“Everything that mattered had happened already” (Natalia Ginzburg)

/ madamebibilophile

Last year I read All Our Yesterdays, which was my first experience of Natalia Ginzburg’s writing, and I absolutely loved her unfussy, direct style. The Dry Heart (1947 transl. Frances Frenaye 1952) is a much shorter work at just 108 pages but it packs a real punch.

On the first page, the unnamed narrator is with her husband in their home:

“I took the revolver out of his desk drawer and shot him between the eyes. But for a long time already I had known that sooner or later I should do something of the sort.”

And so this is a whydunit rather than a whodunit, as we are taken back to a time when a young, naïve girl marries a man who she knows does not love her:

“When a girl is very much alone and leads a tiresome and monotonous existence, with worn gloves and very little spending money, she may let her imagination run wild and find herself defenceless before all the errors and pitfalls which imagination has devised to deceive her.”

Initially her husband Alberto is interested in her, but not romantically. He reads Rilke to her and listens to all she has to say. But he is in love with Giovanna and he never pretends otherwise. They marry despite ambivalence on both sides.

She has friends, including Francesca who lives more independently and freely; and Augusto who is her husband’s friend but also kind and genuine towards her.  Yet the narrator still seems very isolated, and lonely within her marriage. Alberto obfuscates and disregards her feelings. Who she is and how his behaviour impacts on her is of no consequence to him.  

“I wanted to know a lot more about his feelings for me, but I couldn’t talk to him for long about anything important because it bored him to try and get to the bottom of things and turn them over and over the way I did.”

The simple, direct language lends itself to the length of the novella and also emphasises youth of narrator. The complexity of The Dry Heart lies in the characterisation and builds an intriguing portrait of a marriage.

Despite having undertaken such a violent act, the narrator doesn’t ask for sympathy, and doesn’t justify herself. She presents what happened without a trace of sentimentality or self-pity. Possibly she is detached and deeply traumatised, but as the reader comes to her at the point of the shooting, we don’t know if this voice is one of trauma or long-established.

By refusing to have the narrator engage in self-justification and avoiding any sense of authorial knowingness or psychological explanation, Ginzburg firmly places the why in the readers hands. It’s a masterstroke: she highlights patriarchal oppression, psychological warfare in marriage, the pitiable choices available for women and the danger of dismissing fellow human beings, without being remotely heavy-handed.    

The Dry Heart is hugely impressive and I’m looking forward to exploring Ginzburg further, thanks to the wonderful Daunt Books who are doing such a great job reissuing her work in translation.

“It’s probably a mistake to follow every meandering of our feelings and waste time listening to every echo from within. That, in fact, is no way to live.”

To end, from a dry heart to a cold one:

27 thoughts on ““Everything that mattered had happened already” (Natalia Ginzburg)”

  2. I was fairly sure you would really appreciate this one Madame Biblio. It certainly rather ‘blew me away’ with its powerful punch, as you said. I think your review is excellent at capturing the essence of the book; I was glad to be reminded of it.

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  3. A few people mentioned this one when I wrote about Valentino earlier in the month, and clearly I’m going to have to get my hands on it. It sounds so up my street! I love her sparse prose.

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  4. I read this one last summer, the first page is unforgettable isn’t it?! She gives us the ‘why’ in such confrontational language that is so disarming it works like a spell, we have to keep reading!

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  8. Yes, that lack of sentimentality really works here, doesn’t it? I think it shows the lengths some women are driven to when their life choices are severely restricted by societal expectations (certainly those in place when this novella was written in the 1940s).

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  11. All our Yesterday’s is the only Ginzburg I’ve read so far. I certainly enjoyed it, but perhaps didn’t engage with it as much as some people. I wonder if I might prefer this shorter work.

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  13. Pingback: “I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.” (Rudolph Valentino) | madame bibi lophile recommends

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