Elena Ferrante: ‘I’ll Spare You Even my Presence’
In an information-saturated world, Elena Ferrante stands alone. While her name is known around the world and her work is widely read, wholeheartedly loved, and critically acclaimed, Ferrante herself has managed to keep almost every detail about her identity unknown. I stopped myself from typing the word ‘secret’, as I think it’s unfair to say that she is hiding from anybody or anything. Instead, in a world where ‘sharing our authentic self’ has seemingly become a necessity or even expectation, Ferrante has chosen to share her work and not her self.
‘I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t…’
I might be wrong, but I assume most admirers of Ferrante’s writing are not in the least perturbed by her anonymity – at most, it’s an interesting fact purely due to its rarity in a world full to the brim of celebrity authors on a conveyor belt of publicity rounds. This, I think, is why a relatively recent attempt by an Italian journalist to ‘out’ Ferrante was met with widespread unease by her fans. The forensic investigation that took months and involved an interrogation of accounting trails to find the ‘true’ Ferrante, resulted in a revelation that nobody asked for, and that has been dismissed by those named.
What Ferrante’s anonymity has done is allowed readers to read her work without any distraction or pre-judgements – we meet on the page with no prior knowledge of each other; in our minds, Ferrante is her work. This is not to say that there is no connection, intimacy or understanding in the reading experience, only that readers’ empathy and affinity with her books are held entirely with the characters and their experiences, which are a creative channel through which we can begin to understand ourselves.
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