Lia Levi: writing is a solitary job – Martino Mazzonis

The desire to write about this prolific author of books for adults and children was therefore born early. “Sometimes, kindly, I am introduced as someone you write to testify. The truth is that I wanted to write: as a child I wrote myself letters and wrote the micro novel found. But since I have always thought that writing is a solitary job, suitable for mature age, after my studies I looked for a ‘real’ job, which would put me in contact with others, which would allow me to pay the bills. Making a living from writing is not something you can decide. In the meantime I was writing for myself, I have a nice bundle of private stories, some I still like, some I really don’t ”.

Memory, testimony, in short, were the well to draw from, not the spark. “But the theme was that of the years of the Second World War, because those events were the first to make me question the world. I had to invent the world in those days, because in my house, to protect me, they didn’t explain to me what was happening outside. I knew there was something in my life to hide, but I didn’t understand what it was. One summer they sent us to French lessons because there was the idea of ​​moving to France and since nobody did the same thing I thought that was the secret. When a parent saw French grammar I was very worried ”.

Perhaps it is this experience, in addition to the patient work of writing, that makes the dramatic stories he tells light but at the same time unequivocal. “If you write just to testify, everything will sound didactic, it won’t work. Literature is not for teaching. It can help to make people think “.

As an avid reader of books for boys and girls, I ask her why she writes for them. “Many things happen by chance. The first book I published, Just a little girl (Edizioni and / or 1994) was not for children, but even then they invited me to schools. So I tried it and it worked. It’s not the same as writing for adults. Carmen Llera, Alberto Moravia’s second wife, told me that Moravia tried without success. When I write for boys and girls, I think I can imagine my audience, while with adults, boh, you hope they will read you “.

As we eat, we end up talking about cooking. Levi is sorry because it is impossible to find a soufflé, “vegetables are better in a soufflé”. True, but it is a rather rich and complex dish, with waiting times not suited to the rhythms of today’s catering.

Let’s go back to the children who invite her to schools. “It’s the fantasy that binds us,” she says. “As long as there are no teachers who, perhaps for fear of making a bad impression on the author, clip their wings when they launch themselves into flights of fancy referring to my stories. Or they identify themselves: ‘You were a normal child,’ they say. That is, they discover that the characters are human beings like those they meet in their lives. I think I understand, listening to their comments, that they really like metaphors. In middle school I have great satisfaction of another kind. Of course, the best happens to me, in the sense that I go where a professor who has done a work on one of my books invites me. And they dig it, the book, they question you more and better than adults. When we talk about my family, they almost always ask me: ‘What was your mother’s job?’. It’s a beautiful thing, the boys and girls have in mind that mothers work and will work ”.

Levi founded and then directed the monthly magazine of Jewish information and culture Shalom for years. “At the time, I was often identified as ‘the director’s wife’, because it was my husband, Luciano Tas, who wrote the pieces of politics in the newspaper”.

Let’s talk briefly about your latest book Each one next to his night (Editions and / or 2021), three intertwined stories set in Rome in the period of racial laws. Levi was born in Pisa to a Piedmontese Jewish family. In Rome, where she grew up, the Jewish community is very old and cohesive, particularly linked to the rite and the word of the rabbi. “In one of the events that you tell in the book, there is a hint of this special bond,” she says. “And also to the fact that the Roman Jewish ruling class during the years of persecution underestimated the danger.”

When writing about historical events, Levi wants to be precise, but the difficult part, even for a prolific writer, is the creative process. “Blank page and straight-ahead writing aren’t for me. I need a basic idea, then for a long time I think, build a story and think about the characters. A process that lasts months. Of course, after you build it, a schematic is meant to be taken apart. There are authors who claim to improvise, it seems strange to me. Today perhaps too many books are published that are written without an idea of ​​structure. Then there are the influencer books, but don’t let me tell you what I think about social networks! Before, certain ideas were screamed at the bar, today they are written “.

The picture that emerges, according to Levi, is that of a partly racist country. “Once upon a time there was indignation at racism in the United States. But now that minorities are visible, even here they are discriminated against. But be careful, anguish and pain have no historical comparison with the holocaust. I’m not saying this to downsize, but to remember that history is an unraveling of unique facts. If we make constant comparisons we damage both the past and the present ”.