My brilliant friend

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My ingenious girlfriend (original title: L'amica geniale ) is the first volume of Elena Ferrante's novel cycle, known in German-speaking countries as the Neapolitan saga . It was published in the Italian original in 2011; the other three volumes each followed a year later.

The tetralogy tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two Neapolitan women from poor backgrounds with opposing natures and uneven development. The first part, My Genius Friend , covers her childhood (The Story of Don Achille) and her early teens (The Story of the Shoes) .

A review of Ferrante's work and especially this novel in the New Yorker helped the author to break through on the US book market in 2013 and triggered a worldwide response that continues to this day. In 2015, My Genius Girlfriend was selected by literary critics in the BBC's selection of the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014 . The German translation by Karin Krieger was published in 2016; in the following year, volumes two and three followed, and in 2018 the final fourth part .

content

Naples and Ischia , the locations of the first volume

In a brief prologue - apparently part of the framework story - the 66-year-old first-person narrator , who lives in Turin , learns that her lifelong friend Lila has disappeared and has erased all traces of her bourgeois existence. Unlike Lila's son Rino, who turns to her for help, Elena is not surprised by this radical step and uses it as an opportunity to put the life stories of both women on paper.

Born in August 1944, the girls from families with many children - Raffaella Cerullo (called Lina or Lila) and Elena Greco (also called Lenuccia or Lenù) - grow up in a poor district of Naples and are the best in their primary school class. Apart from that, they are fundamentally different. Lila is fearless, headstrong, unruly and does not seek recognition - not even for the fact that she can already read and write. Elena, on the other hand, is fearful and insecure, hardworking and disciplined; she believes that she will never do anything out of conviction, in contrast to Lila, who for her embodies pure determination and with whom she joins when it comes to passing childlike tests of courage. The highlight is their joint walk to Don Achille Carracci, a Camorrista who is feared even among adults and, for the girls, the epitome of the fairy-tale monster who has come into being. Fear of death, Lila demands that he return the dolls that he had stolen from them - a demand that, although apparently innocent, tellingly tries to resolve it by giving them money.

Shoemaker boy in Naples 1948 - Lila is about the same age when she begins to learn the trade

With the end of elementary school, the life paths of the protagonists separate. Because Lila's parents refuse to spend money on further education for their daughter, whereas Elena's parents finally give in - under pressure from the committed teacher Maestra Oliveiro, who works equally for both girls. From now on the teacher only supports Elena.

While Elena attended middle school and later high school, Lila worked in her father's shoemaker's workshop. Despite this handicap, Lila remains the superior for a long time, as she keeps discovering new things with which she is able to surprise her surroundings, be it as a creative designer of shoes or as a passionate reader of the regional library. When she once explained Latin grammar to her friend, who was looking for help (which, as usual, she taught herself), it gave her school career a boost. Elena gains security, the teachers become aware of her and encourage her so that - based on her strict learning regime - she gradually rises to the top, but always remains aware that this rank is actually due to Lila. Maestra Oliveiro also continues to influence Elena. She lends her books and arranges a longer summer vacation for her on Ischia . The 15-year-old really blossoms there - partly from the sun, sea and good food, but partly also from the praise for her diligence in reading and working, which the hostess donates to her in abundance and which she doesn’t even know from home. Their stay is only marred by two men from the Sarratore family (the only one who has ever left their neighborhood). What she hopes in vain for her son, Nino, who is two years her senior (a clear sign of his affection), is forcibly forced upon her by his father, the notorious philanderer and "poet" railroad worker "Donato.

Back in Naples, Elena begins a relationship with auto mechanic Antonio Cappuccino, although she continues to be in love with high school student Nino. However, her worries quickly fade before those of her friend. Lila has matured into a beauty and is being courted by two admirers, grown men in their early twenties, both rich and sons of Camorristi. Lila categorically rejects one, Marcello Solara; notwithstanding, he tries to establish himself in her family through daily visits and expensive gifts. The other, more serious-looking applicant is Stefano Carracci, eldest son of the Don Achille challenged by the brave little girls and who has owned a salumeria since his death . He offers himself to Lila's father as an investor to turn his shoemaker's workshop into a small shoe company, provided that Lila's designs are realized in it. In addition, although they are a little too small for him, he buys the first pair of shoes from their collection that has been around for a long time. Lila and her older brother Rino had made it secretly and in painstaking detail work to get her father to do exactly what Stefano is now proposing. The project is implemented and Stefano receives the hoped-for 'yes', both from Lila's father and from herself. When Lila gets married, she is 16. The celebration, which Elena's prepared with a lot of pomp, just as many difficulties and energetic support, ends with a double Shock for the bride: Marcello Solara mingles with the guests as a matter of course - and he wears the shoes she made! Stefano broke her word twice on her wedding day; he had made a firm promise to prevent Marcello from coming, and he had assured her that he appreciated what those shoes purple mean.

