But what Dante! Already the title Dante, the Italian, with its very subtle linguistic game, it is a program. The book, with many contributions, is edited by Giovanna Frosini and Giuseppe Polimeni.
Throughout this week you will be able to download the digital version for free from all platforms. Here on Amazon.
We
And here we are at the first pronoun declined in the plural: We.
We can easily be associated with the ego.
We are many 'I's put together that are huddled close together to form something compact and sometimes impenetrable.
When you pronounce the word We you want to establish without a shadow of a doubt that we are not alone, that there is a world around me that understands me, approves of me, that has the same ideas and habits as me.
We are often referred to as family, but also as belonging to a city – parochialism is the most harmful form of us – to an association, a trade union, a sports team, a religious creed.
I think the most important thing to keep in mind when pronouncing Us in autobiography is to understand that yes, we are part of something that is very close to our hearts, but that the world doesn't end up outside our circle. We often have to deal with closure, with raised drawbridges, with prejudices. We must always be very careful when writing Us.
Marcus Tullius Cicero said:
“We weren't born just for ourselves”.
In this case the us defines a collective that represents all of humanity and makes us reflect on the fact that if we have defined the IO as an island, the us is our archipelago. Everything that is close to us and is in connection with us.
The us is the sum of the many You that we have next to us and that can also be very different from each other.
But at the same time John Donne said "No man is an island". It seems a contradiction to what I was saying before, but if you think about it, it's not like that. Each island is intimately connected to the others within its archipelago and all contribute to forming an ecosystem based on collaboration.
On this quotation the Dominique Marchais has built quite a lot documentary which tells the stories of the farmers of the Galline Felici cooperative in Sicily, the architects, the craftsmen and the elected representatives of the Swiss Alps and Voralberg in Austria. They are just some of those who, in Europe, make a political issue of their work and think of themselves as a common destiny.
From an artistic point of view in Siena we can admire the beautiful cycle of frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti: Allegory ed effects of good government and Bad Government.
In the lower area of the Allegory of Good Government, twenty-four citizens they parade holding the same rope, to symbolize the unity of purpose. We are well represented in my opinion.
A bit like when playing tug of war, the strength of one is added to the strength of all the others for a common purpose.
You guys
The pronoun "You" is a difficult pronoun to interpret, it has multiple meanings and is used in different contexts: in commercial and bureaucratic correspondence it serves to make the dialogue more impersonal, bringing the person on the same level as an institution or a company.
The fundamental characteristic is in fact the pragmatic nature: depending on the "system of rules that govern the behavior of the interlocutors, and the use of linguistic means that condition the choice of non-verbal behaviors in relationships".
The use is also based on the relation of relationship (remember the you and the he/she?) that exists between the one who pronounces the "You" and the one who receives it.
Normally there is almost always an unequal relationship. Those who say You are often in a position of power, those who suffer it from subordination.
In this regard, I still remember the phrase of the Marquis del Grillo which emphasizes his ego as opposed to you who count for nothing…
The "You" presupposes - almost always - a detachment, the "You" around us are - almost never - people of our circle, they are not part of the "groups" in which we have placed ourselves.
“You who live safe in your warm houses, you who find warm food and friendly faces when you return in the evening: consider if this is a man who works in the mud who knows no peace who fights for half a loaf who dies for a yes or a no".
These are Primo Levi's words in his If this is a man". He is an accusatory You, very distant from the reality in which he found himself living. A You who blames someone who stays away, who doesn't see and doesn't hear or maybe doesn't want to see and hear.
It is somewhat the same accusation that Giuseppe Civati makes in his pamphlet You know in which he accuses Western governments of knowing what is happening in Africa in migratory flows.
Voi is therefore a distant pronoun, but above all a pronoun from which we want to distance ourselves, in fact we pronounce Voi precisely when we want to distance ourselves from a group, from a position In autobiography it is the others we do not want to be.
Adolescents say "You parents!"... students ""You teachers"... when they want to make their interlocutors anonymous, hide behind a You the people you want to distance yourself from or with whom you don't agree.
I also discovered a now vintage book from 1960 called Poems for you. Poetry by Italian viewers, from the television program "An answer for you" by Alessandro Cutolo, host of the program broadcast by Rai from 1954 to 1968.
This is why it is so difficult to uniformly frame the pronoun Voi in the Italian language…
Isn't there a difference between singular “you” and “plural you” in English? So let's point the finger and think that whoever is in front of us far from us can be a single one or many let's be careful!
Parrot
So we've come to the end and we're coming to the last in the list of personal pronouns: They.
Loro from the relational point of view – which is basically what interests us – represents the contrast between a singular and a multitude of undefined plurals: “They”.
Who are They who stand before us?
Normally they are an indistinct presence, they are all those we do not know. Mathematics is often not just numbers. mathematics is the basis of sociology, to understand what relationships exist within society.
When we pronounce the word Them we are referring to something that is unknown to us or that we do not fully know, about which we often have preconceived and very summary ideas.
But I don't want to linger on what are the most harmful aspects of their often used in politics to create conflicts - I'm better than them! – or on the contrary – They are worse than me! – formulas that are often the basis of dissatisfaction that also lead to bloody conflicts.
Loro is the title of Paolo Sorrentino's latest film, the plot of which is centered on the life of Berlusconi and even though I haven't seen the film, I wondered why it was titled in this way. I found the explanation in an interview in which Sorrentino says how the title can be interpreted in two different ways which also explain well the meaning of the pronoun Loro.
They are all those who gravitate around the power that emanates from Berlusconi, who gravitate to his private sphere hoping for favors that are not necessarily political. So "their strangers" who aspire to make themselves known.
But Loro is also Berlusconi himself who is like someone different and distant from an implied "we", as if Berlusconi were an alien who has fallen on our country, no one knows from where or why.
Loro becomes the God to pay homage, as the natives paid homage to the unknown "They" who arrived on their conquered lands before they realized that "They" would be "Their" undoing. Double meaning here too!
A good review of the film can be found on “International"
Parrot it is also Sergio Cotroneo's latest novel, in which they are the presences that hover in a house where the protagonist goes to work, but they are also the twins she has to look after.
Then… them as a double. Anyone who has had the opportunity to meet twin brothers - especially identical ones - knows how for them there is no singular but we always refer to them and this tells us that it is not necessary for theirs to be many, but even just two are enough people outside us.
Think of the Kessler twins, they are always referred to as Them, inextricably united. And I know something about it because my mom was one half of a couple with her twin sister. Indistinguishable from those who were not of the family.
Conclusions
The overview I made on pronouns sometimes seems to stray from the main topic which is that of autobiographical writing, but even if sometimes transparent or almost invisible there are many threads that intertwine in an autobiography.
When we write, even in the first person, a myriad of characters appear welcome or uninvited to whom we address each time with different pronouns, it is up to the writer to harmonize the world around us in an understandable story - even only to ourselves.
Cover image: The poster of Carlo Verdone's 2010 film "Me, them and Lara", retouched in the title to adapt it to the content of Ada's post. Verdone dedicated the film to his father, Mario Verdone, who had passed away the year before. Mario Verdone was the first professor in Italy to occupy a university chair of film history.
Ada Ascari
