'old Italians' and Erri de Luca at the Melbourne Writer's Festival 2014
By reading books young people are better equipped to defend themselves against the kind of language that exercises power. Erri de Luca
Erri de Luca at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival
My mother and I debated about the name “Erri.” It sounds like it could be Italian, but not quite. I found out that it's a rendition of “Harry” gotten from an American uncle. It does sound Italian though, since it could be Enrico for short. In Italy, it's common for a name to be shortened by friends, family, workmates, and you get such names as Elli, Gabi, Toni, Nico, Lori, Bea, Giusi. So the name "Erri" does not sound odd at all. My mother, however, has matured many years in Australia, far from Italy, where names have taken new twists.
Erri de Luca at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival
My mother and I debated about the name “Erri.” It sounds like it could be Italian, but not quite. I found out that it's a rendition of “Harry” gotten from an American uncle. It does sound Italian though, since it could be Enrico for short. In Italy, it's common for a name to be shortened by friends, family, workmates, and you get such names as Elli, Gabi, Toni, Nico, Lori, Bea, Giusi. So the name "Erri" does not sound odd at all. My mother, however, has matured many years in Australia, far from Italy, where names have taken new twists.
I walked into Cinema 1 at ACMI, and as I climbed the steps to the higher section of the theatre, the host and his guest became smaller. By the time I was up high, along with my mother, they were two dots on the stage below, and not until their voices rose did they appear at the centre of the stage with a screen looming behind. Just as I was filling up the seat, I grabbed the image of a grandmother in the arms of an Afro-American marine. Erri de Luca recounted the episode during the Second World War of an Afro-American marine carrying his grandmother to safety as bombs fell over Naples.
Born in Naples in the middle of the 20th century, de Luca explained that he felt he belonged to both halves. He belonged to the first half by way of the stories that his grandmother, mother and other women told, and to the second half by direct experience, having lived through it. de Luca also pointed out that hearing his family talk about wartime made him into a witness. He explained that a witness is usually not invited, and added that by retelling the stories, the experience is transformed into literature. In this way, it is elaborated, or as the Italian expression goes, it digested.
I could not help but notice the “old” Italians in the audience, who like my mother, had left Italy before the novelist had become famous for such books as Not Here Not Now, Three Horses, God’s Mountain. The “old Italians” adopted Australia as their home but they left the memory of an/other life, not only of war, behind in Italy. In fact, the stories based in Italy, had no currency in Australia, and it may be fair to say that the "old Italians" would rather forget to make room for the new. Yet, at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, the "old Italians" had come to listen to an Italian guest, a fresh Italian who could give them a taste of Italy, a taste of the past, a taste of their departure. As first generation “migrants” they relocated from Europe to gain an accent that would stick.(1) To this day, the children of the "old Italians", many of whom have children of their own, are called migrants. In Australia, the migrants haven't produced literature (maybe just some letters or postcards or a stack of scribblings to testify that they did cross seas and live in such a place as Melbourne, Australai). The so called second generation, who bore witness to the journey of the "old Italians", to their arrival, to their integration into the Australian context, save for a token few, have not emerged as writers in Australia, leaving untold stories to collect. (2)
According to de Luca, a book is like a good friend since it keeps the reader company. During his formative years, de Luca said that he had been fortunate to have had access to his father’s study, which was lined with books. Reading was his sustenance, and he realised that while the city of Naples was trying to rise above the poverty that beset it as a result of the Second World War, he was growing in awareness of his privilege. He was able to go to school, go on holiday and, especially, to able to read.
An audience member asked de Luca what he thought about a young person's relationship to books. de Luca replied that by reading books young people become better equipped at defending themselves from language deployed to take away personal power. de Luca, explained that reading enhances the capacity for listening.
As I listened to de Luca talk, I was sure that he was speaking the same language as I. He emphasised the role of silence. For de Luca, listening is a state being that involves the subtler aspects of the self. He continued, saying that the listener should let the words seep in and in this way be better able to receive and be touched.
Having made Italy home for the better part of the year, I have been witness, like de Luca, to the movement of peoples from a host of war-torn countries crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. Arriving along coastlines, they are met with an unprecedented fear of the Other. Italian politics and the media lack the cultural depth to mitigate this fear despite the efforts of citizens raising awareness of the humanitarian crisis being enacted on their very shores. I imagine the migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, wanting to choose another destination as soon as they set foot in Italy. I'm sure the idea of escape pursues them, perhaps like it does all relocated people, as they become embroiled in the dynamics of a place struggling to come to terms with post-modernity, and the fragile, ever changing definition of reality.
When a hurricane hit Darwin in 1974, a young hurricane refugee joined the primary school class I attended in Melbourne. When the Vietnam war in the late 1970s brought a Vietnamese family to the local parish, the community organised a welcome walk to the park. In Siracusa, a local initiative pairs volunteers with unaccompanied refugee minors. According to Erri de Luca, coming to terms with the Other is not about tolerance, rather it's about reaching “...a temperature of brotherhood.” And this temperature, unlike that which climate change is producing, must increase.
