Elena Ferrante: ‘Yes, I’m Italian – but I’m not loud, I don’t gesticulate and

I’m not good with pizza’

Being Italian, for me, begins and ends with the fact that I speak and write in the Italian language
Elena Ferrante
Sat 24 Feb 2018

I love my country, but I have no patriotic spirit and no national pride. What’s more, I digest
pizza poorly, I eat very little spaghetti, I don’t speak in a loud voice, I don’t gesticulate, I hate all
mafias, I don’t exclaim “Mamma mia!” National characteristics are simplifications that should
be contested. Being Italian, for me, begins and ends with the fact that I speak and write in the
Italian language.

Put that way it doesn’t seem like much, but really it’s a lot. A language is a collection of the
history, geography, material and spiritual life, the vices and virtues, not only of those who speak
it, but also of those who have spoken it through the centuries. The words, the grammar, the
syntax are a chisel that shapes our thought. Not to mention our literary tradition, an extraordinary
refinery of raw experience that has been active for centuries and centuries, a reservoir of
intelligence and expressive techniques; it’s the tradition that has formed me, and on which I’m
proud to have drawn.

When I say that I’m Italian because I write in Italian, I mean that I’m fully Italian – but Italian in
the only way that I’m willing to attribute to myself a nationality. I don’t like the other ways; they
frighten me, especially when they become nationalism, chauvinism, imperialism, and
reprehensibly use language to wall themselves in, either by cultivating a purity as pointless as it
is impossible, or by imposing language through overwhelming economic power and weapons. It
has happened, it happens, it will happen, and it’s an evil that tends to cancel out differences and
therefore impoverishes us all.

I prefer linguistic nationality as a point of departure for dialogue, an effort to cross over the limit,
to look beyond the border – beyond all borders, especially those of gender. Thus my only heroes
are translators (I especially love those who are experts in the art of simultaneous translation). I
love them in particular when they’re also passionate readers and propose translations themselves.
Thanks to them, Italianness travels through the world, enriching it, and the world, with its many
languages, passes through Italianness and modifies it. Translators transport nations into other
nations; they are the first to reckon with distant modes of feeling. Even their mistakes are
evidence of a positive force. Translation is our salvation: it draws us out of the well in which,
entirely by chance, we are born.

I am therefore Italian, completely and with pride. But if I could, I would descend into all
languages and let myself be infused by them all. Even the terrible Google Translate consoles me.
We can be much more than what we happen to be.