Childhood is an island. In some cases, almost literally: the Neapolitan writer Fabrizia Ramondino (Naples, 1936-Gaeta, 2008), daughter of a diplomat, arrived in Mallorca just a few months after her birth, with the Civil War in full swing. The woman who rented the house to the family, in fact, accustomed to wandering the world since she lost her companion, had not even wanted to get off the boat on her last return as soon as she learned of the massacre that had taken place there in August. . Or, at least, that’s how Ramondino tells it. His family, however, stayed until 1944. He remembers it in War of childhood and Spain (2001; Asteroid Books, 2024, trans. Celia Filipetto).
A late writer, Ramondino lived in many countries, had a cosmopolitan education and dedicated herself to teaching and social activism, an area in which it is worth highlighting not only her commitment to poor children and families in Italy, but also to the Sahrawi people. with which he committed himself to the point of spending a month in the desert tents together with the filmmaker Mario Martone (responsible, among others, for an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s first novel, annoying lovein 1995), an experience from which the book emerged Polisario. A dimented spaceship in the desert (2000). She also investigated women’s experiences in mental health centers when no one paid attention to problems such as alcoholism or depression when they affected them.
It did not debut until 1981, with Althenopisa novel about a girl’s awakening that earned her the Napoli Prize and the Lombardi-Satriani Prize, and received applause from Natalia Ginzburg and Elsa Morante. It is no coincidence that these writers acted as godmothers: when reading this War of childhood and Spainit is inevitable to remember Family lexicon (1963): like Ginzburg, Ramondino also draws on memories, although in this case they are limited to her childhood, to that Mallorca seen through the eyes of a girl. All of his work is characterized by this tenuous border between memory and narrative, always nourished by reflections. He also cultivated poetry, theater, scriptwriting and travel books.
It is not surprising that this work is considered one of his most important titles: somewhere between memory and novel, this imposing book of five hundred pages is an example of the high levels that literature can reach through this exercise that Marcel developed. Proust to dig into memory and pull that thread, coloring it with daydreams. It is much more than a testimony: the poetic style, meticulous and rich in evocative descriptions, denotes the craft of an accomplished writer, a voice that writes from maturity, and therefore from calm, to look back and reconstruct, without nostalgia, that universe lost and yet still present in her.
Childhood days in Mallorca
“Perhaps childhood is longer than life,” said Ana María Matute, and the detail with which Ramondino evokes her experiences undoubtedly corroborates it. Following chronological order, in the first chapters it recreates the place that receives it: the people, the environment, the exuberant flora, the languages. There is a war going on, but she, a girl from a privileged family, arrives at an island where spring is anticipated: “When we arrived at the island, at the end of February, the almond trees were already in bloom,” she says, while hers are They protect from misery and bullets in their caseplón, a mirage of what is sensed as the landscape of an innocence that will be lost in parallel to the destruction of the island.
She writes with the childlike gaze of the adult who remembers, with an astonishing vividness that reflects the way of being in the world of the curious, awake and imaginative girl. It has an extraordinary ability to narrate that point of view, which, unlike other memoirs, retains its sensitivity to wonder, fascinated revelation in a place where adults only see routine. The country, and then the world, is at war, but she is safe in the confines of the town, a safe haven for her kind. Childhood emerges as a suspended, eternal time; and remember The happy days of summer (1976), by Fulco di Verdura, and A garden in Bruges (1996), by Charles Bertin.
Evocation, remembrance predominates over the story; the portrait of environments facing adventure. The incident sneaks in subtly, slowly, always small, halfway between reality and the inner life rich in daydreams. It does not intend (nor could it) tell everything as it was, but rather to reconstruct that being in the world of someone who has not yet been perverted by it and discovers it day by day, in every corner, now fixing his gaze on a dress, now listening to hidden behind the door. Find magic in the speck of dust, magnify the tiny, amplify each gesture. The girl, because she is a child, is more a spectator than an agent; By observing, letting himself be guided by adults, he learns to navigate life.
