The laying on of the Ferrante.
So much thunder that it rained, your birthday arrives and someone (I am sure of his good faith) takes the opportunity to note my Italian origins and decides to give me some books. I had discarded the Ferrante long ago, for other reasons (the author's character / ice is built with the same expedients used for "Q", which bores me, and you should never bore readers before they read the book) and I must say that it was a pleasure to read in person that my prejudices were an exact science, as often happens with prejudices.
The Brilliant Friend is unbearable. Indigestible. It is indigestible because it proposes that form of "moral inversion" that has taken hold in Italy with Manzoni, and then continues with all the patacattolic literature.
To understand what the reversal of morality is, just read Manzoni, the Promessi Sposi. That "historical" novel proposes the idea that the priest victim of a mafia person is the despicable person, while a friar who (one senses well) was a much worse mafioso, and after killing a guy for trivial reasons gets away with it thanks to the family that places it in a convent, that's one of the "good". As the "Unnamed" is a "good one", that apart from the fact of being Toto 'Riina for the rest of his life at some point he repents, and then he is good. Lucia, let's face it, thinks several times of sending up everything to become a nun, a sign that Renzo doesn't give a shit dry, but she is the saint, almost a model of a good wife and Christian mother. While Renzo (who is described with a good party, so he would find even better) who never has a doubt and trusts her, who waits for all the time he needs and everything, he is much less praised than Lucia. Lucia's Mother, a bomber of those from whom I would not buy a nut, is a positive character, while Azzeccagarbugli is a perfidious cavillist because he gives a legal opinion. Donna Prassede actually seems to give common sense advice (in the end, Renzo is also a wanted man), but she is portrayed as a bigot control freak, worthy of the same death as Don Rodrigo. Donna Prassede's husband, who would be a weakling of a useless mezzasega, seems to be admired as a refined intellectual of the period. Inverted morality.
In short, the moral is completely reversed: the only one who is certainly bad is Don Rodrigo, who is the only certainty in the whole book. That is the only character that falls within the moral judgment.
But why am I talking about the moral judgment on people? Because two types of books are written in Italy. Those where the moral judgment on people is reversed (like the Promessi Sposi), and those where the moral judgment on people is absent.
In general, books where the moral judgment on people is inverted come from "Northern Catholic" writers, while books where people's moral judgment is absent come from "Southern Catholic" writers.
Amica Geniale is clearly written by a Catholic writer from the South.
There are various tricks to get this effect and write a book that has a canonical consistency, that is, that respects a literary canon.
The first is to ensure that "the real protagonist is the city / the environment / the abstract neighborhood / place where the facts occur". Obviously no one is investigating why that neighborhood makes people shit, that is, people. No one is investigating why the life of those little girls / little girls is a life of shit.
Because the writer "Catholic of the South" aims to AVOID ANY JUDGMENT ABOUT PEOPLE, WHEN THE JUDGMENT REQUIRES A PUNISHMENT. In a society where reputation is everything, in fact, anyone who can mirror himself in a character in a book that "judges" will wage war on the book itself.
Elena's mother, and with her all the women who can be described in the same way, is a poor woman who was born to breathe, open her legs and relieve children. It is not clear why another such organism should consume oxygen that could otherwise be useful to produce good rust: far more profitable use. Any writer with any moral sense would make her die atrociously, to give the reader the satisfaction we feel when a villain breaks. But be careful: the book does not judge you. The exhibition in a neutral manner, as if he did not see that his profound ignorance, his absence of any critical spirit, of any form of desire, dream, hope, makes it an entirely useless, if not harmful, organism.
But be careful: certainly EVIL.
Because be careful: he's not innocent. Bending his head and accepting that inevitable destiny, he made that fate inevitable . She is a perpetuator of that system. The protagonist is NOT "the shitty neighborhood", but the shitty inhabitants who turn a shit-hole into a place that otherwise could have been beautiful. It is not "the family" that is the protagonist: it is a couple of silly idiots without any capacity for judgment, who with their stupidity, and their ignorance in practice turn the youth of two girls into shit.
Like all the other books of the writers "Catholics of the South", even the genial friend seems to propagate the same message: it is the city that makes people so, and not people who make the city this way.
Lila is brave. Up to a certain point. Because there is one thing that it never does.
To hate. Despise.
Now you will say that it is excessive, but if I told you that hatred should be directed to the environment or to the city or society or to any abstract body, you could also tell me that after all it would be deserved, and sometimes it can be seen.
But here is the point: society can hate it as much as you want. You can hate and despise the neighborhood without a problem. You can harbor a furious hatred of "the mentality": and everyone will accept it.
But woe to the world if you HATE people. Those don't touch. Because in the culture of the "Catholic of the South", if you insult the mentality, nothing happens, but if you insult a guy "you made yourself an enemy".
