and how the wife in particular copes with this separation and finds her own identity. The German translation was published under the title Days of Leaving 2003, the film adaptation by Roberto Faenza followed in 2005.

In the novel La figlia oscura (2006) - German Die Frau im Dunkeln (2007) - the focus is on a successful middle-aged woman who spends her vacation on a beach in southern Italy. She meets an extended family from Naples, and this encounter makes it clear to her the price she had to pay for her own life. This past failure leads her to a psychological crisis.

In 2011, the first volume of Ferrante's tetralogy L'amica geniale was published , and then the three other parts in the following year. The character-rich novel cycle tells the checkered story of a lifelong friendship between two Neapolitan women from poor backgrounds with very different natures and paths in life. Ferrante also achieved an international breakthrough on the book market: So far, L'amica geniale has been translated into almost 40 languages ​​and over 5 million copies have been sold worldwide. A landmark on the part of literary criticism was an eulogy by James Wood in the January 2013 edition of The New Yorker . In 2015, the first volume of the tetralogy was selected by the BBC's selection of the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014 as one of the most important works of this century to date. Roberto Saviano proposed him for the Premio Strega literary prize in 2015 , which the author accepted. The fourth volume of the novel cycle was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize 2016.

The German book market, so it was generally said, had slept through the hype about Ferrante's tetralogy. Recently, this judgment has been called into question: In view of the weak sales figures for Ferrante's first three novels, her house publisher "Edizioni e / o" deliberately delayed the appearance of the German-language edition of L'amica geniale in order to initially get the echo on the US to wait and see the American book market, which turned out to be extremely positive and not least boosted sales in Italy itself. The publication of the German translation, provided by Karin Krieger , began in August 2016 with Meine geniale Freund , followed by The Story of a New Name in January 2017, then The Story of the Separate Paths in August 2017, and finally in February 2018 The Story of the Lost Child . In the Italian original, the entire tetralogy bears the same title as the first volume, in the English-speaking world it runs under Neapolitan Novels ("Neapolitan Romane"), and for the German-language edition, the Neapolitan Saga seems to prevail. The term “saga” is of course not without controversy. Ferrante's comment on this is sober (“I haven't written a saga”), that of the critic Ernst Osterkamp is a lot more emotional: the term “saga” arouses disgust in him, it is devalued and conceals the character of this “wonderful novel”.

In order to meet the wish of her reading public for more information, Ferrante published a collection of interviews already published elsewhere and a selection from her correspondence with her publisher, supplemented by notes on her work, under the title La frantumaglia . An updated version of the book has been available in English since 2016; In 2019 the German translation with the title Frantumaglia: My written life appeared .

For the first time in her writing career, Ferrante also writes a weekly column ; it has appeared in the weekend edition of the British Guardian since January 20, 2018 .

Publications

literature

  • Giancarlo Lombardi: Scambi d'identità: il recupero del corpo materno ne L'Amore molesto. In: Romance Languages ​​Annual 10, 1998, pp. 288-291.
  • Stiliana Milkova: Mothers, Daughters, Dolls: On Disgust in Elena Ferrante's La figlia oscura. In: Italian Culture 31.2, 2013, pp. 91-109.
  • Christine Ott: Abjects Fetishes. Elena Ferrante's writing under the sign of the vréel. In: Italian. Journal of Italian Language and Literature , 75, 2016, pp. 32–59.
  • Nicola Bardola : Elena Ferrante - my brilliant author. Reclam-Verlag 2019, ISBN 978-3150111895 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ferrante, Elena , Treccani
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Elena Ferrante, Art of Fiction No. 228. Interview with Elena Ferrante (English; own translation) , in: The Paris Review, issue no.212, spring 2015, accessed on August 26, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k exchange with a phantom. Interview with Elena Ferrante , in: Der Spiegel, August 21, 2016, accessed on July 7, 2017.
  4. ↑ a b Why should we publish my letters? , in: Literaturportal Bayern, September 9, 2019
  5. ↑ a b Elena Ferrante's exposure is sensational journalism , in: sueddeutsche.de of October 5, 2016, accessed on October 5, 2016.
  6. ↑ a b Elena Ferrante: No means no ZeitOnline from October 5, 2016, accessed on October 5, 2016.
  7. ^ A b Article from Deutschlandradio Kultur from October 2, 2016: The desire for anonymity was disregarded. Maike Albath in conversation with Marietta Schwarz (To listen to the radio report, click on the gray "Listen to report" button located on the left below the heading.)
  8. ↑ a b c Interview with Elena Ferrante in the French magazine L'Obs on January 17, 2018 (German translation), accessed on March 4, 2018.
  9. ↑ a b James Wood: Women on the Verge. The fiction of Elena Ferrante (English; own translation) , in: New Yorker, January 21, 2013, accessed on August 26, 2017.
  10. ↑ Dirk Schümer : The world's most secret author , in: Die literäre Welt , May 7, 2016, pp. 1f.
  11. ^ A b c Franz Haas: Italy puzzles over a literary pseudonym. Who is behind Elena Ferrante and her brilliant novels . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 2, 2016, p. 25, accessed on April 1, 2016.
  12. ↑ Isabel Lucas: Elena Ferrante: este nome é um mistério , Público , January 30, 2015, accessed on June 20, 2015 (Portuguese).
  13. ↑ Lizzy Davies: Who is the real Italian novelist writing as Elena Ferrante? The Guardian , October 15, 2014, accessed June 20, 2015.
  14. ^ Claudio Gatti: Who is Elena F.? In: FAS, October 2, 2016, pp. 41–42
  15. ^ Claudio Gatti: Elena Ferrante: An Answer? and The Story Behind a Name in: The New York Review of Books , October 2, 2016.
  16. ↑ Nicola Bardola: Elena Ferrante - my brilliant author . ( reclam.shop [accessed September 12, 2019]).
  17. ↑ Liz Jobey: Anonymous writer of literary fiction , Interview, in: Financial Times , December 12, 2015, p. 20.
  18. ↑ a b Marc Reichwein: The global friend , in: Die Welt Kompakt, 23 August 2017, accessed on 26 August 2017.
  19. ^ Roberto Saviano: cara Ferrante ti candido al premio Strega , in: Repubblica , February 21, 2015.
  20. ↑ Elena Ferrante: “Accetto la candidatura allo Strega” , in: Repubblica , February 24, 2015, accessed on June 20, 2015 (Italian).
  21. ↑ Ernst Osterkamp: All men are pathetic. In: Die Zeit , February 3, 2017, accessed July 30, 2017.
  22. ↑ Elena Ferrante writes column for The Guardian , on elenaferrante.de, accessed on February 7, 2018.
  23. ↑ Elena Ferrante nominated for Man Booker International Prize , on elenaferrante.de, accessed on July 7, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Ferrante, Elena
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Raja, Anita (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Naples