Erri de Luca in Melbourne
BY READING BOOKS, young people are better equipped to defend themselves from words that exercise power. Erri de Luca
Erri de Luca in conversation at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival 2016.We debated, my mother and I, about such a name as “Erri.” It sounds like it could be Italian. Later, I would discover that it's a version of “Harry” acquired from an American uncle, though it does sound like a shortened form of Enrico. In Italy, it is common for names to be shortened: usually between friends, at which point it sticks, producing such names as Elly, Gaby, Tony, Nico, Lory, Bea, Giusy. So there is nothing “strange” about the name "Erri." My mother, however, has matured many years in Australia, far from Italy, where names take new twists.
As we walked into Cinema 1 at ACMI and climbed the steps to a spot amongst the seats, the host and his guest became ever smaller. By the time we were up high they were two figures down below, and not until their voices rose did they appear to us sitting at the centre of the stage, the screen looming behind them. As we sat in our seats, we grabbed the image of a grandmother in the arms of an Afro-American marine. de Luca was recounting the story from the pages of his recent book in which he describes the episode of a marine carrying his grandmother to safety whilst bombs fell over the city of Naples.
Having been born in the middle of the last century in Naples, de Luca explained that he felt contemporary to both halves of the 20th Century: to the first half by way of the stories that his grandmother, mother and other women told, and to the second half by having experienced it. de Luca also pointed out that hearing his family talk about wartime made him into a second 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 better digested.
In the audience were some “old” Italians 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 their memories, not only of war, in Italy; they had no currency in Australia. Or, perhaps, they rather liked to forget them to make room for the new.
The “old” Italians at this Melbourne Writer’s Festival conversation came to listen to the Italian guest. A fresh Italian who could give them a taste of Italy, a taste of the past, a taste of their departure: wondering, I’m sure, if they had actually ever left or even arrived. As “migrants” they are those that relocated from Europe without ever losing their accent.(1) Even their children, displaced witnesses, today with children of their own, are called migrants. In Australia, the migrants didn't produce literature (maybe just some letters or postcards or scribblings to remind themselves that they did traverse seas and skies, and that they did live in such a place). The second witnesses have never emerged as writers in Australia to collect or tell stories left untold.(2)
According to de Luca, books are good company to a reader. He told how during his formative years, he was lucky to have had access to his father’s study, which was full of books. In that space, reading became important. He found that while the city of Naples was growing away from the legacy of poverty that the war had left, he was growing in awareness of his privilege: going to school, going on holiday, having space. Asked about young people and books, de Luca replied that by reading, young people become equipped with the means to defend themselves from "words" that are employed to exercise power.
With reading comes the act of listening, and as I listened to de Luca talk, I was sure that he was speaking the same language as I when he emphasised the role of silence to enhance listening. For de Luca, listening could be considered an attitude that involves the subtler aspect of our being, explaining that the listener should allow the words to get in as deeply as possible. In this way, he said, the listener is able to receive and be touched.
Having made Italy home for part of the year, like de Luca, I have witnessed the movement of peoples to Italy. Arriving along shores, they are met with an unprecedented fear of the Other, which politics and the media have no cultural clout to contrast despite the efforts of citizens to respond to the human crisis. I imagine the migrants, refugees, asylum seekers as they come to be known, wanting to choose another destination. The narrative of “escape,” I’m sure, pursues them, perhaps like it does all relocated people, as they become embroiled in narratives of place that struggle to be contemporary.
In Melbourne, when the hurricane that hit Darwin in 1974 produced home-grown refugees, a student-refugee joined the class. When the conflict in Vietnam brought a Vietnamese family to the local parish in the late 1970s, the community shared a walk to the park. In Syracuse, one of the Southern most parts of Italy, on whose shoreline boats of people have been landing, a local initiative pairs unaccompanied minors with volunteer tutors. According to Erri de Luca, coming to terms with the “Other” is not about tolerance, rather it is about reaching “a warm and sincere feeling of brotherhood.” And this warm feeling, 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 quest to find inklings of human resilience.
Out of curiosity, I saw the short film that Erri de Luca had mentioned, based on one of his stories. He played himself in the film, and since it was shot in his kitchen, he had been able to "act" without reserve. In the film, the camera frames a man in conversation with his mother while playing a game of solitary in the middle of a sleepless night. But did he reckon for the trick that time plays? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfQULvt-skM
Awkwardly, my mother "greeted" de Luca as we walked out of the theatre, since we found ourselves walking beside him. She may have thought they were paesani (fellow Italians). Or was she less a migrant, and rather one who had a story to tell? As witness, I can only recount such an occurrence.
(c) Silvana Tuccio
September 2014 (revised 2016) (revised 2020)
(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 one 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 culture. The initiative attempted to melt the barrier of marginalisaiton, and bestow the writer the dignity of engaging in cultural practice that spoke to their contemporary time. Unfortunately, those voices were silenced.