Stills from "My Genius Girlfriend"
Observing the discussion and empathy that the works of the anonymous Italian writer Elena Ferrante provoke in China is like a fieldwork on the current situation of women's existence in China. But Chen Ying, an Italian literary researcher and Chinese translator of Ferrante's works, reminds us not to ignore the literary nature and creativity of the works themselves, as well as the rich literary tradition and realistic soil behind the works. Chen Ying believes that the "Naples Quadrilogy" tells not only the story of women's growth, but also a history, objectively telling the historical changes in Italy over the years.
Here's what Chen Ying had with Southern People Weekly about Ferrante's work:
People: Southern People Weekly Chen: Chen Ying
Ferranteria in different countries: Round Table Mutual Aid and The Italian Southern Society
Southern People Weekly: I went to The Salon of Ferrante's new book a few years ago and was impressed because people were not talking about the book itself, but about their experiences and confusions like a roundtable mutual aid club. In recent years, when you have attended Ferrante's relevant lectures and salons, what have you been asked the most?
Chen: Every time we go to lectures, we have more than a hundred readers, most of them are girls, and everyone shares the feeling of reading the "Neapolitan Tetralogy", but I think most of the discussion in China focuses on the situation of women, and most of the questions I am asked about the lives of girls themselves.
I was most impressed by a lecture at a bookstore in Chongqing on March 7, 2021, when a male reader said that he realized that his mother was in a state of complete self-loss, that everything was sacrificed, and that time and energy were focused on others. As a child, she was his mother, giving everything for the family, and by the time he had children, she became a grandmother and continued to take the children. He was aware that all men had their own lives, careers, and circles of friends, and saw a sad situation in their own mothers. He asked: How can she get out of this situation of losing herself?
I've recently started thinking about the fact that many of the images of women portrayed in past novels may be trapped in love and family, with women appearing as mothers or lovers. Both of ferrante's fictional characters created in the Neapolitan Quadrilogy appear as working women. The various problems encountered by women in all aspects of growth, education and work are reflected in Ferrante's female characters. Both Elena (Lennon) and Lila try to find their way through work.
People: Internationally, what is the discussion of the "Neapolitan Tetralogy"?
Chen: The international attention paid to Ferrante, in addition to the novel's writing of female friendships, is also the reality of southern Italy. The society of the south of Italy is very different from that of the north, and there are deep-rooted "southern problems", which are clearly written in the "Neapolitan Tetralogy". The United States has a collective understanding of southern Italian literature, in fact, the United States' love for Ferrante also corresponds to the United States' interest in southern Italian literature.
In general, I think that the work is to seize the moment, and it is precisely in this era, in such a historical process, that there is a work like the "Neapolitan Tetralogy". But I also have a doubt, some works caused a huge sensation at the time, but eventually needed time to verify, including some very great works, such as the works of Calvino, who is also an Italian writer.
People: In the years when the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" has aroused discussion and empathy in China, there has been an increasing focus on women's issues in society, what role has this set of books played in this attention?
Chen: This set of books has a high degree of attention in China because it fits into a social reality. There are a large number of women in China who receive higher education, starting with the generation of only children, and no men compete with her for educational resources in the family. There are a lot of good women in my generation, and I feel like it has something to do with this era. In any case, the one-child policy has played a big role in changing the living conditions of women. Ferrante's book is relevant to their lives and discusses how to solve some of the common problems facing this generation, such as how to enter society from small towns, such as how this group of highly educated women entered society, which is particularly in line with the reality of China.
Man: What was it like to translate the "purely spiritual, poetic, abstract, dreamlike" postmodern novels in your early translations to Ferrante?
Chen: At first, I was very uncomfortable, because I had translated Alessandro Barico (the pianist at sea) and other writers, and their works were not concerned with life itself, but were pure spiritual, escapist. They want to find a perfect world in the text, and postmodern writing is sometimes very abstract allegorical writing. In fact, I myself am also an escapist type, feeling that daily life is very boring, worthless, and unrealistic when I was young, but I think Ferrante has a power to pull me back to reality.
