”Maybe I have been thoughtless, or too enthusiastic, when I accepted your proposal, which requires a great freedom from me, greater than I have. In the situation where I am now, I have no freedom and no hope to ever get back to a tolerable human condition […] That’s why I cannot see myself as a writer anymore. I am the only one who remembers I’ve ever been one”.
In this letter, dated 20th of March 1980, Anna Maria Ortese asked to postpone her visit to the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm to the following autumn. She had been invited to give a speech about the current cultural situation in the country. Lately, the writer decided to cancel her visit to the Swedish capital.
Forty years after that failed visit, the Italian Cultural Institute celebrates one of the greatest post-war Italian writers by presenting the Swedish translation of Il mare non bagna Napoli, recently published by Palaver Press with the support of the Italian Foreign Office.
Cecilia Schwartz (Associate Professor of Italian Literature, Stockholm University) and Vibeke Emond (translator) present this collection of tales, published for the first time in 1953 and considered today a classic of the Italian contemporary canon.
The presentation will be held in Swedish.
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