Dear All,
Please take this short survey to help me organize the rest of the semester. We are halfway there and I would like to know what is working for you in this class, and what you would like to change.
I would also like to remind you to fill in the participation self-evaluation sheet after each class.
Thank you. Take the survey!
Q: Who is teaching the course?
Dear All,
Prof. Lombardi had a family emergency and didn’t fly to NY yesterday, as it was supposed to do. He will probably be in NYC in November. For now the lecture is postponed, but we don’t have a new date yet. I am sorry for the inconvenience.
Please leave a message below to confirm that you have received this note.
Enjoy your break!
Dear All,
Please remember that there is no class on October 9 and 16 (but there is Lombardi’s lecture on the 16). Please take advantage of this break to catch up with the readings or to read ahead or to prepare your presentation. Speaking of presentations (October 30), see the instructions in the page assignments and please notice that in class we discussed the criteria for a good presentation: clarity, specificity, originality of the argument, performance directed at the class (in other words, don’t talk just to the instructor), simple slides with images or bullets points (no text from your presentation, quotations from your sources are allowed) have been voted as the most important criteria for a good presentation.
For October 23 please finish reading The Story of a New Name and read the essay by Emma Van Ness’s in Grace Russo Bullaro and Stephanie V. Love, eds. The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins. Follow the link under materials and download the chapter entitled “Dixit Mater”. Read pages 293-300 for now.
In your Post 6, you can:
I look forward to seeing you at the lecture on October 16, at 6.30pm.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment here. Ciao!
With the date of the midterm presentation approaching I want to center my thinking and analyses on Lila and Lenù’s relationship. I want to narrow my presentation specifically on how Lila is a sort of parasite or disease in Lenù’s life.
An episode in this reading where Lila is seen as a parasite in Lenù’s life occurs through the events following the party at Professor Galiani’s house. At the party, Lenù feels confident, praised and accepted amongst people like her who are educated and strive to be brilliant. Lenù comes to realize after the party at Professor Galiani’s house that she does not want a real relationship with Lila anymore (Ferrante, 169). Lila viciously mocks the manner of the people Lenù strives to be like and this deeply upsets Lenù. All of Lila’s hateful remarks of the night turns Lenù’s joy sour. This immense influence Lila has over Lenù’s emotions is shown through this passage:
“She was so spiteful, all the way home along Corso Vittorio Emanuele, that I was silent, and felt the poison that was transforming what had seemed to me an important moment of my life into a false step that has made me ridiculous. I struggled not to believe her. I felt she was truly hostile and capable of anything. She knew how to set the nerves of good people alight, in their breasts she kindled the fire of destruction” (Ferrante, 163).
Lila has the power to ruin the joys of Lenù’s life. This party is one of the few moments so far that Lenù feels confident being herself; someone who continues to pursue her studies because they matter and will lead to a brilliant future. This party gives her hope and in a single car ride home Lila is able to dismantle that hope and leave Lenù feeling inadequate once again. Lila sucks the hope and joy out of Lenù like a parasite sucks the life out of its host.
The Prologue closes as Elena begins to type in the middle of the night, is she typing out all four books at one go? We don’t know, but we know it’s impossible. But when I sit to type out a remembered conversation or encounter, of necessity I type quickly, perhaps writing run-on sentences as I go. As Christopher Warley writes, “Ferrante deploys the run-on to create a momentum that is headlong and occasionally breathless but still intimate—here you are, inside the operation of Elena’s head, everything she thinks coming out in the order it occurs to her….” But let’s be clear: Ferrante’s run-ons are clearly stylistic choices or, to be more precise, a style employed to build a cumulative effect with language, with structure, on a sentence level. This is something you can only do by writing purposely, by planning, by rereading and editing your own writing. The prologue, the impulse to sit down to write it all out, is a conceit that I was acutely aware of the first time I read the novel(s). No one can write even a tenth of that at one sitting.
Not only does Ferrante use the comma splice to create her run-ons, she uses semi-colons. Also, in lists, she does not use “and” before the last thing in the list: “…[I]t had become clear to her that her life would forever be Stefano, the grocery stores, the marriage of her brother and Pinuccia, the conversations with Pasquale and Carmen, the petty war with the Solaras” (161).