Because she writes about very specific realities in her novels, she makes you face the first menstruation, the first time you have a boyfriend, you can't study hard, you have to find a job, you don't have money to buy books, you don't have clothes to wear. There was a feeling that I was being led through my youth again.
The role "duo" looks for references in growth
People: Many original readers have a sense of deception when they watch the TV series "My Genius Girlfriend". In the book, the protagonist Elena uses a first-person perspective to create a closed information environment, and everything the reader sees is the world she paraphrases her understanding, and she always says that she is worthless. It is not until watching the play that many readers see Elena in the eyes of other characters, it turns out that she is very good, it turns out that she is respected by the people around her. Do you have a "sense of deception" or "deception" when you translate texts in depth?
Chen: No, her sense of inferiority is very real. Because I recently finished translating Ferrante's collection of essays in The Guardian's op-ed, Accidental Creation. After I finished the page, I was even more convinced, and it revealed a more conservative, unsure, and hesitant attitude of Ferrante when writing the article, which I thought was the real emotion that the author felt throughout his heart, not a fiction.
Ferrante is not of our generation, and the new generation of Italians has produced some strong and confident female scholars. But if it is the Italian generation born in the 1950s, like Ferrante, inferiority is a typical complex. She really doesn't have self-confidence, so I don't think the Neapolitan Quadrilogy is a deception, it's a very real feeling and reaction. Throughout the trilogy, the protagonist, Elena, shows this lack of confidence throughout. But Lila was different, she was confident, she dared to say anything, and Elena was particularly dependent on Lila because of that.
Man: Ferrante's novel The Adult Lie is also about the growth of a girl. In the novel, Ferrante also creates a character for the protagonist, a bit like Lila, the protagonist's aunt, a "determined, fierce, destructive" female figure. She seems to like to set up such a contrasting role in the work, what does such a contrast mean?
Chen: Including Ferrante's original publication of "Annoying Love" and "Adult's Life of Lies", the biggest feature of Ferrante's novels is the subjective consciousness of women, and everything in the book is said and understood from a female perspective. She looks at men from a female perspective, such as Nino and Enzo, and she struggles to find references when confronting other women.
You see, Lila is a very charming image. In the entire growth process of the protagonist, the influence of this femininity is particularly strong and particularly guiding, and the same sex is still very large. Lila especially knows who she is from an early age, and has a strong self and self-confidence; although "Aunt" has no culture, she especially knows what she wants, and whether it is Lila or Aunt, their desire to control the protagonist is still quite strong.
Such a contrast role is the process of the protagonist looking for references in his growth. Ferrante's first novel, Called Annoying Love, is based on a reference in his mother. Ferrante's next two novels, The Forsaken Days and The Daughter in the Shadows, will be a little more like a one-man show. But at present, these few Ferrante novels that we have translated do have a phenomenon of duets, which is what makes Ferrante special.
Lila in a wedding dress
If you dare to cut your hand, I dare to cut my hand
People: The relationship between Elena and Lila is indeed more passionate and lasting than their respective love and marriage, and the two people know and value each other's values, respect and chase each other. You once said that the two men ransacked each other, and "looting" is indeed a new description of friendship.
Chen: Robbing each other is a feeling of stealing energy from each other. When you're in a particularly good shape, I'll find a sense of dependency in you, or when I need inspiration, I'll discuss it with you. "Mutual looting" seems to be the formulation of an American critic, and the relationship between Elena and Lila is indeed very complicated, supporting each other and robbing each other.
After Lila and Nino were together, Lila had this important and precious experience. When Elena later re-approached Nino, the main factor besides liking the boy was that her most beloved girlfriend had possessed the boy and she wanted to have a similar experience. The deeper meaning of "looting" is this, which is a particularly common psychology in female relationships, and the looting may be physical or it may be a certain quality. Their relationship pattern from childhood is like this, you dare to scratch your hand, I dare to cut my hand, this kind of competitive relationship. You have had such a lover, and I want to have it too.
