Anonymous Italian writer Elena Ferrante has stirred up the world literary scene with her Neapolitan tetralogy of novels: My Genius Girlfriend, The Story of a New Name, The One Who Left, the One who Left, and the Missing Child. Ferrante's four novels, published at an annual rate since 2011, trace the friendship and growth of two Neapolitan girls, Leila and Lenon, and reflect half a century of changing times in Italy. Once published, the novel became a worldwide phenomenon.
The "Neapolitan Tetralogy" has been translated into China since 2017, which also caused a sensation. By late 2019, Ferrante's novels had been translated into more than 45 countries, and the Neapolitan Quartet had sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, according to her publisher. Ferrante was named "the best novelist of our time" by the New York Times.
The third season of my Genius Girlfriend, based on the novel, was aired in February 2022, and currently has a rating of 9.6 on Douban (9.3 in the first season, 9.5 in the second). The artist Chen Danqing's special photography exhibition my Genius Girlfriend is also popular with millions of fans of books and drama at Muxin Art Museum in Wuzhen.
The "genius girlfriend craze" is back.
Of the wood heart art gallery in the genius of my girlfriend on the eve of the exhibition show, Chen is still in catch up, Elena fee rand, another novel "lies my adult life, this book is fee rand after" my girlfriend genius, "big heat, but also because of the heroine and" girlfriend "genius" lennon "similarity in spirit, seen by fans as his girlfriend on the set of genius. At that time, the Chinese version of The book had just been published, and Chen was almost one of the first readers of dangdang.
"At the end, I suddenly cried so hard that I didn't know what it was like to be a girl when she's no longer a virgin. No one had written about it before, and I cried my eyes out." He wakes up and eagerly reads the end of the novel, where 17-year-old Giovanna decides to bid farewell to her virginity and, in a cool, direct, almost brutal way, plunges into the dangerous complex world that adults rely on constant lying to sustain them. It was an unexplainable experience that every young girl must embark on alone, but one reader, a man in his late seventies, burst into tears and got up to wash his face.
"When Ferrante showed up at the writer's house, I was very grateful to her. She told me how girls think, and men never know." Chen danqing says that in his past reading experience, he can't remember anyone writing so deeply about women. He wrote to Ferrante, saying: Look at your book, you will surprise Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.
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When Somali, the editor of "My Genius Girlfriend," first got her hands on it, she was in her third year of publishing after a career in the media and had written half a dozen books, almost all of them serious, pure literature, including ondaj's "The Ghost of Anil" and Primo Levi's "The Periodic Table." But My Genius Offers an entirely different reading experience, bordering on popular. Ferrante seems to have chosen this ground-to-ground approach deliberately, after much deliberation, to appeal to the widest possible audience.
"When I got the draft of this book in 2014, I still read the English version. At that time, I didn't have enough publishing experience, so I felt that the first book was written about children, girls between 9 and 14 years old, and the pace of the story was very slow. The Acceptance and appreciation of this theme in the Chinese market was very weak. So I said at the time, the first book is harder to move."
But nine long reader or bought my girlfriend genius four volumes of copyright in China, the decision is not difficult, compared to those who sell hot, rand's Chinese copyright fee is not high, but she clearly has stirred the international reputation: evaluation of the New York times she was "our best novelists of this age"; The Financial Times named her Woman of the Year; The Economist described the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" as "spectacular"; The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and other major media outlets have reported on the phenomenon, suggesting that this brilliant and mysterious Italian writer has a magical power to enchant and hypnotic talent.
"The book opened up to me in a unique way, and by the time I got to the second one, I suddenly understood what kind of work it was, and that it was by no means an isolated example of how it opened up to the reader." Ms. Somalis said her concerns disappeared almost immediately. "WHEN I read the second book, I fell completely into it, and it was a powerful thing that came out of it, and as an editor, you have to respond to that."
Invisibility cloak
After the Neapolitan Tetralogy became an international bestseller, Elena Ferrante was included in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" list in 2016. In October of that year, Claudio Gatti, an Italian journalist, wrote in the New York Review of Books that he had uncovered Ferrante's true identity and laid out a list of evidence. He obtained from his informant records of remittances from the publishers of the Neapolitan series, including a dramatic increase in the income of one of the authors, which coincided with the novel's rise in popularity.
Ferrante's identity has always been a curiosity, but the journalist's uncovering was not a welcome one. Sandro Ferri, Ferrante's publisher, said he was shocked by Claudio Gatti's behavior: 'Why bother a woman who just wants to write her book and not be noticed?'
"Rummaging through the wallet of a writer determined to avoid the public, I think that's a disgraceful way of doing journalism." As one of the few people who knew Ferrante's identity, Ferri fiercely defended the anonymity of mystery writers. All that is known is that when Ferrante sent her debut novel, "Annoying Love," to the Ferries, she had offered to write it entirely anonymously: no reader meetings, no book signings, no salons, no in-person interviews. There was no doubt that trust and friendship had developed between her and the publisher, and that the Ferries loved her book and were willing to accept the unique arrangement.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2017, there was a gathering of Ferrante's publishers in different countries around the world, and Somalia, as the editor of the Chinese version, was invited. "All of them, probably dozens of Ferrante's publishers, were so close that no one asked or mentioned the gossip. When the New York Review of Books broke the story, everyone in the press was criticizing the Review of Books for doing this and saying it's just skimming, it doesn't make any sense, and we spontaneously didn't talk about it, it was all about her work and how she was published in different countries."