Here’s an example of Warley’s claim: “[Lila] admitted she had been sure she would be attractive to the males, she always was. Instead she immediately felt voiceless, graceless, deprived of movement, of beauty. She listed details: even when we were next to each other, people chose to speak only to me; they had brought me pastries, a drink, no one had done anything for her; Armando had shown me a family portrait, something from the seventeenth century, he had talked to me about it for a quarter of an hour; she had been treated as if she weren’t capable of understanding” (161).
Lenù is using information she gained from the notebooks (and, I wonder, is she here mimicking Lila’s style of notebook writing, its structure?). But, in the moment, she only knows that after the party Lila spitefully ridicules the evening, the people and the conversation, and even Lenù herself. Thus, from that night, begins Lenù’s “first break and a long separation from Lila” (163). And so Ferrante uses run-ons to signal a transition to a new period in Lenù’s life.
When I tutor I tell beginning writers who use run-ons that they shouldn’t use them because the professor will expect them not to; because they do not know they are writing them; because they have to learn how to structure sentences. But I almost always also say that we speak in run-on sentences, and in fiction and poetry you can do anything you want. The point is to use any construction, device, or strategy consciously as part of your style. Same with fragments, for example.
I use run-on sentences in my creative writing, but not only in my draft. I use them with purpose. I like that they plunge the reader forward and are, as Warley says, “breathless.” They’re good for interiority, which is one (of the many) frame(s) for the whole book. Run-ons don’t give the character time to pause and reflect; as Warley points out, Elena remains caught in the action, in the scene, by means of those sentences. Maybe I started using them from reading Ferrante years ago.
The new section for this week’s reading starts, like the beginning of the book, with a reflection from the future about the past. Elena notes, “How much that evening had hurt her I learned later from her notebooks. She admitted that she had asked to go with me…” (160-161). And Elena continues on about all the things that Lila later admitted in her journals about the night of the dinner party. But in the present Elena describes Lila as “mean” and “treacherous” (161). Elena does not often talk from the future, so the choice to use future knowledge here must be important. Elena wants to show sympathy for Lila. At the time the way Lila acts towards Elena is horrendous and we might not understand why, so we cannot empathize with her. Once we know how Lila felt thanks to the future perspective, specifically, how upset she was at the dinner party, we are able to have more sympathy for her. Elena also chooses to add the future knowledge before even telling the readers what Lila did. These small details show how much love Elena has for Lila even when they are old. Elena works hard to be gracious to Lila and show a kind image of her in her story, but only once she has the perspective of time and age. Sometimes anger is a thing of the present, and kindness is only something that can come with time.
In his piece Ferrante’s Run-Ons, Christopher Warley writes of a scene in the first book where Elena becomes aware of her lower social status, that “the speed of the narrative prevents this observation from turning into unfurled Marxist theory”. This is true throughout the novels. Elena the narrator avoids any heavy analysis about political or social situations in the books. Throughout, Lenù is exposed to talk of communists, facists, student protests etc, and her friends and other characters speak of these topics, yet the narrator never discloses her opinion or analyses these topics.
The reason for this can be seen in how the novel is written. As Christopher Warley writes, Ferrante’s writing shows “inside the operation of Elena’s head.. She thinks coming out in the order it occurs to her”. Ferrante is writing the way Elena Greco thinks, unstructured and unplanned. Ferrante’s run on sentences are “the narrator recreating the rush of the moment” (Warley). When these things are happening to Lenù, she is not thinking of the broad social or political meaning, she is thinking of what is happening to her. The writing is Elena’s life, rather than an explanation of it.