People: Elena and Lila present a whole new state of friendship in literature, friendship and the world in the eyes of women. When I read the book, I thought that this deep relationship might not be understood by many people, but this set of books did cause a lot of empathy and discussion because of their friendship.
Chen: Of course, before the "Neapolitan Tetralogy", what others did not write or did not write so well and so deeply is the relationship between women. This relationship is deeper, more persistent, truly passionate and inseparable than a romantic relationship. All those who write about women's friendship rarely write about this step, and the portrayal of this friendship is the latest place in the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" as literature. This kind of writing is not only new, but also very true. When we create literary works, we must find places that others have not written, which is very difficult to find, love is the road that most people have stepped on, and it is very difficult.
The beauty of the "Naples" set of books is that it presents the relationship between women in an unprecedented form. Because most female readers have a deep attachment to their same-sex friends, this extraordinary relationship is particularly resonant, some broken, some lasting a lifetime.
People: Speaking of friendship, people may be more familiar with male friendship like Taoyuan Sanjieyi, which is magnificent and magnificent, tied to the fate of the home country, and the public is particularly strong, but there are almost no samples of female friendship.
Chen: For a long time in history, women stayed at home, there was no personal freedom, there was no public space, it was difficult to have the opportunity to meet many other women, and to establish a more public and magnificent relationship with other women.
Without paraphrasing, women speak their own desires
People: Elena, the protagonist of the "Neapolitan Quadrilogy," is also a writer, and she says that the mechanically rigid women created by men can be found everywhere, and lists Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, literary classic female characters that often appear as dependent characters. Did Italian writers before Ferrante write about female characters with strong subjectivity?
Chen: Before Ferrante, women writers like Malaini and Farage had written about such female characters. But the female figure created by Malayini is a revolutionary, somewhat rough female figure, and the independent posture is very tough. In particular, Farage's women are basically the kind of people who can't be bound by any tradition, like Maria Rosa in Ferrante's novel, the sister of Elena's husband, who was born into a high-level intellectual family, and she was particularly confident from an early age, especially clear about what she wanted, but this image did not have much to resonate with the reader.
In fact, the whole set of novels I find most fascinating is when Elena is old, you watch her go from six to sixty, all the way forward, she leaves everyone behind, including the men, and she ends up being an intellectual. Although she had a lot of frustration in the end, she got to that point in a very exploratory and pioneering process.
Why does the "Naples" novel have so many readers, because the vast majority of people are still in a more similar situation to Elena, without innate self-confidence. Of course, there are many excellent women in the world, as pilots, astronauts, scientists, but Elena is a very ordinary woman who has been moving forward, so the way she opened up is very representative and referenced. In other literary works, female characters are either too minority, too avant-garde, or particularly backward — many male writers portray female figures that are highly attached, often through "being desired and shaped", and they are unable to properly present and tell the female her own desires and this subjectivity.
People: When the female perspective begins to become a narrative trend, I sometimes wonder, whether it is literary creation or long-form report writing, if it is just to break up and crush the suffering of women, and present it to the reader in a landscaped way, is it also a kind of exploitation and exploitation?
Chen: There is indeed such a phenomenon, and there are already some such texts in literary works. Now that I think about it, in some news events, there are also perfect victims.
The transformation of social culture is a long process, and it is now a very good state. When the generation I just talked about (only children) grows up, they will play a role in influencing others. This generation is strong because of the elements of history, culture, and national policies, so this generation must pass on that firm belief. Now many women already have such a sense of self, but some people have not yet realized this, can only slowly persuade them, let them try to understand the situation of women, do not use women as a tool.
