Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
THE memories, fragile matter to handleeveryone keeps them in his own way, who keeps them well ordered in a brain room like a library where the volumes are cataloged in alphabetical order and respond to the appeal as soon as we decide to evoke them.
Who hides them in the cellar and keeps them closed in the dark for fear of suddenly finding them in front of them as unwanted ghosts.
Whatever your attitude towards personal memories sooner or later the time comes to deal with it and the best way for me is to ask literature for help.
The memories of others help us bring our own to lightand as scholars of ancient civilizations after an accurate archaeological excavation we rediscover in the lives that do not belong to us the disordered fragments of our existences.
In this sense, Paola Farinetti’s book is a great comfort Surface diving (Gallucci editore) those we do when we leaf through the photo album of our past, and the author starts from the photographs that marked some moments of her life, immersing herself in a journey backwards to shed light – if ever possible – on the sense of existence.
“Surface diving” by Paola Farinetti (Gallucci publisher).
Through seemingly insignificant details, a much desired handbag, an impossible haircut, a seductive aunt, pages as light as dragonflies that graze the landscape alternate with others as dense as smoke screens that nail despair for death to the page.
Chapter after chapter Farinetti rediscovers fears and enthusiasms that have marked her growth since she was a child, passing through all the steps of life up to the difficult to accept status of a widow, an almost taboo word in our society.
“To be a widower means to have suffered a tear, it means to have clashed with the impossible, to have experienced the irreparable, and to have survived, obscenely survived.”
The book is dedicated to her husband the great poet Gian Maria Testa that we all regret, that he would be proud of this beautiful work that he had always advocated.
There is no manual for learning to deal with the waves of life and sailing among the pains that crash the heart or among the sudden and unexpected joys, but thanks to this magnifying glass in the form of memoir-stories we are able to face our experience with a new sweetness that softens the shocks.
All the articles by Serena Dandini
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