The narration of the story is tricky when one considers that for the most part, the reader is placed inside the mind of Elena and is not often allowed a genuine glimpse into Lila’s complicated thoughts. However, when Elena is invited to a party by one of her professors and Lila decides to tag along, the reader is given a painful insight into the humiliation in Lila’s heart that Elena later reads from her private notebooks. Elena marks the significance of this event for her friend by noting, “That evening for the first time it had become clear to her that her life would forever be Stefano, the grocery stores, the marriage of her brother and Pinuccia, the conversations with Pasquale and Carmen, the petty war with the Solaras…There, for the entire evening, she had felt irrefutably lost.” (Ferrante 161) Up to this point, Lila feels a sense of regret regarding her marriage to Stefano and everything related to it. She is a force to be reckoned with and cannot nor will not allow herself to be controlled and limited by anyone in any respect. Upon hearing of this party, her hopeful excitement that she would be able to escape her repetitive, demanding and sorrowful marriage life is put off balance by Elena’s hesitancy to bring her there. Evidently, Lila believes that her mysterious and dangerous aura would be a source of attraction to everyone she meets at the party. When she realizes the festivities are fulfilling the opposite of her expectations, the humiliation becomes too much to bear and she feigns boredom. Although her intelligence is boundless and her capacity to learn is admirable, her insecurities and the disrespectful treatment she receives are a reflection of her lack of schooling and awareness of everyday international events. Her pride and ego are damaged heavily at this event and she begins to realize where she is destined to belong.
Even upon realizing this, her attempt to humiliate Elena to conceal her own shame is evidence of denial on Lila’s part. Perhaps, the same stubbornness that does not allow Stefano, her in-laws nor the Solaras to control her every move, is the same sentiment that prevents her from understanding that the marriage trap she has placed herself in is more permanent than she believes. Whatever the extent of her knowledge, according to Elena, Lila is beginning to accept that she belongs to a certain group of people: those who are content with wealth, luxuries, marriage and children. In other words, in Lila’s eyes, a comfortable life that limits a woman’s freedom and persistent efforts of business deceptions that help to increase those lifelong comforts. The vulgarity with which Stefano and everyone around Lila are constantly attempting to pursue the utmost wealthy success, including her own brother, is so far from the world of education and academics of Elena’s world, that it seems as though Lila feels intimidated and unable to catch up with the mental marathon that Lila, herself, has pushed Elena to pursue. She does not wish to be left behind yet does not seem to realize that she, herself, is ahead of Elena in many other aspects of life. It is a matter of comprehending that, in reality, there is a balance to Elena and Lila’s friendship that reveals that intelligence and education take many forms.
The novelty of such an episode stems from the weakness that Lila expresses. From the beginning, the reader becomes intimate with a Lila that is ferocious and indestructible both physically and mentally. However, the humiliating reality of her situation and the decision of placing herself under the hand of Stefano has revealed her human side. The constant mental and physical pressure at home, whether it’s working at the grocery, her husband’s beatings or her miscarriage and the mental pressure of the party has thrown her off balance. She is finally beginning to realize that she cannot control everything. This time, instead of being able to step on the brake to place herself where she deems suitable, she is swerving out of control, unable to understand that she is being led down a dangerous route.
Throughout “The Story of a New Name”, Nino’s personality becomes more and more prevalent. He is elusive, charming, intelligent, witty, handsome, and most importantly he seems different than all of the other men in the neighborhood, especially his father. He does not concern himself with the neighborhood drama. Nino is able to use his intellectual charm to physically and emotionally attract many women. He has always been Elena’s only love interest and the one person she obsessively desires. Then, Lila spends more time with him and her attraction to him thickens.
Nino is sexually and intellectually intriguing to both girls. He is an equal who possesses access to a wordly knowledge foreign to Lenu and Lila. He is symbolic and vital to the rivalry between the girls. The girls both crave attention from Nino who represents something else that Lila is able to acquire over Lenu. Nino is symbolic in the sense that he is just another controlling factor in the enduring competition between the girls. The fact that Nino chooses Lila is an unbearable betrayal for Lenu. Present-day Elena writes, “Today I feel some uneasiness in recalling how much I suffered, I have no sympathy for myself of that time” (236). In retrospect, it seems that Elena is critical on her younger self and deems her time and effort was wasted on trivial affairs.
What I find most compelling while reading Ferrante’s second volume is that there is always mutual jealousy between Lenu and Lila. The symbiotic envy between the girls continues from the first novel. Lenu is bitter when Lila gets Nino, while Lila remains envious of Lenu’s academic life that grants her an independence Lila can never attain.