shape

Narrative perspective

If you compare My Ingenious Friend with Ferrante's first three novels, which were published again in 2012 in a complete edition, some new things catch the eye, but also familiar ones. The novelties include, for example, the wealth of figures, the constants the adherence to the point of view from which the story is told. It is, as Ferrante describes herself, the perspective of a “strong, lucid , educated” woman from today's middle class, a female protagonist with plenty of potential for identification. She acts as a first-person narrator who, despite the great distance in time to the action, makes it possible to experience this first hand and, despite her contemplative nature, feeds the reader with a lot of action. On the other hand, she holds back with reflections. She also hardly ever guesses what drives and worries others, not even with a view to Lila. That would certainly have great appeal, both for her and for the reader. The fact that she resists this creates an exciting picture of her "brilliant friend" - a vita activa that apparently has no motivation. That is part of her fascination and makes her, Lila, the most “dazzling” figure in the novel.

The assumption that what is told in My ingenious girlfriend , conditioned by the perspective, is only Elena's view, is relativized by the second volume . There the reader learns that Elena has made the notes that Lila left her with, which go back to both childhoods, so "her own" that it is basically impossible to distinguish what in the novel she is writing from who comes from. But this reading is also put into perspective if the pair of friends is understood to mean that they are two facets of one and the same person. My ingenious friend also places this possibility of interpretation in the line of tradition of other multi-layered works of world literature, including Goethe's Faust , from which Ferrante took the motto for her novel.

One of Lila's most amazing utterances supports this interpretation. It affects the title of the novel and does not change the narrative perspective, but the reader's perspective. The effect achieved is all the greater as the first-person narrator avoids any comment here as well. Until the moment when Lila - almost at the end of the novel - makes this statement, the reader takes it for granted that the title My ingenious girlfriend is coined for purple, that it corresponds exactly to the picture, the “the eternal second “Elena got from her best friend. The greater the surprise when Lila suddenly turns this on its head: While both are busy trying on Lila's wedding dress, they also start talking about Elena's future; Elena says that after graduating from high school, learning will be over in two years; Lila replies that it shouldn't be, she would even pay for her further education, because: "You are my brilliant friend, you have to become the best of all, of the boys and of the girls." - What follows is that Continuation of their wedding preparations; no discussion, not even a question, not even a thoughtful reflection, neither here nor later, neither with Elena nor - speculatively - with Lila. At least Ferrante doesn't tell about it. So much room for interpretation remains for the reader.

Narrative

James Wood praises Ferrante's surprising change of perspective as a successful ironic break and as an opportunity for the reader to gain a completely new view of the novel as a whole. He also counts their trick with the numerous tension-increasing turns of the novel. Lila's "fall from the window" - her father ends the week-long, aggressive dispute about her future at school by literally throwing her out of the window - Iris Radisch even compares with the "classic turning point of a tragedy ". Verena Auffermann emphasizes a third such turn, through which Lila's genius comes to light: The first grader Lila disrupts the lessons, does not react to admonitions, the teacher gets up, falls and remains (the students suspect: dead). A few days later, she returns and orders Lila to the front, not to punish her, but to praise her - for teaching herself to read and write as a three-year-old (which she immediately did in front of the class and the specially invited mother to demonstrate).

