A review by ethicalcannibalism
In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing by Elena Ferrante

emotional informative inspiring reflective relaxing fast-paced

5.0

The Commedia, in this way, seemed to me an extraordinary trap, prepared at great length and in detail. I still think that no writer in the seven hundred years since Dante has succeeded in transforming the living, scholarly analysis of his own time, and the even more scholarly memory of the writings of the past, into a cage so crowded with the life of all humanity and, at the same time, so individually considered, so passionately personal, so specifically local-universal.

ferrante snapped her fingers and said let it be life inside my brain. god. this was supposed to be a lecture. the effect that this text has in me is unspeakable in its truth. ferrante’s thoughts about ‘writing as a man’ as the golden ratio for excellent writing, her explaining how she come up with my brilliant friend made me tear up, my chest became tight with emotion. of course, i had always been aware of the queer subtext in the neapolitan novels, yet there is the sublime feeling fostered inside me by reading ferrante speaking of lila and lenù. my favorite chapter is the last one, about dante. it ties perfectly with the first chapter on ‘one must write like a man’ to be a true writer, finishing off by comparing how dante writes women in his early work, vita nuova, and then in the commedia in beatrice’s elevation. god.