Abstract
Performing oneself
Carla Lonzi was attracted by theatre through her entire life, sometimes in a very discreet way, yet always profoundly. The appeal of the performing arts can be found in her younger years, as shown by her master’s dissertation (Lonzi, 1996), and it is maintained until her very last production. And indeed her path runs from its beginning to the end in the name of performance, of which Lonzi highlights not the artificiality, but rather its capacity to reveal the truth. Her interest is focused precisely on the capacity of theatrical dialogues to unavoidably recall gained experience. Aiming to understand the group and the experience of the Précieuses – women who lived hundred years before her and who, despite dating back to the 17th century, seemed to be very close to her experience as a feminist – Lonzi begun reading Molière’s pièces about them: I turned towards theatre because I realized that theatre was staging real life experiences. … I understood that theatre has to reproduce life. (Lonzi, 1992: 30)
Her trust in mise en scène had already been clearly demonstrated with Autoritratto (Lonzi, 1969), a revolutionary example of art criticism based on dialogue with the artists, which abolishes the traditional role of the art critic (see Conte et al., 2011). Lonzi converses with artists and those conversations, recorded and remastered by the author in a way which recalls a film, reproduce an experience of life, close to the rhythm and the manners of theatrical dialogue. Years later, Lonzi opted once again for dialogue format to convey feeling of truth and real life in Vai pure (Lonzi, 1980), a work in which she describes the dynamics of a breach between an heterosexual couple, speaking first of all about herself and her relationship with Pietro Consagra and depicting their tense and unrelenting confrontation. It constitutes a: Reflection on a relationship and the incompatibilities between two human beings who represent two cultures: the culture of women … and the culture of men … . It can be seen as a gesture which breaks the code of silence within the couple. (Lonzi, 1980: 5)
The conversation is recorded and transcribed, and ends with her conclusive words, which also constitute the title of the volume: ‘You Can Go Now’ (Lonzi, 1980: 144). The work begins with a histrionic yet genuine caption, which defines the place and time of this harsh conversation, spanning four days. Lonzi does not use the performative structure of dialogue as a ‘bag of tricks’, as repetition (Théatron); rather she exploits it, aiming at the opposite, a representation of events (Drama), in which the pure truth of words and gained experience becomes a collective value, embraceable, and profoundly individual. The entire work (and life) of Carla Lonzi is based on her conviction that dialogue is shaped by authenticity when the ‘I’ is performing. This is especially evident in her diary, Taci, anzi parla (Lonzi, 1978), which could not have been conceived in any other format than dialogue, as Carla calls upon the women of Rivolta Femminile to take part in the conversation. The diary structure shows how the author controls the representation, her determination to stress some details more than others, the choice she makes about what is worth being said and what is not. Taci, anzi parla reveals itself as a radical political action which remains unique and individual, yet calls for collective thinking and activity. The unexpected subject of the diary (see Lonzi, 1974: 54), a new woman who has discovered and recognized herself through her similarity to another woman, steps into the performance of the masculine, into the world and into History, and then proceeds to upset and crush it. As it is, the diary is an eccentric object, which modifies the border between private and public life and defies any literal or classical definition, revealing itself as writing based on consciousness-raising. Lonzi’s diary is indeed a text which represents a process of introspection and ‘remains faithful to the two main principles of consciousness-raising: begin the process by speaking about yourself and addressing another woman’ (Boccia, 1990: 8). In Taci, anzi parla reflection overlaps with real life and strongly recalls theatrical dialogue’s structure, by continuously turning to the inner self as a way to open up to the world. Thus comes the drive towards a tabula rasa, the desire to wipe out all former identities with a masquerade, theatrically, like the game life can be. She writes in the form of poetic fragments, interlacing thoughts and diverse materials to compose the diary: Twenty years ago I was a University student / fifteen years ago I was a Bachelor of Arts / ten years ago I was an art writer and friend of artists / two years ago I was a feminist … Now / I am nothing, absolutely nothing. (Lonzi, 1978: 200) How nice to be / what we are / even if it is / little very little / nothing. (Lonzi, 1978: 580)
The void, the non-identity where all masks have disappeared, is tragic and promising at the same time: it is a new stage on which the subject can at last identify herself. Lonzi can now get rid of it all: Enough with the prophetical phase, daughter to myself and ally to every woman, John the Baptist of feminism, almost in a desert, a brand in people’s mind – ‘Lonzi’ – never a human being – ‘la Carla’. That is what I want to be, ‘la Carla’. (Lonzi, 1978: 1255)
In the diary’s 1300 pages, it is ‘la Carla’ who leads the dialogue, who dares to look beyond comforting and gratifying appearances. What is left is an unassailable character who refuses any kind of identity mask, any kind of categorization. ‘La Carla’ denies herself as a model, an exemplum, while she opens up to intuition, to the kind of knowledge which alerts the senses, which does not forget the body, considering it, on the contrary, central to every tension or conflict. Intuition is the key to this essay, which begins with theatre and proceeds to cinema, is both present and yet marginal in Taci, anzi parla, as it attempts to capture the thoughts which build ‘la Carla’s’ character.
She spectator: A creative gaze
In Taci, anzi parla Lonzi’s reflections on cinema and films reach far deeper and inspire very articulate observations. While reflecting on her personal relationships and those represented in fiction, Lonzi investigates further and tests her way of thinking through the screen’s mirror, mixing experience and narrative to create an original plot, where characters and situations represented in films participate to her consciousness-raising introspection. While observing the relationship between ex-torturer and ex-victim, in Il portiere di notte (Liliana Cavani, 1974), Lonzi understands ‘something which is true and successful in a couple’ (Lonzi, 1978: 768). With no reticence, she investigates the dynamics of sadomasochist relationships, which she considers rooted in unconditioned and total trust, capable of reaching beyond appearances, of forcing love through threats, punches, pain, in order to achieve the opposite, an unprecedented tenderness: The ‘cruel’ foreplay obviously … preludes and enables love’s revelation, through kisses, caresses, hugs, coitus. (Lonzi, 1978: 768)
From screen to life, Lonzi never abandons her beloved themes. She reflects on sexuality as the origin of female defeat, symbol of the denial of women as subjects, yet she enriches her position, compared to intuitions described in previous texts (cf. Lonzi, 1974), with the deeply rooted predilection for starting from her own existence as it reverberates in film.
