In Other Words (22 page)

I do my best to hit the target, but when I take aim I never know where the arrow will land. At least a hundred times while I was writing the chapters of this book I felt so demoralized, so disheartened, that I would have liked to stop. In those dark moments my Italian writing seemed to me a mad undertaking, a slope too steep. Yet if I want to
go on writing in Italian I have to withstand those stormy moments when the sky darkens, when I despair, when I fear I'm at the end of my rope.

I envy Pavese, and his capacity to plumb Italian to the depths. But I think that I, too, have taken a sounding by way of these reflections. Investigating my discovery of the language, I think I have investigated myself. The verb
sondare
means “to explore, to examine.” It means, literally, to measure the depth of something. According to my dictionary the verb means “seek to know, to understand something, in particular the thoughts and intentions of others.” It implies detachment, uncertainty; it implies a state of immersion. It means methodical, stubborn research, into something that remains forever out of reach. A well-aimed verb that perfectly explains my project.

I
conceived and wrote this book in a library in the ghetto in Rome. When I came to the city for the first time, more than ten years ago, it was the first neighborhood I discovered. It remains my favorite. I'll never forget the emotion of seeing the Portico di Ottavia, a short distance from the apartment we had rented for a week. It made such an impression that after returning to New York I wrote, in English, a story set in the ghetto, in which I described the ruins of the portico: “its chewed-up columns girded with scaffolding, its massive pediment with significant chunks missing.” At the time, this ancient complex, ravaged, in pieces, rebuilt many times, yet still standing, for me embodied the sense of the city. And now it gives me the metaphor with which I would like to end this series of reflections.

I write to feel alone. Ever since I was a child it has been a way of withdrawing, of finding myself. I need silence and solitude. When I write in English I take for granted that I can do it without help. Someone may give me a suggestion, point out a problem. But in terms of the linguistic journey I am self-sufficient.

In Italian I've taken a different path. I was alone in the library, it's true. While I was writing no one was with me. My only companion was a volume of the poems and letters of Emily Dickinson, the solitary poet who spent her entire life in Massachusetts, not far from where I grew up. A beautiful red book, an Italian translation, that among all the others on the library shelves happened to draw my attention. Often, before starting a new piece, I would read one of the poems or letters. It became a kind of ritual. One day I found these lines: “I feel that I am sailing upon the brink of an awful precipice, from which I cannot escape & over which I fear my tiny boat will soon glide if I do not receive help from above.” I was amazed. Writing these chapters, I felt exactly like that.

I wrote them in order, one after the other, as if they were homework for my Italian lessons. For six months, I drafted one more or less every week. I'd never undertaken a writing project in such a methodical way. I sent the first draft to my teacher, who was the first reader. During our lessons we worked together. It was a rigorous process, both for me and for him. He saw all the gross mistakes, all the mortal sins:
gli penso
rather than
ci penso, sono chiesta
rather than
mi viene chiesto
(I think about him, I'm asked). At first he gave me a series of copious, punctilious notes. (“Be careful not to use too many verbs as nouns”;
“Mica”—
at all, it's not like
—
“is too colloquial”;
“Lasciarsi alle spalle”—
leave behind.
“Lasciare
isn't wrong but it's less natural.”) For the first story, which was less than five hundred words long, he made thirty-two notes at the bottom of the page. He gave me alternative words, he corrected (and rebuked) me when for the hundredth time I made a
mistake in the subjunctive, a gerund, a conditional clause. He explained how English stalked me. He pointed out, always patiently, how many times a wrong preposition screwed things up.

After preparing a more or less clean text with my teacher, I showed every piece to two readers, both writers. They suggested more subtle modifications. With them I analyzed the text from a thematic rather than a grammatical point of view, in such a way as to really understand what I was doing. They explained what sort of impact my reflections had on them, and they always said the most important thing I needed to hear: keep going.

The third and last stage consisted of the editors at
Internazionale,
the magazine where the essays first appeared, who provided an invaluable opportunity. They understood my desire to express myself in a new language, they respected the oddness of my Italian, they accepted the experimental, somewhat halting nature of the writing. Working together, we made the final fixes before publication, examining every sentence, every word. Thanks to them I was able to make this creative linguistic leap. I was able to reach new Italian readers and, ultimately, a new part of myself.

The day the first article came out, I was so excited that, even though I'm fairly shy by nature, I would have liked to stand in the middle of the piazza and shout out the news. I'd only ever felt that way when my first story was published in English, more than twenty years ago. At the time, I imagined I would feel that sort of joy only once in my life.

All my first readers provided a critical mirror. As I said
before, I'm unable to evaluate what I write in Italian. But, more than anything, those readers supported me, the way scaffolding supports so many buildings in Rome, both ruins and new construction.

Although this project has been a kind of collaboration, writing in Italian leaves me more isolated than writing in English does. I feel estranged now from the Anglophone writers I am linguistically related to, and I'm necessarily different from Italian writers. When I think of authors who decided, for one reason or another, to work in a foreign language, I don't feel I'm a legitimate member of that group, either. Beckett lived in France for decades before writing in French, Nabokov had learned English as a child, Conrad spent a long time at sea, absorbing English, before becoming an Anglophone rather than a Polish writer. What I'm doing—daring to write in Italian after living in Italy for barely a year—is different, out of the ordinary, and so I feel an even more intense solitude, almost another dimension of solitude. I wonder if there are others like me.

Scaffolding is not considered beautiful. It usually represents a kind of blight. It interferes, it spoils the look of something. Ideally it shouldn't be there. If I have to walk under scaffolding, I prefer to cross the street. I'm always afraid it's going to collapse.

In the case of the Portico di Ottavia, however, I make an exception. I've never seen the portico without scaffolding, so I now consider it permanent, natural. Although it's an obstruction, the scaffolding adds an element of emotion to the ruin. It seems a miracle to see the columns, the pediment, restored and dedicated in the Augustan age.
I'm amazed that one can walk calmly through the complex, which is in pieces and yet still present. It recounts the passing of time but also its annulment.