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I know that today's proposal is certainly not that fascinating and will be invisible to your tired and distracted eyes. I can already see you walking quickly with your fingers on the main road of the web while you're doing two or three other things at the same time. And you will slip away. Here we would need some big, beautiful lights, Las Vegas-style, to be clear! A pyrotechnic and slick intro that can somehow capture your attention, lead you elegantly to this page, and make you stay… But after 10 hours of work, I'm not exactly itching to try to build this intro, and then, come to think of it, what the hell do I care? A space for a few close ones is more than enough.
You see it like this, fleetingly at a relative's house, this straw-colored cover wedged between two important and heavy tomes and you don't pay attention. And so "Lingua di falce" is sold for a few bucks at the second-hand market under the house. And then someone like me comes along, discovering it on the streets of Genoa: as I usually do, I read the first pages and if something strikes me, I head to the checkout.
“Licking and re-licking the trough in a kind of obligatory rite, to remind others that he must be a similar master since dogs are at man's service. He frantically rubs his tongue over that now dry trough. He passes and re-passes it over the surface, rough and porous, even when there is nothing left. Indeed that is the most expressive part of the acquired rite for him. His command is born and reborn precisely from those empty licks on those hollows without fat or slobber: the tongue has the power to eliminate the possession marks left by the subordinates”.
Heading to the checkout.
The way in which it describes the power that perpetuates with the image of a dog, pack leader, desperately and obsessively licking an empty trough fascinated and captivated me, and I devoured the 180 pages in a handful of hours. Sentences that cut: they perfectly describe the revolt, the repressed anger, and finally the refusal of an already pre-packaged destiny. The struggle against the extreme difficulty of dismantling a condition of subservience towards one's parent and customs and traditions. Swimming against the current against the chatter, the expectations, and the perpetual immobility of a society stagnant for centuries. It is an autobiographical work and Gavino understands that the only way out of this dead end must be sought and he finds it in culture without, however, denying his origins because doing so would be like spitting in one's own face.
On one side of this book emerges the deep-rooted love for one's land, the wonderful and wild Sardinia, and the privileged relationship with nature and animals that his upbringing has “granted” him in an increasingly mechanical, impersonal, aseptic, ethereal, smoky world: simply false. Having toiled in the fields from a very young age allowed him to stay grounded and be a much fuller and more mature person compared to his dull and old peers from the city described as voluminous empty shells.
The book at the same time reveals a strong detachment from the centuries-old superstitions, folk remedies, and the culture steeped in submission to the master, the impossibility of making a critique or proposing an improvement. That's just how it is, period! His writing manages to render this dichotomy between two contrasting feelings with its sometimes delicate nature, then taking on the traits of a raging outburst, alternating between Sardinian language, Italian, dialogues, and more intimate and philosophical thoughts. I admit that at certain moments the reading can be difficult, but there is so much power and liveliness in these pages that the author struggled to contain it and in some cases has "overflowed".
Ledda believes in the compromise between the new and the old, between the pastoral and ancient civilization from which he comes and that of the modern world knocking insistently on the doors. We are in 1977, but this book is tremendously current and cannot leave you indifferent. At least I hope so.
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