Ferrante does not tell the two parts of this sequence, offense / misfortune and turn for the better, en bloc. She splits them up by digressing over three chapters - but not without finishing the first part with one of the many tense cliffhangers (Is the teacher really dead? What happens to Lila?). Sometimes the narrative arcs are even more stretched: Each of the two major phases of life begins with an episode that is only taken up and ended much later. At the end of the novel, Ferrante puts another cliffhanger (How does the newly married Lila react to her husband's double betrayal?) - so effective that “you immediately want to know how things will continue.” Sandra Kegel recognizes a narrative technique here modern American TV series again: the horizontal narration , which allows certain storylines to go beyond the end of an episode. She also points out that this procedure was already in use among the authors of serial novels in the 19th century - and that work on a film adaptation of Ferrante's tetralogy is said to have already begun.

language

The author's “elegant, weightless language” is highlighted in one review, the “light weave of her flawless sentences” in another. In two others it is said that she maintains an “unexcited, unadorned” style and that her language is “simpler” than Elsa Morante's .

Karin Krieger , the translator into German, feels Ferrante's language is “controlled” and explains it like this: She herself often feels the need to describe the “bad events” described with “bad, fiery, powerful words”, but Ferrante takes that linguistically back, and she must follow her in it.

Dealing with language is also one of the themes of the novel. On the one hand, this concerns the constant conflict between the dialect used in everyday life and the high-level Italian language, which is required by the school, but which is mastered differently. On the other hand, it is about both girls trying their hand at writing: Lila early on and later distancing herself from it; Elena gradually, but always with the feeling of being inferior and the desire to learn from Lila's livelier style.

interpretation

characters

main characters

The starting conditions for both protagonists are almost the same: They come from poor backgrounds and are both intelligent, which is recognized and encouraged by their primary school teacher, but not by their parents. Elena has a small starting advantage through her father, a porter in the city administration, who knows the world outside of her neighborhood and shows his daughter at least once on a day that is memorable for her, and who is a little less narrow-minded than his wife and so on Elena's educational career made possible.

What distinguishes both girls is that they are not only opposites outwardly - Lila the “thin black woman”, Elena the “blonde chubby” - but above all in their temperament. Elena is obedient, diligent, insecure and hesitant, while Lila is unadjusted, cheeky, inconsiderate and determined to do everything. - In many ways, Lila also fulfills stereotypical ideas of a “sloppy genius”: Whatever she tackles, she succeeds immediately and apparently effortlessly; As quickly and intensively as their interest ignites, it often fades away again; her ambition, close to perfectionism, focuses entirely on the matter at hand, and she measures the result solely by her own judgment, not by the other. - The narrative perspective, however, has no small influence on the image that the reader gains from both protagonists. So it is Elena's subjective view when she makes herself “bad” and “small” while she “adores” and “heroizes” her “brilliant friend” Lila. The first volume suggests that she seems to be gradually breaking free of her inferiority complex .

When assessing the friendship between the two girls, the aspect of competition plays a central role. This rivalry is rated differently in the reviews. In one case, all-round positive: Although one-sided in the premises (attraction and neediness), their relationship is free of resentment and equally stimulating for both in terms of “affection, knowledge, ambition and incentive”. Other judgments are somewhat more skeptical: the girlfriends are almost what we call “frenemies”, favorite enemies in English; Already in the prologue it became clear that it was a question of which of the two had "the last word"; friendship with Lila was for Elena a "covenant with the devil" to which even the from Goethe's Faust originated motto of the novel refer.

Minor characters

The equipment of the hardcover edition includes a service that is known from, among other things, user-friendly editions of Russian social novels of the 19th century and which is rarely used today: a list of figures, here even in duplicate. The novel is preceded by an almost complete tableau, structured according to families, and a reduced one is added on a mobile reading card.

In total there are around 10 families with around 50 people portrayed by the author, plus individual figures such as the primary school teacher Oliviero or her cousin Nella on Ischia . The critics almost unanimously praised Ferrante for succeeding in “directing” such a large staff and creating “memorable characters” that she draws with psychological sensitivity and allows them to appear in “changing constellations”, which leads to new characteristics Would come out. Multiple examples of particularly successful supporting characters are the “crazy” widow Melina Cappuccio, her platonic lover, the poet conductor Donato Sarratore, and his antipode , his son Nino.

Themes and motifs

Naples

Young mothers in Naples 1947. - Lila and Elena were almost 3 at the time, their mothers about as old as them.

Apart from the episode on Ischia , Naples is the only setting for the first volume of the tetralogy. According to Maike Albath, she perceived him as a recipient on several levels: concrete, metaphorical and social.

