Antonella Cilentoprolific Neapolitan writer and journalist, creator of the first master of writing and publishing in the South, in Cinquina alla Strega in 2014, in the country of writing, since his literary debut (many novels ago), brings his luxurious figure that novel after novel feeds on his passion for the mystery, as well as for the pure romance (“there is no history that is not intimately esoteric”, ” repeat). And also in his latest novel, “the Babylonian” (Bompiani) – proposed by Sandra Petrignani to the Strega 2025 award and which will be presented today a Cosenzaat 5.30 pm, at the Museum of the Brettii and of the Enotri, in a meeting by the author with the journalist Rosa Cardillo and the literary critic Antonella Falco, moderated by the delegate to culture Antonietta Cozza and with the readings of Federica Montanelli and the musical interventions of the duo of violinists Apolline Tchorek and Zaira Caridad Vallone – his writing always expanded and intertwined, historical characters. and invention, atmospheres, plots of history and art, which bring the present closer to pieces of the past. Taking inspiration from the exhibition on the “Assyrians in the shadow of Vesuvius” to the Archaeological Museum of Naples, Cilento, passionate about art, leads the reader from the ancient nineteous to Victorian London, from the Naples of the seventeenth century, his multifaceted city, to the 2000s, from the cuneiform tablets to digital writing. With an expressive wealth (she is a hunter of words and her work on the tongue is highly sought after) that in this novel-museum full of colors (and museums they are places where present and past time look like) is also an art treasure.
Antonella, from ancient Mesopotamian anxiety to the 2000s, through 800 and 600, a move back and forth in time, in a dizziness of stories.
“” The Babylonian “was born many times, as there are many narrative layers that make up a novel of novels: the first time I was seven years old, the discovery of a group of Italian archaeologists from ancient Ebla showed me that the Americans went to the moon, as showed the photo of the Alhunaggio on my subsidiary, but the Italians traveled over time. The second coincided with the failure of a data recovery company: we are so busy to outsource every memory that seems impossible to close a company born to save our memories, just as the Assyrians could not imagine that their immense archives disappeared as it will happen to our world, which tends to data from data and disappears a little every day. And then a third time was born thanks to an exhibition where I saw Libbali for the first time, bride of Assurbanipal kings ».
From the legendary nineteous to Victorian London the Babylonian, the woman with the girl who brings the lantern, appeals to us. How?
“Libbers falling in love with a Jewish deporteate and for retaliation he and all the daughters of Libbals are killed. It would be up to her too, it was not for the little Yoeudith, daughter of her lover, who drags her, armed with Lucerne, in an escape that will last millennia. At each return of Libbals, such as Albalì, Babylonian sorceress in seventeenth -century Naples, with the name of Madame Ballu in the London nineteenth century and Neapolitan, or as Alice Bilardi in our day, always corresponds to the presence of the girl with lanterns, torch or Lucerne, which indicates the way: the strength of revenge is embodied in the praise, while in Yeoudith, which brings the power in the death. creation and hope. Of these forces we need great, like women. In “The Babylonian” is portrayed the female who gets up, who is condemned because he promises revenge and who, despite everything, loves ».
And in fact in this vertigo of stories the power of the female triumphs …
“Yes, despite every effort to destroy the female, to which women often collaborate, one must say it, the female strength of creation is unstoppable: the Babylonian is, after all, he continues resurrection”.
She loves to seek in the past, and in this novel times and centuries intertwine. Which thread unites them?
«The past often acts as a magnifying glass of our present: in” the Babylonian “the repetition of the trauma is photographed. How many times are the same events repeat in our life, until we become aware of being the architect of that repetition? And how many lives, maybe, are they repeating? The trauma occurs for 3000 years until its memory runs out, until the acceptance extinguishes pain, just as in history the destruction is repeated, from remote Mesopotamia to today Iraq, because humanity does not stop destroying. Here the love story exceeds time but also deception is renewed. Are we able to remember and learn or delete to repeat the same gestures? ».
The scope of his research is often the history of art. What, this time, recalled the romance imagination?
«Writing has always been for me to paint stories: in” the Babylonian “the 600, its shadows, its battles return to Aniello Falcone’s painting. Then there is the fulgent Mesopotamian art rediscovered thanks to Henry Layard. Painters and painters of Naples between Masaniello and the great plague, where Caravaggio and Ribera were masters, are the fulcrum of many of my pages such as the Assyrian art and a tribute to Bill Viola, who closes the novel “.
And there are historical characters, in fact, linked to the world of art, which she revives.
“I always choose forgotten or secondary figures and transform them completely into the invention. Many characters come from the history books but often we know little about them: Layard has been very busy telling himself as Falcone disappears in the great plague. He had died the whole family before he turned fifty years: I always wondered how he survived. That they were four his true children who died like four are the killed daughters that I invented for the praise is a synchrony, like the ones that Yourcenar said they happened while wrote. You are looking for something and something bigger finds you, confirming your invention ».
In a passage he is told to Henry Layard “to be on guard from the past, because he always tries to reach us, no matter how fast we are”. So is it all a dream in which past, present and future are the same thing? And what is memory?
«We are in a dream of a dream of a dream: Calderon, Shakespeare, Borges and even Pasolini in” What the clouds “remind us. A theater that repeats itself. Memory is an infinite story that changes and that we delude ourselves to fix. All the photos we take with the cell phone without ever looking at them are our memory? No. If anything, they are the way we cancel it, we eliminate the strength of the experience. Our world collapses because we cancel art as experience and experience as a profound matter of art ».
