#ferranteposting

[rotzaprachim]

Frothing at the mouth

[rotzaprachim]

there’s something so genuinely haunting and magical about the Neapolitan novels by Elena ferrante in that they’re simultaneously so deeply rooted in the experience of working class women in Napoli and this very specific experience and the intersections of gender ethnicity location and class that shape these peoples’ lives….. and yet the novels have this ability to unlock Buried Memories in pretty much everyone who reads them no matter your background like oh boy that sure was a Thing that happened

[rotzaprachim]

Me about my wedding when I am straight: what if I were to focus on commemorating all the photos of my girlbestie

[rotzaprachim]

pg 19 and going insane already

[balkanlila]

Seashells from across the world series; A very Ferrante summer: Conversations on My Brilliant Friend, part V 🐚☎️

starring: @balkanelena (Colette) & @balkanlila (Jo)

Colette: I actually dislike Pietro and Nino roughly the same amount. The Solaras are more excusable at least they don't pretend to be anything other than they are.

Jo: I always say the same about the Solaras!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm 100% with you on this. Stefano is probably the worst for me personally, even more so because I know how pathetic he is. A similar thing could be said about both Pietro and Nino. Character empty of meaning affects the narrative in excruciatingly meaningful ways. Very realistic unfortunately. Michele and Marcello are worthy opponents? These other men are just. Nothing. And yet...

Colette: Yeah I completely agree with you. I think Stefano is an empty shell there is at least ~something~ to Pietro/Nino even if it's a rotten thing, eating them from the inside out. Michele and Marcello have an awareness of being villains; Pietro and Nino never perceive themselves as more than a good guy. There's something so sinister to me in the guy who is evil but thinks of himself as good and different.

Jo: Oh there is a little something to Stefano in my opinion, or more precisely there was, I think the rotten thing has had its fair share with him at the moment of our first serious encounter with him. I fear revisiting those chapters, but I recall there being some pondering on Don Achille's role in his life on Stefano's part during the rape scene. This just makes him worse to me, similarly to Pietro and Nino. Those hints of humanity only intensify my disgust.

Colette: There's one scene, although I do not remember which it is, that talks about Don Achille bursting out of Stefano's body which I think talks about the rotten thing...... The fact that he could've chosen differently and appears at first to have done so makes him disgusting to me.

Jo: Stefano also thinks of himself as the endangered species in comparison to what he sees as Lila's prevailing authority!!! On the other hand, Michele sees himself in that trait of Lila's in his sick way. Michele and Lila are kind of like the worst of Elena and Franco, a woman who exists as the female elaboration of her male equivalent.

Colette: There is a perversion in that dynamic where both Franco and Michele reflect these qualities of Elena/Lila and make them believe that's the aspect they possess in themselves.

Jo: I would talk about Rino in this context, but he is sort of a sore spot because my knowledge of his monstrosity fails to accomplish what it does with all of the other men. I think he says he's the good guy in arguments, but he ultimately feels inadequate in every single area of what he believes manhood should be. Which is probably why I treat him a little differently, he doesn't actually think of himself as the good guy.

Colette: Yeah he tries really hard to live up to that model and ultimately fails, even to himself. So there's a particulate of that "aware of what he is" quality that makes even the Solaras palatable. In a story that's so focused on dissolving boundaries as the ultimate evil, the terror in a world that needs to be neatly divided and defined to be understood, there's a comfort even in evil knowing what it is. And that's a story Lila is the hero of; someone who can't help but be what she is.

Jo: Status is such a significant aspect of both Michele/Lila and Elena/Franco because they find their female counterpart to be lacking not only due to her sex, but due to her societal rank/upbringing/ancestry as well.

Colette: Yes exactly!! They are aware that society has conferred higher value on their lives and see that as intrinsic value rather than circumstance, ElenaLila proving greater intellectual merit challenges a system they see as natural.

Jo: Yessss, so naturally their response to that would be to make the girls a part of their world. They both either actually give or offer expensive gifts meant to make them appropriate. There's also that element of thinking of people who aren't in their position as unfortunate. Like for Franco poverty will never be anything but an intellectual topic as is the case with everything he supposedly believes in. Nino is interesting here because he HAS knowledge of misfortunes of one's birth, but he absorbs behaviour reminiscent of Franco and Galiani's son and that has a lot to do with his central contradiction, the one that's eating him and Lila (Lila who also starts off dreaming of money and feels thrilled at the prospect of taking Nadia Galiani's place).

Colette: Nodding nodding nodding. I think the difference between Lila and Nino is the thing ends up eating him alive and she’s able to recognize the reality of her situation, of the neighbourhood as crucial to her being rather than something she needs to shake off to be acceptable.

Jo: I often think of Lila and Nino as opposing resolutions for the same topic, with Elena in the middle. Lila who suffers from too much individuality and Nino who suffers from sacrificing his. Elena doesn't end the story unharmed, it's just that her ending seems less extreme in comparison to Lila and Nino's.

Colette: Yes precisely!!! And Elena is borne of a kind of repression that Lila and Nino don’t exhibit in the same way. Not one of my true desires etc

[balkanlila]

it's also so endlessly heartbreaking to me how lila is continously described as selfish by other characters in the novels when a lot of what she does isn't focused on making herself the main character at all, but the exact opposite. her most selfish moments supposedly are her fighting against decisions that affect her life first and foremost, more profoundly and drastically than anybody else's. it's rino blaming her for everything that's ever happened to them, blaming it on lila's personality more than anything else, when all lila has ever done has been so deeply focused on her relationship with him and the love that she has for him. the worst part of it all is that rino doesn't believe he's right about what he's saying wholeheartedly either, his behaviour largely stems from his own feeling of inadequacy, his inability to make sure lila lives a better life. everything is about lila and rino, but what do i know. if only they realised that making their sibling's life better had little to do with making them rich or helping them go to school. but then again, if this were clear to them, l'amica geniale wouldn't exist as a story at all.

[balkanlila]

meeting lila all over again is finally giving me the words for the central struggle of my life which is... having your intelligence advertised without including the person that comes with it. the person that doesn't exist separately from that intelligence, but the person who doesn't meet the requirements for utilisation of that same intelligence because so many parts of you are sticking out the wrong way and those parts are what makes you human. and the truth is, you can't help but take all of this to heart no matter how independent you make yourself out to be and then you start thinking of yourself as exclusively valuable in the context of that utilisation so you either consider yourself to be integral for that reason alone or completely meaningless and useless once deprived of it ("she's realising that i'm stupid" encounter with oliviero). so your brain is both like a foreign entity and the one thing that guarantees your survival. deep down you just want to live without anyone bothering you and you want to love everything that you love without it being a big deal to anyone apart from yourself, but you are nothing without the things that make you prone to being bothered.

you don't understand the strength and effort it took me to write this down.

[balkanlila]

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