Un anthropologist determined to investigate the mystery of tarantismthe syndrome that tradition wants to be linked to the bite of a spider. An enigmatic woman, a daughter never born and another destined to represent the nemesis for the scholar And anyone who does not accept to abandon themselves to the power of the ritual.
La Puglia and Rome, Tricase and the Velabro: Manuela Maddamma, scholar and translator of Giordano Bruno, curator of Adèle Hugo’s diary, with the his second novel, Fascinating itweaves a map that from the semiologist Salentina Maria Corti (makes you exclaim to its protagonist “how much I had loved that book!” About Everyone’s time, Medieval novel by Maria Corti set in Otranto) comes to Suspiria and Black Swan.
“In the book there are many my mixed passions,” explains Maddamma. «The closed world of the Accademia di Dance, which the young Irma attends. The idea that the female is one and indivisible, for this reason the names in the book are all registry, Mira, Irma, Miriam, as in Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.
And then, a theme that you have always fascinated me, that of the Great Mediterranean motherlady of life and death, represented by the network fabricly woven by the spider which, Like the “Maman” spider of Louise Bourgeois (bronze statue, ten meters by ten, made in 1999 editor’s note ), trap the protagonist: What happens in Puglia in the 70s drags to Rome in the following decade.
Manuela Maddamma, 52 years old. He studied Renaissance philosophy in Rome and Paris. Among his books he lets you look, an esoteric novel set in Paris, extreme souls, essays of literature on little known figures of the ‘900, crazy love, extracts of Adèle Hugo’s diaries. (Photo: Francesca Romano)
She chooses the exclusivity of the first male person, through the anthropologist’s story, a scholar who investigates anything but rational issues, but who does it with the scientist’s attitude. Then besieged this first male person with Irma’s diaries and letters. Rationality gives way.
The rationality of the protagonist had already failed in Puglia: my character does not understand anything about the rite, but remains subjugated, overwhelmed by his power, without being able to decipher it. He will get rid of the spell only years later, in Rome, when he aims through his daughter he will sacrifice himself to restore order.
He worked on two poles who are also his, Rome and Puglia, the big city with its secrets and the reality of the small rural community.
These are the two dimensions that belong to me, paternal and maternal. My father was from Lecce, I attend Salento since childhood. My paternal grandmother was then Lucana. All the speech linked to the magical-religious traditions of Basilicata and Puglia is within me since childhood, they are rites that are transmitted only in a female line and only to a woman in life, on Christmas night. I persecuted my grandmother, so that these magical and religious knowledge that once had the role that psychoanalysis played today. The rites made it possible to give an order to the chaos of everyday life, to heal from diseases related to love passions. Or even just from melancholy.
In her there is also the rational aspect of the scholar. In addition to Maria Corti, the book is full of references. Cristina Campo, for example …
It gives the title to one of the chapters, the tiger absence. The titles are almost all inspired by the poets that I have most expensive, like the station of the city of R that comes from Wisława Szymborska. They are small tributes, musical and poetic references that accompany me. I always repeat verses while walking, it’s my arianna thread.
“The fascinating” by Manuela Maddamma, Fandango Books136 pages, € 14
His book manages to reconcile “Christian and pagan prayer, the Madonna della Serra and the snake King of Tiberina”. How do you keep the two dimensions in the newspaper together?
I received a Catholic education, I learned to recite the prayers, Ave Maria, our father, hi regina. Then I studied philosophy, Giordano Bruno and the 16th century, and I ended up in Paris in a world where in the 90s, in the Department of religious and anthropological sciences, magical things, cabal, paganism were studied. I moved away from Catholicism and then get closer about about ten years ago thanks to the encounter with a priest – in the book is Father Alfio – who is a leader of charismatic, hosted in Rome in a church of the ghetto, near the Tiber island where there is a fragment of the snake of the temple of Esculapio who mysteriously healed Rome from the plague. The prayer that practice is very felt and uses glossolalia, the so -called “speaking in language”, that is, through vocalizations that do not correspond to a coded language, but are inspired by God. I have been attending this church for some years, a truly unique place where you find the clochard sitting in prayer next to the lawyer of Goldo, and Father Alfio who is a healer, an exorcist, and looks more like a gurus. An enlightened that to a priest is a reference figure for me.
In the book there are ghosts and a bewitched house.
This is also linked to ancient family events. To a very secret and immense love from which a little girl could have been born. My sister who still lives in that house assures me that there is her ghost. A good and melancholy ghost, the ghost of a girl who could not stop on earth.
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