Let me be clear, it is not the only case: in the US of the politically correct now you can only kill vampires, werewolves, robots and Zombies, since if you touch a redskin you're just shit, if you touch a nigger you're a shit, if you kill a woman you are a shit, in short, aliens, werewolves, robots, orcs, Zombies of all kinds have been invented, so that as soon as you touch someone you have become an enemy.
Here, the "Catholic of the South" does exactly that. But instead of having the imagination to invent, what do I know, Zombies, Aliens, Vampires, Werewolves, (which you never know, and if they exist?) Then they invent an abstract entity to hate, like "the neighborhood", "the mentality "," misery ", and everything.
In short, the whole book pisses you off, maybe you are passionate about the events of those two, but let's be clear: the bad guys don't die, but not so much because you don't want them to die, but because "you don't want to decide who it is really the bad ", and especially: because YOU DON'T WANT TO HATE THEM. The author does not want you to hate them. He wants you to despise them, disapprove of them, see them as adversaries or as bad people. But it does NOT want you to HATE them.
And it is always like this when a Catholic from the South takes the pen and describes a shitty environment that is such because shitty people make it so : you see the environment of shit in all its splendor, but the characters are "A desperate humanity", a "world of beggars". You can feel compassion, contempt, disgust, BUT NEVER HATE.
Look stammmer:
No coincidence that Elena becomes more beautiful during her stay in Ischia, the pimples on her face disappear and her skin becomes tanned, giving her a healthy golden complexion, but above all her mood is positively affected. The fact of having moved away from the gray fumes of her neighborhood clearly helps her, since it is as if in the neighborhood the air was haunted, graying appearance and soul.
In short, the problem is the neighborhood. It's the neighborhood air. They are the "gray fumes" to "turn the soul gray". And not the miserable, wicked, squalid bits of shit that inhabit the neighborhood. Judging people, ODIARLE, NEVER. It's not the people who produce the neighborhood, it's the neighborhood that produces people: so you hate the neighborhood, not the people, the writer seems to say.
There are incredibly sophisticated NON-judgment pearls that show how sophisticated this art is:
"It was – he told me – as if on a night with a full moon over the sea, a very black mass of storm advanced through the sky, swallowed every light, wore out the circumference of the lunar circle and deformed the shiny disk reducing it to its true nature of raw matter senseless. Lila imagined, she saw, she felt – as if it were true – her brother who broke. Rino in front of his eyes lost the physiognomy he had always had since he remembered it, the physiognomy of the generous, honest boy, the pleasing features of the reliable person, the beloved profile of those who always, since she had memory of him, the she had always enjoyed, helped, protected. There, in the midst of violent explosions, in the frost, between the rivers that burned the nostrils and the violent smell of sulfur, something violated the organic structure of his brother, exerted on him such strong pressure that he broke the contours, and the matter expanded like a magma showing them what it really was made of ".
It seems that from that moment the judgment broke out, or at least contempt, right? I mean, it seems like there's a kind of judgment, certainly a criticism: so I would be wrong. It's a pity that exactly the opposite happens. It is very clear that from that moment Lila has no more contempt and even more hatred towards (if not her brother) at least who made him a subhuman.
"Something" has changed him, "something has exerted pressure". It seems to me that Rino deliberately chose to do what he did. That evening Rino CHOSEN to enlist as a volunteer in the Armies of the People of Shit. And therefore it deserves all our HATE.
But not that of his sister.
No. Indeed, that judgment and contempt do not make it stronger. Make it weaker.
Because one ingredient is missing: hatred. Anger. The ferocity.
All the characters of the authors "Catholics of the South" are sub-human, they are incomplete humans, because they lack a characteristic: hatred.
Because the program of the "Catholic of the South", as a gatekeeper of a specific system, is to prevent the HATE from being born towards the perpetuators of the system in the population.
In Promessi Sposi, at least Manzoni offers you the spectacle of seeing Don Rodrigo crack badly. I mean, it's not as bad as you'd hoped, but come on, it's not even a trump game. And that's because he's just a villain: he 's worthy of hate.
It is worthy of a violent, rancorous, vindictive, ferocious feeling. Which is the only humanly worthy feeling towards those who do evil knowing they are doing evil and enjoying their ignorance
But when a Catholic from the South writes a book, the need to hate the bad guys, which could lead to a revolutionary feeling (that is, violent), and violent (because revolutionary) lacks completely. Always.
Because they are first of all useless books, or useful only to pass the concept that "you must not hate". Because next Sunday we will all be at mass, and we must shake hands in peace.
I'm sorry, but in that book the protagonists are not "human". They are sub-human.
They are sub-human because they lack one of the qualities that, for better or for worse, characterize human beings. Hatred.
