I thought that when one writes, it makes no sense to be contained, to censor oneself, writes the bestselling Italian novelist behind the highly acclaimed Neapolitan series, Elena Ferrante, in the Guardian. Read on:
I kept a diary for several years as a girl. I was a timid adolescent; all I said was yes, and mostly I was silent. In my diary, on the other hand, I let go: I recounted in detail what happened to me every day, very secret events, bold thoughts. So I was really worried about it: I was afraid that my family, especially my mother, would find it and read it. Thus I was always inventing safe hiding places that soon seemed to me unsafe.
Why was I worried? Because if, in everyday life, I was so embarrassed, so cautious, that I scarcely breathed, the diary produced in me a craving for truth. I thought that when one writes, it makes no sense to be contained, to censor oneself, and as a result I wrote mostly – maybe only – about what I would have preferred to be silent about, resorting among other things to a vocabulary that I would never have dared to use in speaking.
This soon created a situation that exhausted me. On the one hand, I made an effort of expression every day to demonstrate to myself that I was ruthlessly honest, and that nothing would ever prevent me from being so; on the other, I was terrified that someone might set eyes on my pages.
That contradiction was with me for a long time, and in many ways it’s still alive today. If I chose to make visible in writing what, if I hadn’t written, would have remained completely hidden in my head, why then was I anxious that my diary might be discovered?
Around the age of 20, it seemed to me I’d found a solution that satisfied me. I had to stop writing my diary and channel the desire to tell the truth – my most unutterable truths – into an invented story. I took that route partly because the diary itself was starting to become fiction. Very often, for example, I didn’t have time to write every day, and as a result it seemed to me that the thread of causes and effects was broken. So I filled the voids by writing pages that I later back-dated. And in doing so I gave the facts, the reflections, a coherence that didn’t always exist in the pages that I wrote daily. So it was probably the experience of the diary and its contradictions that transformed me into a fiction writer. In the invented stories, I felt that I was – I and my truths – a little safer.
In fact, as soon as that new writing gained ground, I threw away my diaries. I did it because the writing seemed crude, without worthwhile thoughts, full of childish exaggerations and, above all, far removed from how I now remembered my adolescence. Since then, I’ve no longer felt the need to keep a diary.
I kept a diary for several years as a girl. I was a timid adolescent; all I said was yes, and mostly I was silent. In my diary, on the other hand, I let go: I recounted in detail what happened to me every day, very secret events, bold thoughts. So I was really worried about it: I was afraid that my family, especially my mother, would find it and read it. Thus I was always inventing safe hiding places that soon seemed to me unsafe.
Why was I worried? Because if, in everyday life, I was so embarrassed, so cautious, that I scarcely breathed, the diary produced in me a craving for truth. I thought that when one writes, it makes no sense to be contained, to censor oneself, and as a result I wrote mostly – maybe only – about what I would have preferred to be silent about, resorting among other things to a vocabulary that I would never have dared to use in speaking.
This soon created a situation that exhausted me. On the one hand, I made an effort of expression every day to demonstrate to myself that I was ruthlessly honest, and that nothing would ever prevent me from being so; on the other, I was terrified that someone might set eyes on my pages.
That contradiction was with me for a long time, and in many ways it’s still alive today. If I chose to make visible in writing what, if I hadn’t written, would have remained completely hidden in my head, why then was I anxious that my diary might be discovered?
Around the age of 20, it seemed to me I’d found a solution that satisfied me. I had to stop writing my diary and channel the desire to tell the truth – my most unutterable truths – into an invented story. I took that route partly because the diary itself was starting to become fiction. Very often, for example, I didn’t have time to write every day, and as a result it seemed to me that the thread of causes and effects was broken. So I filled the voids by writing pages that I later back-dated. And in doing so I gave the facts, the reflections, a coherence that didn’t always exist in the pages that I wrote daily. So it was probably the experience of the diary and its contradictions that transformed me into a fiction writer. In the invented stories, I felt that I was – I and my truths – a little safer.
In fact, as soon as that new writing gained ground, I threw away my diaries. I did it because the writing seemed crude, without worthwhile thoughts, full of childish exaggerations and, above all, far removed from how I now remembered my adolescence. Since then, I’ve no longer felt the need to keep a diary.
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