Having made Italy home for the better part of the year, I have been witness, like de Luca, to the movement of peoples from a host of war-torn countries crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. Arriving along coastlines, they are met with an unprecedented fear of the Other. Italian politics and the media lack the cultural depth to mitigate this fear despite the efforts of citizens raising awareness of the humanitarian crisis being enacted on their very shores. I imagine the migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, wanting to choose another destination as soon as they set foot in Italy. I'm sure the idea of escape pursues them, perhaps like it does all relocated people, as they become embroiled in the dynamics of a place struggling to come to terms with post-modernity, and the fragile, ever changing definition of reality.
When a hurricane hit Darwin in 1974, a young hurricane refugee joined the primary school class I attended in Melbourne. When the Vietnam war in the late 1970s brought a Vietnamese family to the local parish, the community organised a welcome walk to the park. In Siracusa, a local initiative pairs volunteers with unaccompanied refugee minors. According to Erri de Luca, coming to terms with the Other is not about tolerance, rather it's about reaching “...a temperature of brotherhood.” And this temperature, unlike that which climate change is producing, must increase.
Here is a taste of Erri de Luca’s writing in translation in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/03/13/the-trench. It attests to the clarity of thought and the quest to delve into the self in search of inklings of human resilience.
I watched the short film in which Erri de Luca plays himself, based on one of his stories. It was shot in his kitchen, which made him feel as if acting were effortless. In the film, the camera frames a man who is playing a game of solitaire on the kitchen table in the middle of a sleepless night, and who is conversing with his mother. But did he reckon for the trick that time would play? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfQULvt-skM
As I walked out of ACMI 1, my mother at my side, and Erri de Luca at a short distance, also exiting the theatre, I heard my mother greeting him, actually applauding him directly - perhaps awkwardly, and with no formality. She may have thought they were fellow Italians, paesani. Or was she no longer an 'old Italian, a migrant, but rather had a story to tell? As witness, I can only say what I saw.
(c) Silvana Tuccio
September 2014 (revised 2016, 2025)
(1) When people relocate under circumstances for which they have little control they are essentially going into exile. The circumstances might be economic, conflict, trends and so on, and most of the time the relocated person is referred to as 'migrant', and in some cases refugee or asylum seeker. These terms only explain the way these people have relocated, but not the fact that they are exiled. When we begin to see that they are foreigners, and we understand that they have had to relocate under specific circumstances, then we might be able to see that the terms migrant, refugee or asylum seeker are not terms that afford social status, nor do they attest to their state of exile. Such terms of reference, often employed in vernacular expression, take away the status of the person since they are stripped of the complexity that makes them human. Each person is an individual with a story, of which relocation is a part. In engaging with society how does one annul the force of labeling, arising out of a dominant position, on the identity of the self as a human being? The work of becoming aware of the subjective positions that are taken up and subsequent identification with them can be the only recourse where the safeguarding of human rights and justice is the ultimate goal.
(2) In the early 1990s, Professor Sneja Gunew compiled writings by people relocated to Melbourne, especially from Europe, producing amongst others the volume: Displacements 2: Multicultural Storytellers (Deakin University Press, 1987). The writings recounted the Australian experience, and were produced by people who would never have found a foot in mainstream cultural production. The initiative attempted to soften the sense of marginalisaiton, and bestow the writer the dignity of engaging in cultural practice that spoke to the time they were living, their contemporaneity. Unfortunately, those voices were mostly silenced.
(1) When people relocate under circumstances for which they have little control they are essentially going into exile. The circumstances might be economic, conflict, trends and so on, and most of the time the relocated person is referred to as 'migrant', and in some cases refugee or asylum seeker. These terms only explain the way these people have relocated, but not the fact that they are exiled. When we begin to see that they are foreigners, and we understand that they have had to relocate under specific circumstances, then we might be able to see that the terms migrant, refugee or asylum seeker are not terms that afford social status, nor do they attest to their state of exile. Such terms of reference, often employed in vernacular expression, take away the status of the person since they are stripped of the complexity that makes them human. Each person is an individual with a story, of which relocation is a part. In engaging with society how does one annul the force of labeling, arising out of a dominant position, on the identity of the self as a human being? The work of becoming aware of the subjective positions that are taken up and subsequent identification with them can be the only recourse where the safeguarding of human rights and justice is the ultimate goal.
(2) In the early 1990s, Professor Sneja Gunew compiled writings by people relocated to Melbourne, especially from Europe, producing amongst others the volume: Displacements 2: Multicultural Storytellers (Deakin University Press, 1987). The writings recounted the Australian experience, and were produced by people who would never have found a foot in mainstream cultural production. The initiative attempted to soften the sense of marginalisaiton, and bestow the writer the dignity of engaging in cultural practice that spoke to the time they were living, their contemporaneity. Unfortunately, those voices were mostly silenced.