Neglected literary creativity and Italian literary tradition
People: I've always looked at the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" as a coming-of-age novel, a person who comes into this world, experiences a lot of things, collides with a lot of people, and the content is very rich. Sometimes I think Elena and Lila's relationship is too dazzling, resulting in the richer content in the book being overlooked, as a translator, do you have anything to say to the reader in this regard?
Chen: This set of books is not only a work about social reality and women's lives, it is a literary creation in itself. One of Ferrante's own particular objections was to treat her creation as a pamphlet. The "Neapolitan Tetralogy" itself is a literary work, and she cares about her literary achievements. This set of books has a lot of new things to focus on in terms of narrative framework, angle, content, etc., and I want to say this to readers who are familiar with the work.
For readers who don't find resonance in the book, I would like to say that when a person reads, there is no need to force themselves, but they can try to see the world from a different perspective. Because this set of books is not only a story of women's growth, but also a history, it tells the historical changes in Italy over the years more objectively. I hope that readers will not feel that this set of books is just a story of women telling their own experiences, in fact, it has many levels, you can see more behind the story.
People: Behind the eager discussion of women's lives is a great social demand, but for the work itself, too much focus on a certain focus, I feel that it will limit more exploration and absorption of the work.
Chen: In fact, as a literary work, the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" has a lot of subtleties, and there are many creative explorations that belong to Ferrante himself. Good Italian literature is inextricably linked to tradition, a bit like the feudal society's inheritance of concubines, Calvino inherited the literary achievements of the Renaissance, such as Ariosto's imagination, sense of entertainment; Ariosto also completed a kind of inheritance, inheriting the literary tradition of ancient Greece and Rome, but also playing a national characteristic, and has a deep historical relationship with previous works.
In Ferrante's writing, there are also heavy traces of rewriting myths and legends, and there are many mythological archetypes in her works, such as Oedipus (Oedipus) and Medea (betrayed and revenge). She actually inherited a lot of things from an Italian female writer before her, Moranda, who was also a writer whose tendency was very obvious. The passion that Moranda reveals in the novel, which Ferrante has tried in the tetralogy, such as a crazy widow like Melina, is actually like the mythical image of the mad Queen Dido, who did what the mythological characters did. Ferrante's characters, including her first book, Annoying Love, can fully see her connection to the Italian literary tradition, and she talks about many mythological archetypes in Fragments.
Simply sitting at home and creating, thinking for yourself, can't think of anything, it must be based on some existing tradition, which is a matter that Ferrante has repeatedly emphasized, and there is learning in it. She must inherit the things of her predecessors, take another step forward, and write what belongs to her.
Man: From what you know about Ferrante, is this exploration conscious, and how long is the process?
Chen: It's definitely conscious, and it's a very long process. Ferrante is definitely a scholar-type writer, she studied these things to study it thoroughly, equivalent to creating a tool library for herself, what kind of tools to use at what time, whose tone to use, whose literary style to use, the plot to learn from whom, this is all tools. Ferrante did not write out of instinct, Moranda was an instinctive writer, and the passion for writing supported her, and Morandette could not hold on and fell ill. But Ferrante is an endurance type player, and she is a scholar type.
Melina and the kids
People: The content of the four-step series is really very complex, there are forty or fifty characters with names, the character lines are staggered, and they occur on the soil of a very specific real society. I felt that the whole reading experience was too smooth, and at one point I had the illusion that she was running the whole marathon at sprint speed.
Chen: There is a lot of work behind the book, such as how to explain clearly the China I experienced in the 1980s, in addition to my own experience, I had to study that period of history and read a lot of newspapers from that period. Wild novelists can see it, but Ferrante is definitely not a wild novelist, she is a novelist with deep skills. That kind of thing that is written at a young age, with his own life experience, plus a momentum, the weight is still relatively light. When I read Italian literature, I often encounter works based on my own momentary talent, but in fact, the persistence of the works is not very strong.
