Sex & The Book / Sexual initiation and the discovery of eros in the lines of Goliarda Sapienza

The unscrupulous and talented writer and actress Goliarda Sapienza was born in Catania in 1924, into an equally revolutionary family: her father, Giuseppe Sapienza, was a well-known socialist lawyer and politician who dedicated his life to fighting fascism and the mafia, while his mother, Maria Giudice, was the first woman to become a director of the Chamber of Labor. Goliarda grew up in an open environment, devoid of prejudices. He did not even go to school at the behest of his father, because he did not have to undergo the education of the regime. He studied acting at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome and acted mainly in the theater, but also in the cinema (he appears, among others, in Sense by Luchino Visconti). The passion for writing, however, led her to abandon acting to devote herself to writing a first novel, Open letter , then followed by The midday thread , The University of Rebibbia , The certainties of doubt . Controversial personality, she even ended up in prison for a period for stealing some objects from friends' homes. She married the actor and writer Angelo Maria Pellegrino.

"Now I know what the sea is".
She didn't answer, and staring at me without moving, she pulled my skirt down, lifted my petticoat and tore off my panties. He didn't move, but with his fingers, still staring at me, he began to caress me just as I did when Tina screamed. [...] Then the caresses became so deep that ... how did he do it? I looked at him. He had opened my legs and his face sank into my thighs; he stroked me with his tongue. Of course I couldn't understand if I didn't look at it: I couldn't do that alone.

The passage is taken from his most illustrious novel, as well as his masterpiece - The art of joy - curiously published after Goliarda's death: rejected for twenty years by the main Italian publishers, it was printed in a few copies by Stampa Alternativa in 1998, edited by her husband. Only after obtaining excellent recognition abroad was it reprinted by Einaudi, in 2008, finally received with all the enthusiasm of the public and critics that the indisputable and original talent of Sapienza had long deserved. The art of joy tells the story of Modesta, born on January 1, 1900 into a problematic family in the deepest Sicily.

See also

The erogenous zones: discovering the pleasure of women and men

Candaulism: what there is to know about this sexual practice

Fetishism: what it is and how to deal with this sexual behavior

Little Modesta, at the beginning of the novel, is a girl still unaware of the secrets of sex, but far from disinterested in the subject: she has just discovered the pleasure of caressing herself "in that place" and she can't wait to learn a little more. Will her mother know what those chills she feels are? Has he ever tried them? And your friend Tuzzu, that tall, dark boy with eyes so blue that they seem to contain the water of the oceans? She just has to look for him in the reeds, now that the heat of the day has passed, and ask him in person. Tuzzu treats her like a child, he is surprised to see her still standing. She confesses that she has strange thoughts and asks him to explain what the sea is. The boy does it, but it is not enough for Modesta and he squeezes his arm: "I shouldn't have let him go, I had to ask him why - when I looked at him before, and now that I was holding his arm - I had that desire to caress myself where ... ". Finally she asks him, and he replies that he is ashamed, but Modesta does not understand why she should: perhaps it does not happen to the others? Tuzzu tells her to stop, not to provoke him, he is still a man and if she does not plant her he will be forced to caress her himself ... Mody does not wait any longer: he will finally be able to understand what the sea is.

Modesta's stubbornness, her marked intelligence and absolute disregard for socially shared moral rules, as well as her incredible seductive power that will spare neither men nor women - will lead her, growing up, to elevate her condition, to become from a humble girl raised in a convent, an aristocrat with titles and lands and to cross the history of the twentieth century in the name of the passion, emancipation and happiness that every woman, however Machiavellian it may be, is always due. Joy, on the other hand, is an art that must be learned.

by Giuliana Altamura

Here you can read the previous appointment with the Sex & The Book / Sexual repression and search for the extreme in writing by Elfriede Jelinek
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