Clara Sereni and the transition of a ‘last-minute’ figure

When Einaudi published Clara Sereni’s “Casalinghitudine” in 1987, the book swept the female readership off its feet as a new feminist banner. It did, of course, contain recipes, with precise instructions on quantities, herbs and cooking times. But it was also an exploration of a woman’s life, of a generation – that of ’68 – and of a special family: that of Emilio Sereni, the partisan, politician, essayist and member of the Constituent Assembly. In that novel there was a curious, new continuity between food and history, food and life. And now that book – which remains significant not least for the originality of its structure – returns from La Tartaruga with an illuminating afterword by Benedetta Centovalli, who explains its importance and its painful background. The publishing house’s director, Claudia Durastanti – who is considerably younger than Clara – has penned a brief introduction, in which she highlights not so much the ‘political’ implications of the work, but rather its ‘ideal and practical writing style, characterised by restraint but also by eccentric, almost unexpected sleight of hand’. It is also amusing to read the hope expressed by Sereni herself in a 2015 note appended to this reprint, recalling that the few male readers she spoke to confessed to having ‘obviously’ skipped the recipes: ‘Now that this book has become a minor classic, perhaps the men will read the recipes too. Or will they not?’. Let us hope so, because this is a novel that has gained even greater depth over time and tackles major themes whilst raising topical questions. Incidentally, Sereni would have turned eighty this year.

She was born on 28 August 1946 – the year in which Italian women won the right to vote – and passed away in July 2018, having freely chosen to end her life in Zurich due to an illness that had become unbearable. Courageous and determined from start to finish, she will be honoured at two conferences, strongly championed by her friend, the writer Francesca Silvestri – with whom she shared the experience of running the publishing house Ali&no – one on 8 October in the Sala dei Notari in Perugia, the city where she lived her entire life after being born in Rome and where she served as deputy mayor, and the other in Rome the following day in the Sala della Protomoteca on the Capitoline Hill.

Many figures from the cultural and political world will be paying tribute to her, from Dacia Maraini to Filippo La Porta, from Benedetta Tobagi to Livia Turco, to Silvia Calamandrei and many others. The literary prize named after her will also be awarded at the same time. In "Taccuino di un’ultimista" (Feltrinelli, 1998), she painted this self-portrait: “Jewish by choice rather than by fate, a woman not merely on paper, an expert on disabilities and weaknesses like anyone who has experienced them, a utopian like those who, whilst rooted in what exists here and now and without shying away from engaging with everyday reality, nurture the need to give themselves a breath of fresh air and a passion anchored in the future”. For her, literature was never merely fiction or memoir, but a way of making her voice heard in society. And she did not confine herself to writing and speaking; she was the sort to roll up her sleeves and get down to practical work, leaving her mark in various fields. The mark of an ‘ultimist’, in fact – that is, someone who stands firmly on the side of the least among us.