Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
dacia Maraini has named her new book after Hypatia, a Greek philosopher killed in the fifth century after Christ in Alexandria in Egypt at the hands of fanatical Christians, the parabalans.
In the name of Hypatiapublished by Solferino and edited by Eugenio Murrali – the young, highly cultured intellectual who is now almost a son for Dacia – collects many corsair pages of the writer, combative articles and texts of reflection on female destinyappearing very often on the Corriere della Sera.
Dacia wrote for Hypatia, symbol of freedom of thought, but she was also inspired by Topazia, her courageous motherwho preferred to be locked up with her husband and three daughters in a concentration camp in Japan, rather than join the fascism of Salò.
Dacia confesses in the introduction: “I can still hear my mother’s voice smiling and saying: it doesn’t matter what others say, but the first fidelity to one’s ideas comes from you, accompanied by esteem for yourself”. Those ideas that our writer has been pursuing for decades come back in this collection to be looked at as a whole.
We must be admired for the coherence, courage and tenacity with which Dacia has denounced the offences, violence and abuses that have marked female destiny. You told us about a patriarchal culture often capable of overpowering, hindering, wounding this destiny, but never completely killing it.
“In the name of Hypatia” by Dacia Maraini (Solferino).
Dacia lays bare the stereotypes and reification of the female bodybroadens her gaze to the sufferings of Iranian and Afghan women, whom as a great traveller, with Pasolini and Moravia, she had once seen walking free on the streets.
Historical articles appear, such as a open letter from 1975 In defense of abortionaddressed to your dear Pier Paolo Pasolini, who had said he was against the legalization. An affectionate and firm letter to Pope Francis on the same subject also follows.
The grand finale is the investigation into women’s prisons of 1969 for Country Evening. On that occasion she met one of her most beloved characters, Teresa the thief, who inspired a novel by her and the film starring Monica Vitti. These articles are pages of an overwhelming force, true stories of a young writer with clear ideas, determined in her commitment, powerful in narration.
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