Maria Zef - Paola Drigo

Perhaps you happen to feel like reading something about the mountains that is not necessarily about conquest or extreme sports.

We have plenty of photo books on our shelves and few of them tell of the real life of the mountains... so, among the shelves of a bookshop, you may happen to find a great classic... one that leaves us with a bitter taste of the mountains.

If on the one hand... “ the rhythm of mountain life is so slow and unchanging that, to the human gaze, its images become fixed in a marble stillness, and Mariutine knows that she could go away, come back, stay away for half her life, and on her return find everything unchanged... ” on the other hand, in the mountains a whole life can be concentrated into a few instants, into that infinitesimal fraction of time in which you find yourself "having to grow up" all of a sudden.

The death of a mother, as my good friend Alberto Pezzini wrote...

“Watching your mother die is an absolute pain, one that never forgives again. A stab to the heart, a fistful of pure death. A descent into hell in a few seconds. And then a wide sea of dark pain, a deafness you never get up from. A perpetual Golgotha”.  This is how the tragic coming of age of Mariutine, known to the world as Maria Zef, begins... with a dark pain that struggles to take shape... a pain that grips your guts as you read, a deep bite that will not leave us until the last inexorable conclusion, the last lashing line of the book.

This new face of the mountains has to be lived... even if only through the words of Paola Drigo.
“It is rare for the mountains to offer an image of serenity: more often their aspects offer a vision of violence and anguish, like a petrified torment, the drama of forms.”
A drama that plays out silently over time, digging arid furrows that the careless observer does not notice in the overall view of the mountain panorama. To discover that not everything is beauty in the mountains, it is enough to get closer and carefully observe the details of the landscape. Mariutine herself begins to age, her face grows thin, small wrinkles, the marks on her face and the change in her body clearly show the drama of a life, of that mountain life that is consumed between solitude and bitterness.

An astonishing book, dating from no less than 1936 and published by Treves in 1938. It seems written yesterday, it does not suffer at all from the passing of time, from cultural change. We would easily have placed it, even if only by mistake, in the closer post-war years. Topical, more topical than ever, a cry of horror against violence. Much more. A cry of refusal against violence on women, against discrimination, a cry of rebellion against sexism. A cry against old cultural edifices, perhaps demolished far too late... and some of which, alas... are still standing.

From the same publisher, read also Sotto le Rocce by Michela Piaia.