His ability to describe is so exceptional that the novel seems from another era: enveloping, elegant, suggestive writing, with long sentences that move willingly through the meanders of the language. A novel of slow cooking and slow digestion, which clashes with the contemporary trend towards expressive minimalism, short chapters and action. hectic; certainly not suitable for impatient readers. It could only be written from maturity, when that art of living called patience is mastered. It has many similarities with another recent recovery, Balcony overlooking the Atlantic (year), by María Luz Morales, another mature work that revisits childhood, in Galicia in her case.
Growing up in a privileged family
It also stands out, with respect to the current narrative, for the attention paid to the other even starting from the perspective of the self: it makes a detailed portrait of the characters, whom it reveals, physically and psychologically, with just a gesture, a illuminating phrase, like “it seemed that two women coexisted in the lady of Son Batle: the girl she had been and the big woman she was.” With this lady, the owner, the story opens, the first pages that already predict an exuberant narrative, with fine wit and powerful images, which is not afraid to call misfortune, abuse or death by name. Because every recreation of childhood is linked, of course, to the loss of innocence.
In family relationships, the complicity with her older brother, Carlito, her playmate, stands out, to whom she, with the intuition of someone who does not know but absorbs the environment, begs not to become a soldier, to never go to war. . He is jealous of the little girl, Anita; monopolizes the nurse’s attention. She adores the tenderness of her father and enjoys the visits of her Neapolitan grandmother, with those gifts that connect her with what will, one day, be her land. That grandmother who “did not speak to me in monosyllables, did not childishly distort words for me, did not give me orders, did not pamper me, but addressed me as if I were a friend. Maybe because I couldn’t talk to anyone else anymore.”
With the mother, of course, the understanding is more complex – a constant in all of Ramondino’s work; The rigidity of the upper class, the exquisiteness of its receptions, do not match the indomitable spirit of a creature. She prefers to escape to the world of servants. La Dida, or nanny, who takes care of her almost all the time; or the other servants, among whom he detects hierarchies, power relations. And life beyond the confines of the mansion, which because it is forbidden to him, is more attractive to him. Like the seamstress and her unfortunate story, or the soldiers in front of whom the mother avoids ostentation.
The fascination for the other
Like the child who, overwhelmed by the abundance of toys, entertains himself with a box, the protagonist is fascinated by the universe of the poor. There lies the mystery for her, in what she only accesses secretly, but which exudes more truth than the imposture of her circle; perhaps there is the seed that he later cultivated with his social commitment. The garden, all of nature, also enchants her: its harmony, its opulence, its disturbing life cycle. Descriptions of flora and fauna as they are no longer done, a rich and expressive imagery, full of metaphors and delicacy, with the latent tension between the protection of the home and the seductive threat of the unknown beyond its limits.
Languages are another key in his training: with his family and his environment, he speaks Italian and Spanish; with the servants and the humble, Majorcan people; the narrative is peppered with this language. And it is not anecdotal: with the nuances of each language, she discovers another reality and becomes aware of the class difference (she is connected to Anna Maria Ortese, another voice linked to Naples who x-rayed social contrasts). Their linguistic ear is accentuated by nursery rhymes, which under an apparent lightness narrate authentic perversions, like stories. These nourish their imagination of witches, gnomes and undines, and of Pinocchiothe Italian classic par excellence, which teaches you the game of metamorphosis.
And the war? It is another mystery, a backdrop that sneaks into the adults’ comments, into the little girl’s sightings. Apparently, she lives in safety, she has a peaceful childhood; However, despite the cliché that associates this stage with happiness, and even with its capacity to wonder, there is something bitter in everyday life that breaks its innocence. Without being a starving and dirty girl in the rubble, she lives her first experiences with cruelty, lack of communication, illness, and rejection. Without going any further, noticing the abysmal differences between one another is violence in itself; here is the formation of a conscience.
It is hopeful, for literature and for humanity, that a work like War of childhood and Spainfor its undoubted value as a memoir, but also for its literary depth, which no longer demands attention, but total immersion. And time, time and calm, to delight in that hypnotic prose that does not renounce beauty or tenderness even if it leaves a bittersweet residue. This is how the girl opens herself to the world, and this is how the reader recovers, not even for a while, that way of looking, amazed and curious, that he left behind with childhood.
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