Francesco Di Rocco: THE KALEIDOSCOPE OF THE MEMORY

In the small cramped world, of the bored provincial suburbs, or artistic expression from different latitudes, one can often meet a faithful mirror of  them: that is the writing. We can find everything in the written word: the fanatic graphomaniac, who, in order to write, just to appear, struts himself in the art of writing. Such an individul, very often, offers the public sickly narcissims, which almost always wreack havoc on the literary quality hand in hand, but fortunately, there are different dimension, that is the chiseller of the word. A refined style, the well written language, aestetically flawness but at the same time, very fragile, good written words, but short, a reading that crumbless  soon after, because it is evanescent in situations and even worse in the narrative structure that leave no traces on the reader, but the clever and tireless researcher, the elegant writer, in love with the word, the scholar of linguistic armonies, makes the exception, and the desolate landscapes, in this desert of cultural rubale, only radiates a star light, that fade away the nothingness at the appearance of light beyond the limits, light years away, therefore from the  litanies of cloyng normality. Not just a writer then, but artist of the word, who in her writing , she condenses dimensions; it is the stilistic column of illustrious classy writer Maria Teresa Liuzzo. Her writing, has the refined parenting of classicism, has pressing rhythms of greekness and at the same time feeds on the decadent styles of kafkaesque mold, has the aesthetic elegance of the best italian prose, an intellectual philology, who well reconciles, in fact, physically and aestetic moments, which leave an idelible groove to the memory of the reader. Is a talented storyteller of rare lyricism, who although pure prose, dresses up into narrative poetry line to line; all this is revealed in her novels –“NOW I SPEAK” and  “DON’T TELL ME I LOVED THE WIND”- where Maria Theresa who has been the banner of sacredness of life, although virtuous of the words, gives stores , which are not of a banal anonymous province, but the story of every world, those of every man or woman. Is a journey into the secrets depths of the psiche, often of ever human tragedy told with the irreprensibile and indelible pride of her calabrianess. Novels that escape easy labels of contemporary criticism. It a physical dimension, where the protagonist is not Mary, but her physicality that identifies with the clever reader, as if the writer, from the top of her vision, manages to hide herself, which, although clearly and autobiographical seems to invite the reader to an active, part as a protagonist in the unfolding of the facts. Maria Theresa, as an invisible entità, leads by her own writing, certainly cerebral but even more physically mighty. In a state of lirical sleepiness, although  it is the narration of a sequence of violence drama, painful experience, punctuated by a distant rhythm of eardrums, which enance Mary’s spirituality. It is the passionate narration imbued which tragic cadence of the Greeklike school, it is the story of the friend who sit next to you and who came to visit and tells  about yourself. A novel at the times not novel, in the sense that relative realism, goes beyond the mere literary aspect, although this latter, is clearly affected by illustrious influences, as already mentioned, by greek roots, but even more of kafkaesque atmospheres. But that chiselled that armonic chimes in a concert of harmonic voices tuned on the melancholic cords and lacerating inner vocalities; it is the memory that assumes phisicality, and makes it a story which, altough, with strong colors or we want with dark shades, in the wise hands of the author becomes a multichromatic and enthralling kaleidoscope, in a hell, (the real one) enclosed within the four walls. The author, managed, then, to offer the reader these masterfully orchestred voices in a choir of women only, who suffer silent violence, but not less bloody, by the men, often comprimaty and frustrated because of coexistence. Mary the protagonist, becomes, the paradigm of these southern women, but not only- where southern is non meant a geographical expression, but rather a sociality of marginalization of the female condition, which is not only a historical and current fact of many women in southern Italy, but also, just to say, Kabul, or in some opulent american town. A woman who find deep in herslf the same strenght to change her situation (in the past we had countless examples).

In conclusion, these novels exalt life, in its sacredness. It is a hymn that invites respect for the female soul, as it does not generate revenge, or violent redemption, but if redemption should  be, it i sto be forgiveness, the only Christian truth, that is the twin of true life.