Other critics describe the specifics primarily as a reading experience: In relation to the beginning, for example, one is, with the rise of the girls to Don Achille, "immediately in a scene that crackles", and with reference to the whole novel, he lives from the “skill of the author, the Rione , to make the quarter in which the girls grew up, sensually experienceable [...] its inhabitants [...] and the old city itself with its violet light of the courtyards , [...] the dirty houses, dirty streets and the smell of poverty on the stairs ”- so intense that the city becomes“ the real protagonist of the novel ”.

Ferrante says of her birthplace that it is a “prophetic city” that anticipates the “worst and best in the world”. Similarly rezipiert Albath this in my ingenious friend Naples described: It was "for the conditions of human existence itself," Anticipate "with its laws, the eruptive force, the rigid social classes, the brutality and the criminal underground," the development of Italy and even Europe . The “metaphorical qualities” are also evident in the name of the district in which the novel is set: although it has features from the Forcella area, it is always called “Rione” in general, in English “district”.

The thinking of most of the residents of the Rione does not extend beyond the boundaries of their neighborhood; the world outside practically does not exist for them. Such a closed social space is, according to Albath, the breeding ground for “ tribalistic conditions” and for “what the American sociologist Edward Banfield called“ amoral familism ”” - for a world in which “daughters […] from the Windows thrown [...] and sold to the most solvent client in the neighborhood ”.

The girls encounter the Neapolitan Camorra that thrives on this breeding ground early - and immediately dare to meet their boss, Don Achille, whose imagination merges with the monster from the fairy tale. They even unconsciously seek this encounter, but when they play they always put their dolls dangerously close to the edge of the dark cellar shaft, which they in turn associate with the big black bag in which the "monster" always lets everything disappear - so that they, like them eventually throwing their dolls down each other on purpose, believing you know exactly who has them. "The black hole of organized crime", says Franz Haas, "will symbolically open again and again in the course of the novel cycle."

emancipation

The Maronti beach on Ischia : Elena is at the sea for the first time in the summer of 1959 when she was just under 15.

When asked what friendship meant to her, Ferrante replied in an interview that she was a step out of the private sphere, the attempt to experience one's own worth outside of the family. In this respect, the friendship that she puts at the center of her novel is in itself an act of emancipation for the girls. They are not denied it either. It is more difficult with everyone else.

It starts with the discovery of the world outside of your rione . This step is not intended by her parents. As a result, they have to break the rules - and fail. The first time as elementary school students, when they decide to take a secret hike to see the sea, skip school for a day, but turn back prematurely because they underestimated the distance and because Elena experiences her friend undecided for the first time and she has not yet is brave and emancipated enough to go forward. Later, as teenagers - accompanied by male friends - they go on forays through more affluent neighborhoods, where they feel alien, however, and which end in violent confrontations with young people from better circles.

Betty and her sisters : the book that Lila and Elena buy and love together. - Jo, one of the 4 protagonists (pictured): For Ferrante herself, one of her literary heroines.

It is even more difficult to get out of poverty. The girls lack neither imagination nor energy. Even their first idea leads them very close to their "destiny" and literally arises from a joint "investment in the future": With the money Don Achille gave them for their lost dolls, they buy a novel ( Betty and her sisters ), from the reading of which they draw the hope that they could later get rich by writing one themselves. As usual, Lila immediately takes action and writes “The Blue Fairy”, a story that only Elena is persistently enthusiastic about and which remains just as unprinted as her first article many years later, from which she hoped as a high school student to create an identity.

Lila's second attempt - she is just as creative at painting - is not long in coming and, after breaking off her school career, is a double act of emancipation: instead of - as is expected of her - just helping her mother with the household, she conquers herself a place in the father's shoemaker's workshop; instead of just working alongside the men, she designs shoes herself - in the hope of founding her own family label with them . With the help of her brother Rino, she also succeeds in making one of her models, but a lack of technical training, Rino's impatience and the narrow-mindedness of her father bring her project to a standstill until Stefano comes on the scene and makes it possible with his investment, but just at the price of their marriage.

