THEn a dough of pain and irony The protagonist of Paperwho is the same author Rosa Matteucci (on September 5 a Festivalent of Mantua), tells his ramshackle life to the Research of the transcendent. A journey that starts from Umbria, from Dilapidata family villacontinues through the India of the Santoni, the Lourdes of Bernadette and a current of secular Buddhismpassing through the spiritual sessions of the father so loved and even for a exorcist friar who sells messalins and App to listen to the Rosary.
The grotesque and the comic (even in the story of the Father’s funeral) they are the scaffolding that supports a heartbreaking view, of abandonment and currenies. Rosa girl suffered hunger, like her numerous dogs, and her condition of being always hungry becomes fate. The anaffective mother does not want her, the scapestato father playing gamblingthe one -time family is in decline, but on each page of this novel we laugh with the tears in the eyes. Also thanks to a hypnotizing language, who takes the reader and envelops him in terms High, dialectal, refined and desuetic, precise and crystalline.
Rosa Matteucci (Ph: Isabella de Maddalena).
What is the paper paper?
Carturiars are liturgical tables of Latin Mass. Every now and then the priest must take a look to not forget the words. I chose this title just to remember to throw the eye, every now and then, towards the transcendent or towards anything you believe in.
Is the grotesque and self -deprecating register for you to remove suffering?
That remains, but for me it is the only way to tell it. You can’t heal the wounds of a child to whom I never told you I love you, who went to school without books, who in winter risked hypothermia.
Cartagloria by Rosa Matteucci, Adelphi153 pages, 18 €
He says he felt, as a child, an orphan with living parents. And as an adult?
I have always felt like this, always looking for parenting figures. In particular of the mother.
His mother in the book, about her unwanted birth, pronounces a phrase: “It had been for me …”.
He really said it and it is impossible to forget it. In all these years I have done a tiring job, that little girl is still inside me today, I cared posthumously. These bloody and terrifying influences or mate you or make you develop a great desire for life and nourish fantasy and intellect.
His greatest desire was to make the first communion. His did not allow him. Was he the first trauma of his childhood?
Yes, the first social exclusion. Everyone did, at school the companions talked about the party, the clothes, the gifts. And I nothing.
Does the frantic search for spirituality start from the need to be accepted and loved?
Yes. Furthermore, death scares me and the transcendent is something that offers a hold. If you believe that after this ramshackle adventure, full of errors, deviations and false departures, there is something else, then everything becomes more acceptable.
He tells the daring funeral of his father, who begins with an exchange of coffins and continues with some hilarious scenes. Aren’t you sorry that you laugh at this tragedy?
In all funeral there is something ridiculous. It is an unconscious mechanism to make the tragedy less painful.
After undergoing exorcism with little result and having been rejected by Buddhism “because there is too much pain inside her”, finds peace in the Latin Mass. What’s saving in this rite?
The Latin Mass, especially sung, which has been banned in the parishes in 2021 but is still celebrated in some oratory, for me it is a great therapy. The repetition of words, like mantra, soothes and gives joy. There is a particular gestures, different types of genuflections, the sign of the cross, to bow your head in a certain way. It is an archetypal heritage of gestures that humanity brings behind the origins and that return to various religions. I would like to make a plea to Pope Leone XIV because it agrees to celebrate this ritual freely.
So did he find what he was looking for?
I understood that if you agree to bring the cross, but really, with the heart, at that point you become free and deal with everything in a different key.
Do you feel free today?
Yes. I accepted my cross after a very painful process during which rationality and thought must be put aside, which they deepen deeply with dogmas. I still perceive a sense of inadequacy but I feel stronger.
Are you doing research on your literary language?
It is spontaneous. I write how I speak. It is the result of many readings, even bizarre, such as the late nineteenth -century magazines. Among the writers who influenced me are Émile Zola and Tommaso Landolfi. I like the precise and technical terms and learn new words. Italian has an incredible wealth that unfortunately we are losing.