Handwritten between the ages of 12 and 13, with a purple cotton cord to keep them tied, the previously unpublished pages of Lia Levi’s first book were found by chance by the writer on April 25, 2021, hidden in the folds of a diary of the mother, buried in a drawer. A discovery that left the author breathless. “This discovery was a double emotion and even more. I was not looking for this book, I thought I no longer had it. I only remembered the episode of when I was a little girl, to give my parents a gift I had written a booklet with everyone the chapters.
They had thanked me, but they hadn’t focused on the content. The old parents weren’t outgoing and I thought they had thrown it away, not with contempt, but let it go, as it happens. I found it on April 25 because I was looking for papers to participate in a round table on Liberation. It was on the flap of my mother’s diary about the time we were in hiding. I made a leap: all handwritten with a beautiful handwriting and the strange thing is I put the date finished writing the 26 -12-’44 and copying the 16-2-’45 “tells ANSA Lia Levi that on November 9, 2021 she turns 90 and as a child she lived the experience of persecution against Jews, first with the fascist racial laws, then with the occupation of the Germans in Italy and was saved, together with her sisters, by finding refuge in a college of nuns.
Precisely for the ninetieth birthday of the writer, who was born in Pisa on November 9, 1931 and lives in Rome, this story in twenty-five sheets of yellowed paper arrives in the bookstore for Piemme-Il Battello a Vapore. The title is the original ‘From cry to smile’, with the anastatic reproduction of the manuscript, an imaginary dialogue between the writer of today and that of yesterday and with the delicate illustrations by Carla Manea.
In those small sheets found, set in the aftermath of the Liberation of Rome from the Nazi occupation, starring a Jewish family other than the writer’s, there was also a title: ‘From tears to smiles’, and below:’ Short nine-month history of German rule ‘. “The other surprise is that I thought I had written a memory of what we had been through and instead the novel was all different, with fictional characters, different stories, always from that period, but all invented” explains the writer who in 2018 won the Strega Giovani Award with ‘Tonight is already tomorrow’ (E / O).
The striking thing is precisely that that lost work of a twelve-year-old who read so many books is not autobiographical, it does not anticipate as one would expect the first book written by the adult Levi, ‘A girl and that’s it’. The characters are invented: there are a mother and a father, there is Marcella, the judicious eldest daughter and her little brother Bobi, who is quite the opposite.
In the imaginary interview “I can’t use ‘I’, I say ‘she’ wrote. I didn’t remember anything about the content. I told not ours, but another story because I was very fascinated by literature, I read a lot. I had written a letter to myself, in which I said that when I grew up I wanted to be a writer “she says. And now at 90, I can say, “Well. I did it! Both surviving then and writing as I wanted,” he says.
On November 9 Lia Levi will be celebrated “at the Ghione Theater in Rome where there will be 400 students from schools from different cities. They will celebrate me and give me this libretto. But I don’t know more, because it will be a surprise. Then on Sunday I will have a party with the children. friends, good things always come from school kids.
I’m spoiled by the fact that I go where they call me and the guys get ready, I always meet the best part. And this valid part I think will drag everything else “he says. Of course,” this world that is becoming robotic, scares me a lot. And then the new madness of erasing literature, art, this politically correct which is the most incorrect of ways. Trampled memory is horrible. We are in a frightening drift but the struggle cannot be made by the individual, the effort must be made by everyone, by the state, by the laws, by society “, he explains.
In “From cry to smile” Levi has removed a few commas here and there, the characters and descriptions are curated, and the narrative maturity is surprising. “The story can be read by children, but it is one of the documents, certainly minor, that build history with a capital S and I wanted to do that.
I hope it makes the kids want to write too, “says the writer who worked on it during the lockdown.
(ANSA).
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Source From: Ansa
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