TOThis year too, in the classrooms of the first high school exam, an absence occurred again “unjustified”. It is that of the great authors of Italian literaturevoices that have told the story of the twentieth century and the country with extraordinary works that have fully entered our cultural history. The voice of Elsa Morante, the look of Natalia Ginzburg, the poetry of Alda Merini, Grazia Deledda’s Nobel Prize to name just a few: none of them ever appeared in the text analysis track. Since 1999, the year in which the current state exam came into force, 27 years have passed And the test dedicated to literature remained an exclusively male club. More than a simple statistical coincidence, it would seem more like a sign of a canon that continues to struggle in recognizing the richness of women’s writing.
No female literary figure on the trail of Maturity for 27 years
Italy has had six Nobel Prizes for literature in its history. One of these is Grazia Deleddawho won it in 1926. But, a century later, the Sardinian writer has never crossed the threshold of the first test of the state exam. An entirely Italian paradox, if we think about it: students spend months studying modernism, hermeticism and neorealismbut when the moment of ministerial choice arrives, the shortlist of candidates is almost always narrowed down to male authors.
Ungaretti, Montale, Svevo and Pirandello are indisputable giants of our culture. The suspicion, however, is that we systematically prefer to play it safe.
Beyond genre, a question of great stories
Excluding literary women from high school graduation is a deprivation for the students themselves, from which a powerful and alternative narrative is taken away of our national history.
Without Elsa Morante, for example, without the pages of her masterpiece The Historythe dramatic story of the last and the defeated of the Second World War, seen from a visceral, poetic and painful perspective, is missing.
Without Natalia Ginzburg’s voicethe unique ability to transform the family microcosm and the details of everyday life into a universal reflection on memory and psychological resistance is lost. AND without Alda Merini and Sibilla Aleramoa huge chunk of it is ignored lyrical, autobiographical and stylistic experimentation which undermined the traditional languages of the twentieth century.
Natalia Ginzburg, leading figure of twentieth-century Italian literature. (Getty Images)
So why are women still not there?
The question, however, that arises spontaneously is: why should an eighteen year old boy or girl consider these authors as fundamental pillars of our identity? if, at the time of school leave, are placed in the background?
Ministerial school programs are often races against timeeducational marathons where you arrive in May with shortness of breath, sacrificing everything that goes beyond the Second World War. However, in that systematic cut dictated by haste, female voices almost always fall.
And it’s a real shame: Maturity should be the mirror of an Italy that is growing, changing and recognizing the richness and complexity of its cultural roots. Continuing to ignore women writers means presenting the new generations with a country that is halfwaywhere great literature speaks one language. It would be a great sign of cultural maturity if, for once, next year, the ministry decided to surprise the kids.