Natalia Ginzburg, Happiness, as Such (1973)translated from the Italian by Minna Zallman Proctor (201
Natalia Ginzburg, Happiness, as Such (1973)translated from the Italian by Minna Zallman Proctor (2019)Visiting this house, I feel like I’m drowning in endless melancholy. Now I’m back in my room at the boardinghouse and can see the city of Leeds through the window, one of the last cities Michele walked through. I’m having dinner with Ermanno Giustiniani tonight and he’s a nice boy but he can’t tell me much about Michele because he didn’t know him for that long and doesn’t remember much, or perhaps it makes him too sad to talk about it with me. He’s a boy. Boys today don’t have big memories, and more importantly, they don’t cultivate them. You and your mother have a stronger inclination to preserve memories. This life now has nothing to equal to the places and moments we passed through to get here. I’ve lived things and observed things, knowing all the while that each moment had extraordinary splendor. I had to make myself remember. It was always so painful to me that Michele didn’t want to, or couldn’t, understand such splendor, that he moved forward without ever turning back. But I believe he sensed my splendor. A number of times I have thought that maybe while he was dying he had a flash of understanding and he traveled all the paths of his memory and I am consoled by this thought because nothing brings consolation when there is nothing left, and even seeing that dusty undershirt in that kitchen, and then leaving it behind, was a strange, icy, lonely consolation. -- source link
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