But the characters of that book when they become miserable subhumans, condemned to an existence almost unconscious as well as beastly, are not "judged": they are "marginalized". Whatever it means: the author has invented a word, in order to prevent the character from doing the most natural thing in the world: to hate.
Because if we say " Rino, after that New Year's night, he must be hunted down, hunted, captured and killed, because that's what he deserves. And if not, any other horrible end is fine ", we are imagining a revolution. That is a violent event in which the perpetrators of a shit system are normally killed.
And they're being killed because they hated you.
The reason I post these photos is that when a person grows up in a shitty environment that is made infernal by some people, he hates them.
He would kill them. And in the worst possible way.
All the Italian characters, and all the books written by people with the forma mentis of the "Catholic of the South", are always the same. Their characters are subhuman, because they feel all the feelings except one: hatred. And when also, as Saviano does, reality is described with documentary intent, it is good not to foment Hate against the bad guys.
For the bad guys there is compassion, contempt, aversion, need to understand, but none of their works ever invites you to hate these people. Because if you hate the masses, sooner or later the bad guy gets killed. And he dies too badly.
And these authors are there to prevent just that: a popular culture able to HATE the people who oppress them.
HATE THE PEOPLE. THAT OPPRESS THEM.
When someone destroys the life, the future of your children, when they set fire to your workplace, when you humiliate yourself, the most human reaction is HATE. You can bow your head, but HATE is inside you.
But there are authors who strive to keep alive a subhuman culture, less than a human one, in which LACK OF THE GUILTY is missing. Because an oppressive system as monstrously organized cannot survive the fierce hatred of the population.
The enemy of any oppressive system is not books, it is not culture, it is not unity, it is not humanity or freedom. What the men of the oppressive system fear most of all is HATE.
Because they know very well that in a system where the population is packed with HATE they would not survive for long: sooner or later the spark will burst.
In general, dictatorships always find ways to channel hatred towards someone other than the official hierarchy: it never lasts long, but for some time it works. Others focus on propaganda " I love our beloved leader", trying to counter the birth of hatred by artificial love.
But the systems based by the Church go to the root of evil stop HATE before it is born: they sow a culture where people aspire to be less than human, that is, subhuman, because they are unable to feel a specific feeling: HATE.
I'm sorry, but all the characters of the authors "Catholics of the South" are always false, incomplete and subhuman. Because there's one thing they never do, there's one thing missing, there's a piece that doesn't come back: the HATE.
A dark, violent, aggressive, sepulchral feeling, intrinsically devoted to the evil of a person. A feeling that has no objectives, if not the evil of the person who is the object: a violent, ruthless, ferocious and ravenous evil.
Why do you think the Italian population has made a mess of Mussolini's body because they raped Petacci en masse before killing her? The answer is simple: they HATED them.
They were human. 100%, and as such capable of HATE.
But those humans are scary. But those humans make the revolution. But with those humans an oppressive system sooner or later drowns in the violence of revolt or revolution.
But no fear: the Catholic intellectuals of the South will come, who will explain you to live without hatred . To live a sub-human existence, in which the fault lies with the city and not with the people who live there, as if stones, streets and squares could make people worse.
They will teach you to live an existence of muteness and resignation by taking away the HATE, because they know well that not even fear, however strong, can hold back HATE.
You can tell me that the population is afraid of the Camorra, but forget one thing: hatred is stronger than fear.
There is no regime of terror that can resist the hatred of an entire population. This is why even the most terrible dictators will always speak of LOVE and HARMONY: they know well that if hatred were born, even the most ferocious regime would be swept away. This is why the Camorra neomelodic culture is all a love of here and love of la ': because they fear HATE.
For this reason in the areas controlled by these phenomena the writers, who are also enslaved , never sow HATE. Because it is the only thing the oppressors fear: a general, profound, widespread hatred.
This is why the Camorra fears hatred: their culture of reference forbids hating, even those who oppress you and kill their family members, you have to understand that it is the cynical and cheating destiny, it is the environment, and then “if you hate become like them ".
And this is the last spit in the face, because to say that only the mafiosi hate while the others don't mean to say that they are the only complete human beings of the place.
And so no, I find that the Brilliant Friend is the usual book made of that fake Bourbon documentarism, which in the end only describes subhumans , because it describes the oppressed as people who DO NOT hate oppressors.
I mean, less than human.
And you put them in a good position, selling you that "the book describes the profound humanity": no, that humanity is incomplete, therefore false. Because one ingredient is missing: hatred.
These books do not invite us to hate the oppressors, and they are careful not to do it because they are part of the problem, and THEREFORE not the solution.
They are in turn carriers of infection. Very well placed, but still vehicles of an infection that reduces man to subhuman: an anthropomorph that does not HATE.