In altre parole

I just wanted to go home, to the language in which I was known, and loved.

Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.

The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.

Books are the best means—private, discreet, reliable—of overcoming reality

When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the life, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds. When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. Your breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.

If it were possible to bridge the distance between me and Italian, I would stop writing in that language.

Why do I write? To investigate the mystery of existence. To tolerate myself. To get closer to everything that is outside of me.

Even though I now speak the language fairly well, the spoken language doesn’t help me. A conversation involves a sort of collaboration and, often, an act of forgiveness. When I speak I can make mistakes, but I’m somehow able to make myself understood. On the page I am alone. The spoken language is a kind of antechamber with respect to the written, which has a stricter, more elusive logic.

My writing is nothing but a reaction, a response to reading. In other words, a kind of dialogue. The two things are closely bound, interdependent.

I attend elementary courses. My first teacher is a Milanese woman who lives in Boston. I do the homework, I pass the tests. But when, after two years of studying, I try to read Alberto Moravia’s novel La ciociara ( Two Women ), I barely understand it. I underline almost every word on every page. I am constantly looking in the dictionary.