Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
TOI had avoided doing the typical beginning of the year column, with good intentions and so on…but I can’t resist going back to it. To the fateful question: “What do you wish for this new year?”, after answering health and happiness for the people we love and, I forgot, of course peace in the world, even if unfortunately these days it sounds like a paradoxical wish.
But who – in words – doesn’t want peace in the world? Miss Italy herself clamors for it every year, even with a crown on her head. But if we dig deep down, we would all also like a more private, more selfish peace which concerns our personal life afflicted by thousands of small setbacks, inconveniences, disturbances, call them if you want annoyances that sometimes bring shadows which, although tiny, manage to disturb the progress of our daily life.
A minimal wish but no less heartfelt because it is always in the details that bad mood as well as happiness is hidden. It is the details that create the grand design of lifenuances often left out of the great philosophical ruminations which however do not escape Judith Viorst, an extraordinary American writer, poet and psychoanalyst.
The Einaudi publishing house has deservedly decided to publish a collection of his poems from 1971 with a title as attractive as the content People and other nuisances (translation by Leonardo Guzzo and Marco Sonzogni). When I started reading I was immediately struck by the sarcasm, the self-irony and an extraordinary attention to the famous details, which in a mosaic of obsessions make up our lives.
“People and other nuisances” by Judith Viorst (Einaudi).
They are the poems of a desperate but undefeated housewife who tells us about the somersaults that every woman has to do to keep together work, children, home, family and whatever else happens to her every day. Each composition is a small short film that tells us about his but also our daily lives infested with perfect or complaining friends, distracted and privileged husbands, tics and fashions that come into our homes demanding our attention.
Even though it is a text from more than fifty years ago, it is still incredibly timely and it tells us about the inconsistencies of a world that unfortunately has not made great progress since then. Judith Viorst will be 92 in a few days and just a few years ago she published her latest book Approaching Ninety and Other Comedies of Late Age. Needless to say, we are anxiously awaiting the translation.
All articles by Serena Dandini.
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