The Neapolitan from Os Maias is reborn in a novel by the Neapolitan woman from Lisbon
Without Tancredo, the Neapolitan for whom Maria Monforte trades Carlos da Maia and flees Portugal with a daughter, leaving the other small son behind, there would not have been the sudden separation of the brothers, the future central incestuous lovers.You Mayans. Now Tancredo gained a life beyond Eça de Queiroz’s masterpiece through the imagination of Paola D’Agostino, Italian who arrived in Lisbon in 1998 for an Erasmus, confirmed the passion for the Portuguese language that she had started to study in Naples and now, after more than two decades living around here, he published his Tancredi the Neapolitan, already published in Italy.
Paola works at the Italian embassy, in the beautiful Pombeiro Palace, and our conversation is close at hand, in the Campo dos Mártires da Pátria Garden. Not on purpose, an Italian restaurant, La Villa, has just opened in this quiet corner of the Portuguese capital and we sit on the terrace while I listen to the journey of both the writer and the book.
“If Eça’s Tancredo is credible as Italian? Yes, of course. Eça’s Tancredo is incredibly credible! Above all I was fascinated by the extraordinary synthesis capacity of a genius novelist, who concentrated in a fleeting sketch like the figure of the Neapolitan an enormous knowledge about the history of Italy and Europe. Eça’s character was a synthesis of the Italian Resurgence, of the exiled revolutionary who passes through Lisbon on his way to England, with the help of the Spanish Carbonaria, as other old Italian liberals have done, for example. . And the arrival of the Neapolitan n ‘You Mayans is introduced by an omen: Pedro and Maria, at the beginning of their courtship, leave for Italy, cross the country to Naples (“the soft country of romance“, says Eça) but when they arrive in Rome, Maria decides to change the direction of the trip and go see Paris…”, says Paola, while drinking a limoncello, just like me. I take this opportunity to explain that I have known Paola as I have known her for many years, suffice it to say that the embassy service has already served me as a translator for figures such as the director of the museums in Florence, as my Italian is limited, despite occasional incursions in the Institute’s courses Italian Culture.
To enter the ‘You Mayans and reveal something that Eça did not reveal to readers Paola had to be brave. Even because of the need to understand a different time and country, a Lisbon also with a geography and toponymy very different from the current ones. “In the beginning it was a compulsive instinct, I went on a trip after Tancredi – mine is with me – who allowed me to live in 19th century Lisbon. Chiado was something else, Almirante Reis too. There is a secret layer of the city that it is the place of literature. In this space, life has other dynamics, another rhythm. Living in the city of literature is foreign, always, and at the same time inhabiting places with greater strength, more intensity”, confesses Paola. To soon add: “It was also a journey through the history of Italy, of a precise moment and place that, after all, could constitute an exemplary landscape of collective history. I plunged into a world in revolt, writing was my diving suit.”
the way the Mayans entered Paola’s life, it deserves to be highlighted, not least because a great deceased journalist, who then worked at the NS, saturday magazine of News Diary: “In 2006 Fenda published my first book, Largo das Necessidades, and I was interviewed by Torcato Sepúlveda. At some point Torcato asks me” the Mayans? “At that time I was only interested in contemporary authors and no, I hadn’t read The Mayans. So much so that when an article came out, with the title “Our Neapolitan”, I didn’t even notice the quote. Later, when my second book was coming out, This Cold and Other Love Stories (Cleft, always), I wanted to arrive prepared for the meeting with the critic and I went to read the Mayans, finally. Early in the novel, I met the Neapolitan. Meanwhile Torcato had passed away. I thought that I would deflect an answer from you, but now it can only be through writing, the only universe where we can dialogue with the dead, finding them on a plane parallel to that of the real city. That’s why the book is dedicated to Torcato Sepúlveda’s question. “
The limoncello is great and asks for another one and meanwhile Paola, curious about the reception in Portugal to Tancredi the Neapolitan, he says that, to his surprise, the original edition of the book in 2018 sold out in Italy: “It was published by an independent publisher dedicated mainly to Portuguese-speaking authors, Vittoria Iguazu Editora. work that is now called a literary book, a definition which in itself is absurd. But a literary book has a chance of being read, say the market gurus. Therefore, the book was well received. It was read, it was shared. And it had a beautiful review by Professor Manuel Simões, which highlights the dialectic between dystopia and utopia in the novel.”
the author of Tancredi, il Napoletano (original title) was born in 1975 in Sapri, a small town in southern Italy, on the coast of a natural park called Cilento, described as “wonderful” by itself, which immediately makes you want to visit. “Therefore, I grew up in the province, by the sea, a geographical contingency that she considers a great privilege. Basically, the first lottery we are faced with at birth is geography”, says Paola, whose condition as a Neapolitan, it should be noted , is explained not only by Sapri’s being in Campania, a region whose capital is Naples, but also by living as a student in this World Heritage city and capital of a kingdom until it was annexed in 1861 to a unified Italy and to this day with its own personality.
And it was in Naples that he began to study Portuguese at the L “Orientale” University. It was a cosmopolitan place where languages from all over the world were taught. In the first year I opted for Russian Literature, I could read the classics but then I realized I wouldn’t move to Moscow. So I decided to look for another language, I visited several classes and when I got to Portuguese I heard a sound that reminded me of my father’s dialect. The choice was made. The first experience in Portugal was Erasmus. Fatal. One day I saw a poem by Alberto Pimenta called Alfa e Omega on display in the corridor of the Faculty of Arts in Lisbon. I finished the course and immediately asked for a research grant to return to Lisbon to study Pimenta, supervised by Maria Lúcia Lepecki. And here I am! “, tells the author of a novel inspired n ‘You Mayans and which has everything to captivate the writer’s connoisseurs, but which is also valid on its own, allowing us to enter into a very unique atmosphere of 19th century origins, both Portuguese and Italian. And Tancredo himself, or Tancredi (and this is not a detail of the ending in o or i, as readers will discover), is a character to which Paola gives a strong density.
The Italian community in Portugal is numerous, some famous such as Carlo Greco, scientist at the Champalimaud Foundation, or Luciana Fina, director. Many are fluent in Portuguese, but Paola has always impressed me with the ease with which she speaks the language she began learning 23 years ago at L’Orientale. And so, knowing that this edition by VS (the new publisher of Vasco Santos, from Fenda) has a translation by Vasco Gato (excellent), I ask him when a novel written in the language he also made his own, but the answer is cautious : “In Portuguese I’ve only published short stories, chronicles and some poetry, but a novel would be a huge challenge. In Portuguese I walk on tiptoe, I only write when it makes sense, when I happen to find myself in the middle of something that is born. With the little poetry books I published, the editors happened to invite me and I accepted the invitation. They were happy coincidences, editors I love like Douda Correria and A Tu Mãe, already extinct. And then this feeling of uncertain step, like walking in the snow, creates a breath-tongue that is more conducive to poetry than prose. Perhaps.”
To end the conversation, in this 2021, which marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, author of The divine Comedy, a masterpiece of Italian literature, I am looking for paola’s advice for a book that, in Italy, is somehow comparable to the Mayans, as an almost timeless portrait of society, and society doesn’t hesitate: “Our timeless classic is The bride and groom, by Alessandro Manzoni. About the book, Pasolini wrote that the characters d ‘You bride and groom, much more than those of Dante or Ariosto, became images encoded as playing cards, symbolic figures to whom a meaning is instinctively attributed, a value that is also ethical, and fixed forever in the Italian cultural landscape. A great fresco, with the fate of all must-read books: to be hated by many in adolescence, to be reread with enthusiasm and surprise in adulthood. “