Pleasure of Writing: Critical Essays on Dacia Maraini

Reflections on the Logical and Illogical Bodies of My Sexual Compatriots

Dacia Maraini Reflections on the Logical and Illogical Bodies of My Sexual Compatriots I am in the countryside. In a house without a telephone. Five kilometers away from the near~st village. On a hill called Cava del Bruciore.1 In fact, there is" something burning: a fragrance of dry grasses, the crackling of air so taut that it seems about to splinter and crumble. I am here to think about the relation between women's writing and criticism. How, when, and why was that distrust born,that unconscious bias that too often accompanies the reading of texts _ written by ,women? . Recently I happened to take part in a meeting of a jury of which I am 'a member, called for the purpose of assigning an important national prize. Counting us, I see that there are two women and seven men. Each of us had to present ten books thathad appeared during the course of the year. And, naturally, each had to do it as a critic, recounting t~em and judging them publicly. I presented six books written by women and four by men, but not even one of the novels was taken into consideration by the other members of the jury. I asked why; they answered in a chorus: "We don't make distinctions between men and women; for us they are all authors; we have not chosen on the basis of gender, but quality; ifthere aren't any women on the list, it means they didn't deserve it." The books to be read were, however, many, more than sixty, and the time frame was two months. Is it possible to read sixty books ,in two months? Obviously not. Thus, some books had been only skimmed. I started to ask, book by book, what they thought, and I quickly discovered that t~e books,qy 1 Bruciore means "burning."-Trans. 21 Dacia Maraini women had been approached from the beginning with less interest and attention. Other books, written by men, among which was the autobiography of a famous journalist, had been given prominence and had been read by all the other jurors. The debu_t novel ofa young woman writer, five hundred pages long, had been read by no one, and, despite my favorable presentation , it was summarily dismissed. Not because it was bad, but because it had not been taken into consideration. And yet I'm certain that none of the board members, among whom there was a female literary scholar, was conscious of having done feminine writing an injustice. Ifamong these books there had been a famous female name, perhaps it would have attracted more attention, but since most of the female authors were little known, or neophytes, the members had not consipered them worthy of consideration. . Of these small, invisible defeats is made the history of female literature. How can we forget the paternalistic letters of the critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Emily Dickinson, who was asking for his opinion? The critic, with much goodwill and gentleness, advises her decisively against writing. Yet, this great literary man, I'm certain, did not think he was a victim of sexist prejudice. His mind was enlightened; his judgmentwas severe but just. It was simply that the poetry was not praiseworthy; that it was written by a man or a woman qid not matter at all. It was solely a question of quality, not of gender. This was certainly his thinking, and it still is today the concept that many critics bring to bear on texts by women. Now here I am, immersed in the pale green landscape that trembles on the horizon like a mirage. I realize that I am closed inside an unknown silence, with my ideas and my papers, as if alarmed by a quiet rhythm 1 sense pressing me. On second thought, it's not even a silence. There are many sounds that ring in my ear, but there's something different: these sounds are linked one to the other like stitches in the same piece of needlework. In the city, sounds are isolated, without connection among them, and they first strike the eyes rather than the ear. Ifit is possible to hear sounds through tbe eye, then in the city, every noise has the neatness of a daily image, polished and deprived of mystery. 22 Reflections on the Bodies of My Sexual Compatriots But in the country, noises are fused...