Fee rand only limited written interview, in responding to questions about anonymous for many times, she would talk about publishing more and more part of a train of thought, namely, first consider the author is an attractive person, have potential to become a public figure, it is not just to promote sales, even may directly decided to press the will. There is an implicit tendency that an author, all of his or her experiences, looks, emotions, personalities, will also be packaged and sold along with the work.
"Is there a way to protect the rights of authors? Can an author choose that only what he writes is' public '?" Ferrante asked in response to a critic's interview.
"It is up to the author to support his work, to blend the author and the book. I felt shy in the face of it." She went on to write, "A man can be very free when he knows that he does not have to make a public appearance for the work. That's why I defend a corner of my own. I have tried, and if this corner is taken away from me, I shall soon be barren."
"It's like I'm working with a ghost." "Said Saverio Costanzo, who directed the first and second seasons of" My Genius." For two and a half years, he was able to communicate with Ferrante via email from the publisher while he was working on "My Genius Girlfriend." "She's very, very serious, very demanding, not only a great writer, but a great screenwriter. But she is fair, fair and inclusive."
Ferrante stopped short of demanding that the show be faithful to the novels, encouraging the director, saying, "You decide what you want Leila and Lenon to be, and the closer they come to your imagination, the closer they come to mine." But she is the kind of original writer who makes detailed notes on all drafts of the script and fights to the end for what she thinks needs to be changed, and she ends up deeply involved in the re-creation of the story, no matter how polite and accommodating the tone of communication.
It was not the first time Costanzo had seen her force and fairness. Back in 2007, Costanzo approached Ferrante about the rights to her novel "The Lost Daughter."
Director Savilio Costanzo (left) on set
Ferrante did not immediately agree. She gave Costanzo six months to come up with a satisfactory adaptation, and after six months he had to give up his bid for the rights. Nine years later, when HBO was developing a series of "My Genius Girl" in 2016, Mr. Costanzo was one of the directors in the running, and the publisher told him that Mr. Ferrante had offered him the chance.
"I have a premonition that I shall find myself in the faintly ridiculous, faintly awkward position of being the reader of a story written by myself, written by another. Through his words, I imagined what I had imagined, experienced, and written down in the past." Ferrante writes, "In short, I will be the reader of my readers... How would I react? I don't know yet." Ferrante is clearly the sensitive, thoughtful, wordy writer, industrious and old-fashioned, afflicted by his own inner drama. By the time she made her debut film, Annoying Love, she had already been through the ordeal. She earnestly promised her editors a free hand, but immediately outlined a dozen proposed changes to the script, detailing the reasons for them. When the movie actually came out, she refused to see it and certainly didn't participate in any promotion. Later, she couldn't help watching it and wrote a long letter to the director expressing her strong feelings. But in the end, the letter was never sent.
Dark power
"The genius of my girlfriend time span is large, numerous characters, characters of childhood alone, director Mr. Saverio, Stan in Naples around and they interviewed nearly 9000 children, in the end, they found a lennon with a pair of sensitive eyes, and all the object edges Lila, two leading lady's childhood and youth actor is a 10-year, With no acting experience, they made up for it with an intense pre-show training camp and a full plot, and they soon convinced the audience.
Mr. Costanzo says that during one of the most important scenes, two Chinese girls visiting Italy walked by the set and when they saw a large black-and-white wedding photo in the shoe store, they became excited and pointed at the photo, yelling, 'Leila! That's Leila!
"It really touched me." Costanzo said it made it real to him that 'My Genius' had a huge readership around the world. It's another example of how the show's casting is so instantly recognisable to its main character's ethos. Two Chinese girls told him they were obsessed with everything about Leila, including her hair and clothes.
In Costanzo's understanding, Leela is more of a symbolic figure, a deified, all-powerful woman, like the Dark Drive. For him, the most difficult part of adaptation is the cutting. In order to focus on the drama of the show, it is necessary to remove the branches, and in a good novel, the secondary characters are often quite good, so it is extremely difficult to choose. Another difficulty in shooting is the sex scenes. Many sex scenes in the original work contain subtexts of gender and power. How to use film language to present metaphorical power and even violence in a balanced way is a great test.
To become "the genius of my girlfriend" Big Fan, Chen decided to wood heart gallery "the genius of my girlfriend", this is a photography and video exhibition, display the genius girlfriend stills, trivia, studio, and with the relevant documentary, in the exhibition hall is the most prominent position, this will display the Lila wedding dress still. To coincide with the special exhibition, director Chen Danqing organized an online chat with director Costanzo, actress Alba Rohrwacher, Italian film critic Marco Muller and Director of the Cultural Section of the Italian Consulate General in Shanghai Giorgio Da Renli, which was watched by nearly 3 million Chinese viewers. And that doesn't include later replays -- a staggering number, perhaps including the two girls calling out Leila's name in Italy.