Writers still need to learn for a long time, and I think Ferrante is a bit like practicing on her own, she knows desperately what she wants to do and what kind of tools she needs. Ferrante's work feels like she wrote it based on instinct, but it's not like that at all. For example, the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" also inherits the form of the previous storytellers in terms of writing techniques, and likes to leave suspense. There is a lot of knowledge and research behind her, and all the creations of male and female writers, as well as the Italian literary tradition and even world literature, are her mineral deposits and research objects.
People: In "Fragments", Ferrante discussed a lot of how she wrote, how to understand Moranda's writing, how to think about those mythological archetypes, etc., and when she read it, she was quite surprised, and she had a tenacity in her writing exploration.
Chen: Modern Italian writers, Italo Calvino, Amberto Echo, Elena Ferrante are all out of the library, everyone's reading is massive, Echo goes to his library to find a book for half a day, Ferrante is also this kind of person, her whole writing training is very hard.
Modern writers want to go longer and more steadily, I think they must be based on tradition, they must take root in the rich nutrition of tradition, and what they write close to their faces will certainly not last. Ferrante's power behind it can be seen in her Fragments. It's not that she says what books she's read, it's that she doesn't admit that she's read too many books, but she doesn't refuse life while reading them. Calvino completely refused to live. Everyone's life is different, and Ferrante found his own way.
Lila (left) and Lennon (right)
How a person becomes herself
People: Many of Ferrante's novels have women who write, and the Chinese of her works that I have read so far are limited, are her novels all first-person?
Chen: First person, and it's all women who write. The first-person approach is also Ferrante's strategy and tool, a narrative that brings a strong sense of impact and underscores her female perspective. She shows all the dilemmas that women can encounter – what will a woman born in Naples, Italy, experience when she is 60 years old? It's like escape rooms, and it's universal, because that's the rule of the game.
People: When I read the "Neapolitan Tetralogy", I found the most moving part of it that when life reached a semi-mature stage, Elena rediscovered her origins, not only her relationship with her mother, but also her relationship with Naples, she no longer fled, but faced her own origins, digging out the original strength in her life.
Chen: Elena grew up wanting to escape from her crippled mother, and when she grew up, she longed to be close to her elegant intellectual mother-in-law, but later on, she found that the most powerful and profound thing was the real thing. She found this reality in her mother, she no longer looked at the surface, but looked at the deep things, accepted her mother, accepted her origin, which was a very big growth for her. In fact, there is also a mythological archetype, every time Mother Earth's son Antai lay on the ground, his strength was completely restored, and if he was away from the ground for too long, he would die.
When Elena faced the death of her mother, she completely accepted her mother and her origins, drawing a lot of energy from her mother, whether dead or alive, which was a turning point in Elena's life. She walked more and more steadily behind her, doing anything or facing any setbacks, no longer afraid and uneasy, which was equivalent to a mythical figure rolling in the arms of Mother Earth, which was a very important point of growth. In fact, each of us has a different state of mind at different stages of life.
If a woman comes to this step, knows where she comes from, and can do anything with a bottom in her heart. Elena was in a very good state when she got to that realm, but Elena wouldn't have realized it if she hadn't walked through those corners in the first place.
Man: In fact, at the end of the trilogy, Elena is still facing her own life alone, she has experienced her mother, Lila, Nino and her daughters, but when everyone leaves, she has become herself and has her own voice.
Chen: In that feeling, she recognized herself, and this state is very precious. In the end, although Elena has not become a great character, the distance she has traveled and the heights she has reached are very precious references for us.
A woman who gets her own identity, her own name, gets her own social space, I think it's a particularly great process, and some people get stuck in the middle stage. If Elena had continued to hold on to that marriage that didn't respect her talent, with children for the rest of her life, her whole self would have been completely destroyed, and she must have been angry with herself in her old age.
This is a very powerful set of books, which is reflected in these real details. The novel does not say that Elena lived in a large villa and flew a helicopter in her old age, but she left Nino far behind in her personal realm and thoughts, and she left everyone behind. She kept going, and with each step it seemed as if she were going to fall, but she got up and went on.