Dacia Maraini. Love Letters: Unedited Letters by Gabriele D'Annunzio Presented as Theatre.

Meyer, E. Nicole

Dacia Maraini. Love Letters: Unedited Letters by Gabriele D'Annunzio Presented as Theatre. Thomas Simpson, tr. Branko Gorjup, interview. Toronto. Guernica. 2003. 91 pages. Can$12. ISBN 1-55071-178-4

IN THIS RECENT TRANSLATION of prolific and well-known Italian writer Dacia Maraini, Lettere d'amore presents a fictional theatrical monologue featuring a woman reading through love letters addressed to Barbara from the famed poet Gabriele D'Annunzio. The love letters, found among her mother's possessions following her death, cause the daughter to rethink her relationship with her mother. In reinterpreting her mother's mask of opacity, she utters, "You were hiding an incommensurable treasure." The already-formed image of her mother clashes violently with the image resulting from her reading of these passionate letters and cause her to ask, "Who were you?" Her mother's silencing of her all-too-visible pain causes her daughter to now accuse her of betrayal: "Mamma, why did you betray me like this? I wasn't your husband, I could have been your friend. Why didn't you tell me a single word?" She suspects her mother of being Gabriele's lover, wondering if she, in turn, is his daughter. Gabriele's ability to "sculpt" words in his letters appeals to her to the point that she has "already chosen [him] as my father." The beauty of the text lies in its concise questioning of the mother-daughter bond and the silences that permeate any family: "Family, family, that viscid and indecipherable thing that slithers, spreads out, and disappears to suddenly reappear like a dragon hungry for caresses ..." In addition, the ever-shifting prism of their relationship takes on new colors of betrayal as the daughter learns her mother's final secret.

Many readers will appreciate the inclusion of the Italian original because of its exquisite phonetic and poetic beauty. While the translation is good, there are a few slight omissions (e.g., for the stage direction "suono di clarinetto" the translator writes simply "clarinet"). Of interest to other readers is the short interview of Maraini by Branko Gorjup that closes the volume. In it we learn her reasons for undertaking this particular work as well as her opinions on the relationship between writing and politics and on feminist acts and space. Her notions on theater's role in reconstructing reality help us understand both her role in establishing a women's theater, La Maddalena, as well as her creative production in general.

E. Nicole Meyer

University of Wisconsin, Green Bay