Old elder sister
Italy is something of an enclave for Chen danqing, who has traveled to Italy many times, traveling through towns both ancient and modern, for his documentary on Italian Renaissance frescoes, "Parts." Memories overlap: as a teenager, he copied sketches by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo; To a greater extent, Italian neorealist films were almost his spiritual food. One of the reasons he loves My Genius Girl is that it makes him feel like Europe is back.
"In my youth and middle age, I was an admirer of Italian neorealism and French New Wave cinema. They have influenced not only me, but also Chinese film directors born in the 1950s and 1960s. But in my old age, I become a fan of Both American and British TV series. Like many young people today, I've watched, I believe, about 500 episodes of British and American TV dramas over the past 20 years, when I miss Italy. I said where is Europe? Where are the Germans, The French, the Italians? Why don't they make as good a movie as they used to? How happy I was when "Genius Girlfriend" came along, Italy was back! I see all the charm and energy of the new realism in this show." Mr. Chen said he was almost watching the show as if it were an extended movie.
On the set of the first season
Chen Danqing is at the site of the exhibition
He watched the first two seasons of the show before catching up on the books, which, to his surprise, were equally gripping. "I didn't set out to read a novel. I always thought it would be different. I'm visual. You know, at my age, I don't read novels very much. No matter foreign or domestic, I can't read novels of the 20th century, or I forget them. When I read a novel written by my genius girlfriend, I found it very impressive.
Mr. Chen was absolutely convinced that Ms. Ferrante was his contemporary, perhaps a little older, and her descriptions of post-World War II Naples reminded him of his own childhood. The small town blocks of Naples correspond to the Shikumen Alleys of Shanghai, and the Italian Mafia correspond to the ruffians and rascals of Shanghai. The neighbors are hot and disorderly, and they fight each other if they have a word or two. The Times change, frequent social movements and class reshuffle are all similar to the folk ecology. He wrote to Ferrante through the press, praising her in an unsentimental way, for the warmth and the fireworks it offered made him feel as if he were praising an old sister, an old friend, rather than a stranger far away.
"Her novel gave me another reason to love Italy, which I had previously loved for its art, which was wrong. For he was a country, and lived his life, and had troubles, as all countries do. Art embellished my image of Italy, but Ferrante showed me that I love Italy for another reason, the same reason I love my own country."
The survivors
Like peng Wei, the painter who first recommended "My Genius Girlfriend" to Mr. Chen, she believed that in the 21st century, film and television have largely replaced literature, with people binge-watching season after season of episodes the way novels were consumed in the 19th century. But the Neapolitan tetralogy upended her perception. "I watched the play and then I read the novel. Watching American TV series for a long time once made me despise novels, but my genius girlfriend let me know that truly outstanding novels can not be replaced, the power of literature appeared. That kind of inner complexity, it's very difficult for images to show, and images just give you a result, give you picture and richness. Words are abstract, words have space for you to make associations, and that association is about you, and you project yourself into it. The Neapolitan Tetralogy is getting better and better. I was so excited when I saw the third and fourth volumes.
Mu Xin Art Museum 2021 Special Exhibition "My Genius Girlfriend - When Literature Becomes Film and Television"
While working on a marketing copy in Somalia for the first volume of her Neapolitan trilogy, "My Talented Girlfriend," she used the key words "female friendship and female war," which set the tone for the feminist discussion of the book. "I did it deliberately. We wanted to use the most direct and undistorted means, in the Chinese market, to be seen by those who might have despised the subject matter as I did."
But by the time "Naples" reaches volume four, the Lost Child, the cover quote reads: "My whole life has been a vulgar struggle for social advancement."
This is ferrante through the mouth of the heroine of the situation, also pointed out the book's real message. This is not so much a feminist novel as a political novel that seeks to find the underlying causes of social change, class change and chaos. The author is a true biographer who weaves the threads and threads of historical currents into the growth history of two young girls.
Lenon tries to achieve bottom-up through knowledge, occupying language and utilizing existing social order (including marriage). Her genius girlfriend, Lila, is far more thorough and ferocious, restoring order by destroying, subverting, and exploiting human desires. -- "Evil will always come up from under the floor." From the time she was a child, Lila had an insight into the jungle of how the world really works, and as quickly as she could find a verb in Latin, she warned Lenon the bookworm early on: It's always the people below who want to come up, and the people above who don't want them to. Queen Dido, who frequently appears in the novel, is a key to understanding the symbolic character of Leila.
Lenon is the survivor of this struggle, and her survival is built on Leila's destruction. After destroying the evil in the evil way, Leila herself is also the evil bite, like the dragon slayer finally become the new dragon. Lenon, as well as the system of civilized ethics she represents, has once again become the recipient of the fruits of the revolution.
Leila erased herself in her own way, and Lenon had to prove, in writing, who would win. The finale comes with a gasp, as the doll that disappeared from childhood is returned to Lenon, completing the final link in this thrilling loop of intrigue.
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