18.01.2013

Interview with Carlo Repetti

Carlo Repetti is the Director of the Teatro Stabile di Genova and won the 14th edition of the “Città di Cuneo Award for the Primo Romanzo ” with his book Insolita storia di una vita normale, published in 2011 by “Einaudi”.

This debut work tells the story of a man—the author's father—who spans the twentieth century. The language is bold and powerful, with no words left to chance, almost as if to form a symphony played by the thousand voices and places narrated.

I met Carlo Repetti shortly before he was awarded the prize, at the “Circolo “'l Caprissi”, sitting at an old-fashioned table.

How did 'Unusual Story of a Normal Life' come about?
It's a story I've had inside me for a long time, a story that draws on the stories of my father and especially my aunt. It's the story of an elderly man, who happens to be my father, who lives through the twentieth century from birth to death. It's a family story, therefore. It's a story that, in its core, is real, and this core, as always happens in novels, is given the flesh, blood, and muscle of fiction. In writing it, I didn't just try to leave a memory of the life of my father, my grandfather, and, in part, my family. In writing it, I tried to understand what really happened to those people in those years. It's a special story, an unusual story, but one of a normal life, as the book's title suggests.

Your book is a coming-of-age novel, a modern-day "bildungsroman." Why did you choose this genre?
It came naturally to me. I've always had a wonderful relationship with my father. In the last years of his life, when he had health problems, I accompanied him more regularly on some of his weekends, revisiting the places where he had lived. Among these, for example, was a convent he had entered as a young man when he returned from the Americas, as they used to say. These days with my father had the flow of a story. In my memory, above all, they had the flow of a story, a flow of memories a father has with his son when he realizes his last days have arrived. So it was a natural transposition onto the page of what I had actually experienced.

On page 4 of your book, you read: "The father speaks while gazing toward the horizon, as if he could actually see the things he's describing, in a distant film projected far away. And indeed, those memories come from a very distant land and a distant time." You're talking about South America. Do you personally see those lands as a place of hope or lost hopes?
I lived there and saw them only in relation to the times in which this story happened. In those times, those places were places of real hope for Italians who were leaving. But this book also recounts the return journey of the emigrants. My grandfather, with his entire family that had grown up there—a wife, five children, one of whom had died in America—decided to return to Italy, and I have recounted, perhaps for the first time, the return journey of the emigrants, not the outward journey. Return journeys are not usually recounted.

And what is so special about this return journey?
There are many things, but one stands out most clearly: the fact that on this ship, which, on the outward journey, was entirely filled with "travelers of hope," there is a mix of travelers: those who return having achieved something, having acquired wealth and a position, and those who return as defeated as when they left. This is an important fact, because it must be understood that emigration has been an incredible phenomenon in the history of our country, one we have spoken too little about and continue to speak about, yet which has affected more than twenty million people. Many of those who spoke hoping to improve their lives, instead, did not succeed. Therefore, emigration has been a sieve of human existence.

The story unfolds throughout the twentieth century. The twentieth century was a century of great dictatorships, of two World Wars that changed our history forever. How important is the transmission of memory, especially for us young people?
Extremely important. I believe the twentieth century was a terrible century for human history. Wars, dictatorships, concentration camps, genocide, but not just the terrible one in Germany against the Jews, but also those in Asia, those of the communist dictatorships. I believe that memory is not the recollection of an individual person, it is what memories of individuals are worth passing on. It is a fundamental resource for young people, precisely because they too can seek, as I have done in this book, to better understand what happened, because by understanding, choices can be made, and perhaps by understanding, we can make a few fewer mistakes than were made in the past.

Why did you choose the last day of the last millennium for the protagonist's death?
It's purely symbolic. My father died on January 1, 1997. The protagonist of this book, who is actually my father, dies on December 31, 1999. He dies at the end of the century; his death is grotesque, ironic, and tragicomic, signifying what life is like for all of us. His death is accompanied by the fireworks outside celebrating the end of the century, the end of the millennium. Therefore, choosing this day of this year is highly symbolic.

You are the Director of the Teatro Stabile di Genova. What is the difference between telling a story for an audience who can see and writing one for readers who can't look them in the eye?
It's fundamental. They are two techniques, two completely different narrative worlds, because a story in the theater is continually influenced, changed by the fact that, while it is being told, there is an important player in that story: the audience, who changes the way they tell it from night to night. The actor is greatly influenced by the completely different audiences he encounters every night. For the novelist, this is not the case, because the novelist creates a work intended for a very personal use, a one-on-one with various readers. If there's one thing my work has in common with theater, it's that theater, very clearly, identifies with, bears witness to, and captures the significant power that words have and can have. A word, in the theater, is said once and must have power, because it must capture the audience with its meaning in that moment, here and now. I tried to embrace this lesson, the things I learned from writing for the theater, and bring them to the page of this novel, where I tried to ensure that the word was always meaningful, an important word, a word that would steer clear of a risk inherent in telling this story to myself and my feelings: the risk of pathos. Therefore, a word that was restrained, as essential as possible.

What is your relationship with literature? Do you prefer classics or emerging authors?
The classics are classics, it's almost redundant to say so. They are masters for all of us; they became classics because collective memory has preserved some books more important than others. It's also interesting to follow the development of literary and creative thought. I don't have any predilections; I'm a bit of an omnivore when it comes to reading, even non-fiction. I'm omnivorous when it comes to non-fiction, history perhaps a little less; I once loved cultural anthropology and poetry. In short, everything that comes from words, and words contain something that deeply interests me.

What book would you recommend to a young person who isn't sure what to read?
For a young person, I'd recommend a great author like Albert Camus, in The Stranger or The Plague, two great books that can provide an interesting and stimulating introduction to the world of reading. Then, I'd recommend Elsa Morante, with Arturo's Island. In short, books of this kind.

You were a two-term councilor in Genoa. How important is culture in the 21st century?
It would be fundamental. Even those who decide our political fate should realize this. But not only because a civilization without culture is not a civilization, not only because a nation without culture is not a nation, not only because a city without culture is not a city, not only because a community without culture is not a community, because culture is edible, contrary to what some have said. Culture provides nourishment; culture is the only nourishment available to humans for the growth of something fundamental: the brain. The mind doesn't grow with sandwiches or salami; with that, the body grows and the muscles grow. The only nourishment for all of us, for our minds and for their freedom—the true, primary, and perhaps only condition in which the mind must exist—is culture.

Interview by Jacopo Giraudo