My focus is pure craft: nothing beyond the technique of how pen scrapes against page.

Naples 2016

Let’s examine a few sentences that were translated into English. Let’s imagine, however, that we’re reading them as original constructions. We’ll treat the nuances and stresses as we would any English sentence. At the bottom, we’ll return to the translation.

Pick up your spectacles and a scalpel and cast your eye over this paragraph.

I put everything back in order and tried to repress the threat that I looked like the sister my father had obliterated. Meanwhile I became more and more distracted, and my aversion for school increased, scaring me. Still, I wanted to go back to being a good girl, the way I’d been until a few months earlier: it was important to my parents, and I thought that if I could get excellent grades again I would be pretty again, too, and good. But I couldn’t; in class my mind wandered, at home I wasted my time in front of the mirror.

What you’ve just read comes from the opening of Chapter Five in The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante. Unfortunately, cutting off the excerpt at “mirror” is a little unfair, as the paragraph continues and escalates over the next page. Even with this limited excerpt, however, we do see enough to notice that something is amiss. I found myself reading this passage a few times when I first came across it, stuck in a loop of what’s certainly an intriguing construction. My focus here is pure craft: nothing beyond the technique of how pen scrapes against page.

All narratives need a foundation—a place for the reader to stand while the story proceeds. A foundation can be a location, a character, a time. Without that foundation, the story simply floats in abstraction, as there’s nothing tangible for the reader to grasp. Now imagine writing the paragraph above with that in mind. Try to create a similar story. What’s your foundation? Where do you situate the reader? In your version—and this is a tad difficult to phrase—when does the narrative occur? Is your narrative chronological? Or is your narrative a memory? If the reader searches for now, what time do they discover?

Let’s look again at the passage and highlight every word that describes or hints at time:

I put everything back in order and tried to repress the threat that I looked like the sister my father had obliterated. Meanwhile / I became more and more distracted, and my aversion for school increased, scaring me. Still, I wanted to go back to being a good girl, the way I’d been until a few months earlier: it was important to my parents, and I thought that if I could get excellent grades again I would be pretty again, too, and good. But I couldn’t; in class my mind wandered, at home I wasted my time in front of the mirror.

Toward the end, the shifts are subtle, hidden in a description of potential. Yet there’s still an implicit sense that thinking something might work occurs before you learn it doesn’t work, even without any explicit reference to time. Notice, too, the intriguing repetition of again, or the sentence that begins with still; both of which magnify the disorientation we already feel.

Here’s a straightforward question: when does this paragraph occur? There’s an answer, though I doubt most readers would speak it with confidence. Every sentence demands that you wear multiple watches, and it’s worth asking how this might point to an elusive, or even entrancing, quality in Ferrante’s writing.

Consider that she’s most known for her Neapolitan Novels, which present a chronicle from early childhood to old age. And also consider that many of her readers find themselves incapable of stopping while they read her words. Although I wouldn’t call those two elements—a lengthy narrative, breathless readers—a contradiction, it’s certainly an interesting juxtaposition. The traditional tools of suspense aren’t typically found in her subject. Perhaps one solution for those describing the past and present and future, or for those revealing the cascade of effects each moment brings, is to force the reader to feel every single moment as now.  

The excerpt above comes from Ann Goldstein’s translation. Because I know there are Italian speakers who subscribe, here’s the original:

Rimisi tutto in ordine e mi tenni sotto pelle la minaccia di assomigliare alla sorella cancellata di mio padre. Intanto diventai sempre più distratta e crebbe, spaventandomi, il mio rifiuto della scuola. Eppure desideravo tornare brava come ero stata fino a pochi mesi prima, i miei genitori ci tenevano molto, pensai persino che se fossi riuscita a prendere di nuovo ottimi voti, sarei ridiventata bella e di buon carattere. Ma non ci riuscii, in classe ero svagata, a casa buttavo via il mio tempo davanti allo specchio.

There’s nothing too dramatic about the differences, though the sentence structure changes in English do both subtract and add flavor, which is the art of translation. “Mi tenni sotto pelle la minaccia” is probably the most difficult phrase to adapt to English. Goldstein’s choice of “tried to repress the threat” is a good example of how translators—in the best possible sense—are writers.

Subscribe to Desk Notes

If you are passionate about language, I think that you will enjoy Desk Notes.

You will receive a new issue every Friday.

Read More