It is obvious that the novel uses the example of Lila's doomed attempts to emancipate a woman in a “male-dominated” society. Nevertheless, he also tells of at least one such emancipatory attempt by a man: Stefano himself. On New Year's Eve 1958, he, the eldest son of the murdered Camorrista Don Achille Carracci, wants to break with the past ("set everything to zero") by not only making friends , but also invites old enemies, above all Pasquale Peluso, the son of his father's alleged murderer. What everyone ignores in their anticipation is that Stefano's real drive is pure selfishness: He wants to strengthen his own party against new "enemies", the Solaras, another Camorra family who are fighting with him for supremacy in the Rione. Logically, the fireworks, the recognized highlight of the New Year's Eve celebration, turn into a demonstration of power, a “war of men”, and only creates new dependencies - the opposite of emancipation.

According to Iris Radisch, the possibilities that Elena and Lila have in a “ men's society ” like this one to escape “the drama of a traditional woman's life” are “escape routes”, and there are only two of them: One leads through education Recognition and prosperity, the other through an "advantageous marriage". Judging by this, Lila was already twice unfree as a 15-year-old. One “escape route” is already blocked for her, and the remaining one leaves her only “choice” of the less “unfavorable” applicant. In terms of wealth and comfort, Lila has left Rione far behind with her marriage. Maestra Oliviero had already announced to Elena years before the extent to which she would remain arrested by Elena with her gloomy prognosis that Lila was “ plebs ”, “ rabble ”, wanted to stay and therefore deserve no better. This warning, according to James Wood, hangs over Elena like the prophecy of a classic tragedy throughout the first volume , until Elena understands this rabble even better at the final wedding celebration - as part of all of them and as something from which they want to free themselves .

Adaptations

The English playwright April De Angelis adapted the entire Neapolitan saga into a two-part play with a total playing time of four and a half hours. It premiered in March 2017 at the Rose Theater in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames .

Directed by Saverio Costanzo , the novel was adapted as an eight-part television series. It was produced on behalf of HBO , RAI and TIMvision and began broadcasting on HBO on November 18, 2018. In Germany, the series has been on Magenta TV since May 2, 2019 .

literature

Text output

Secondary literature

  • Grace Russo Bullaro, Stephanie V. Love (Eds.): The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-59062-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This title for the entire novel cycle begins to become naturalized and is used among other things on the website of the German-language publisher: Elena Ferrante: Meine geniale Freund . Suhrkamp / island
  2. ↑ a b c James Wood: Women on the Verge. The fiction of Elena Ferrante. In: New Yorker. January 21, 2013, accessed July 3, 2017.
  3. ↑ Elena Ferrante, Art of Fiction No. 228. Interview with Elena Ferrante (English; own translation) In: The Paris Review. No. 212, Spring 2015, accessed on August 26, 2017.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Maike Albath: Social advancement at the price of alienation. In: Deutschlandfunk. August 28, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
  5. ↑ Ursula March: Reversed in doubles. In: The time. August 23, 2017. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  6. ↑ Martin Ebel: Elena Ferrante is one of the best storytellers of our time. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. September 12, 2017. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  7. ↑ Elena Ferrante: My brilliant friend . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2016, p. 398.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f Iris Radisch: A great success. In: The time. September 11, 2016, accessed July 3, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Elena Ferrante: My brilliant friend. Interview with Verena Auffermann. In: SWR2. September 9, 2016, accessed July 3, 2017.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f Sandra Kegel: The law of the street rules in the Rione. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. August 25, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
  11. ↑ a b Christian Bos: Elena Ferrante's novel “My ingenious girlfriend” - a sensational success. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. August 28, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
  12. ↑ The Phantom Ferrante. Interview with Karin Krieger. In: Österreichischer Rundfunk. September 15, 2016, accessed July 3, 2017.
  13. ↑ a b c Franz Haas: Naples is not by the sea for everyone. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. August 26, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
  14. ↑ a b c d Exchange with a phantom. Interview with Elena Ferrante. In: Der Spiegel. August 21, 2016. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  15. ↑ Elena Ferrante: My brilliant friend. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2016, p. 212.
  16. ↑ Michael Billington: My Brilliant Friend review - triumphant staging of Elena Ferrante's quartet . The Guardian, March 14, 2017.
  17. ↑ James Poniewozik: Review: 'My Brilliant Friend' Is an Intimate Epic . The New York Times, November 14, 2018
  18. ↑ Fiona Ehler's "My ingenious girlfriend" as a series . Spiegel online, May 2, 2019