Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
There are many women fighting as men and who go around looking for love, for the men they love and fighting and riding horses all around the world. It is beautiful poetry and the Italian language of Ludovico Ariosto is wonderful. He lived between 1474 and 1533 and he was from the north of Italy, Ferrara, in the region of Emilia-Romagna.
Orlando Furioso, the poem by Ludovico Ariosto.
This is another wonderful poem. It comes from the legend of the French Knights of the Round Table and it’s all about warriors and wanderers who go walking through woods, crossing rivers, climbing mountains. There is a lot of imagination: flying horses and dragons and miraculous springs. The women are courageous and willing to travel to know the world better. That’s what I like in this epic poem. There are many women fighting as men and who go around looking for adventures, for the men they love, riding horses all around the world. It is a beautiful epic poem and the Italian language of Ludovico Ariosto is so inventive and vivid and light. He lived between 1474 and 1533 and he was from the north-centre of Italy, Emilia-Romagna, specifically from a great town called Ferrara. The fourth chapter is about a lot of people who fly, and I love this. In another life maybe I was a bird – I often dream of flying and I love birds. It’s a story of imagination, a sort of fable, but wonderfully written and described.
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Dacia Maraini was born in Florence. Her Sicilian mother came from the old Alliata family from Salaparuta and her half-English father was a famous ethnologist. After a difficult childhood she moved to Rome, where she continued her studies and did a variety of jobs to make ends meet. Together with several other young people, she founded a literary magazine called Tempo di Letteratura, published by Pironti in Naples, and began contributing to magazines, including Nuovi Argomenti and Mondo. During the 60s she published her first novels and also began to turn her attention to the theatre. Together with a group of writers, she founded the Teatro del Porcospino, a theatre devoted exclusively to staging new Italian works by the likes of Parise, Gadda, Tornabuoni and Moravia. In 1973 she contributed to the foundation of the Teatro della Maddalena, run solely by women. Five years later, this theatre put on her play Dialogo di una Prostituta Con un suo Cliente (Dialogue of a Prostitute and her Client), which was translated into English and French and staged in 12 different countries.