This drive to look deeper can be found in Taci, anzi parla when she describes films which offer many analytical cues and reminders, transporting her far into fiction and at the same time recalling her to herself. In her diary some movies engender original and extravagant reflections, as happened with Il fiore delle mille e una notte (1974), a film which obliges her to once again reflect upon Pier Paolo Pasolini and the brotherly relationship she imagined having had with him. Carla writes a long letter to Pasolini, based on her reflections on his films, in which she investigates the connection between guilt and innocence, unhappiness and conscience: I have myself been tempted to inquire and point at the grace some categories of people seem to have: saints, artists, poets, uncivilized humans, and finally women. … In your film the eyes of characters represented by Arabs or Africans are ‘innocent’ … . As soon as Davoli appears on scene, the rift is noticeable: unity has disappeared, replaced by duplicity … he belongs to our race, seized by nostalgia. (Lonzi, 1978: 769–770)
Lonzi’s creativity as a spectator is witnessed by the conclusive words of her letter. Nothing is passive or automatic in the way she watches the film; on the contrary, audiovisual images pierce her way of thinking and provide inspiration and echoes, enable her to focus on and recognize, elsewhere, the same reflections and conclusions operated by her mind: You cannot imagine what a sinister effect all the happy laughs which populate the film’s soundtrack had on me. I can still feel them on my lips, the lips of a woman who had been assigned the duty of being happy … . Now that I am aware that I have the right to unhappiness, as this is self-consciousness, I have finally discovered the path to happiness. (Lonzi, 1978: 770)
Lonzi establishes a weird relationship with Pasolini, remote and unilateral; he appears to be the addressee of some of the diary’s letters and a potential interlocutor since he criticizes patriarchy in the first person, with his own body and sexuality; he is also one of the fantastic characters populating Carla’s dreams. Among the letters published in Taci, anzi parla, Lonzi actually only sent Pasolini the one written in January 1975 (Lonzi, 1978: 461–462), centred on the dispute about abortion in which Pasolini took a position which was close to the libertarian one expressed by Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi never received a reply, and the thought of that letter, the lack of that dialogue, reappears in the diary’s pages even after the writer’s death. And it was another film, Il ferroviere (Pietro Germi, 1956), that she absent-mindedly watched on TV, which pushed her to reflect on that letter: The film itself seemed to criticize me, telling me that I am illogical, weird; that I do crazy things, such as writing a letter full of fondness to somebody I do not know, a cultural star, already quite narcissist and cuddled by his entourage. (Lonzi, 1978: 928)
Having dreamt of getting close to Pasolini – ‘he is like me, he calls for attention as much as I do’ (Lonzi, 1978: 928) – becomes source of disillusion when the writer’s reply does not arrive: ‘I ask myself, what have I in common with Pasolini. … this man excludes me, he does not even realize I exist, I do not belong to his world’ (Lonzi, 1978: 1127). After the poet’s tragic passing, with painful lucidity Lonzi concludes: ‘Yet I know you were a person who deserves love without any sexual distinction. … Those who could be brothers are unattainable in their loneliness. They mistrust us’ (Lonzi, 1978: 1150–1151).
An uncommon and creative spectator, Lonzi is open and attentive towards films, ready to seize any opportunity for authentic exchange with her inner self and with the rest of the world, as the relationship with Pasolini shows.
Cinema, poetry and authenticity
Beside theatre and some other projects, Carla dreams of her ‘re-birth’ through cinema: ‘I need some thrills. I want to work, work in cinema. … I would like to make a film’ (Lonzi, 1978: 742), she writes to a friend. But if it never becomes a profession, cinematographic language fascinates Lonzi, who approaches it thanks to new technologies, such as the light and easy-to-use home movie cameras. Indeed through the domestic practice of cinema, Carla conceives and realizes several home films, which are not accessible for the moment. With the Super8 camera she plans to shoot short movies describing women’s invisible work, their unrecognized and unappraised gestures ‘which provide sustenance to humankind: doing the dishes, taking care of the young and the sick … . Title: “Feminine Culture for the Sustenance of Humankind” ’ (Lonzi, 1978: 763). These are very concrete and at the same time poetic actions: ‘gestures which do not produce money, only good care. Gestures like the acrobats’ ones, in the air and made of air. On these gestures which remain unattended our life is based’ (Lonzi, 1978: 767). Film’s tape appears as an accessible space capable of reproducing the tiniest and most hidden folds in women’s existences. For this reason, Lonzi thinks of turning the camera towards herself, seizing the opportunities offered by not having any cultural mediation and by her own naivety when behind the lens: ‘I feel like a virgin with this instrument, I can express sensations ex novo’ (Lonzi, 1978: 357). In the camera’s responsive gaze Lonzi recognizes a chance to show her most intimate side, confronting the painful misunderstanding she experienced with her writings as well as in her consciousness-raising group: The first thought I had when I imagined a film about myself was that of an overwhelming cry, when Sara made me realize that shooting a film is possible … I was taken by her enthusiasm and was about to film myself. – An overwhelming cry, endless, with all the faces, the handkerchief, etc., a cry of freedom, nothing else. (Lonzi, 1978: 356–357)
She almost instinctively chooses to represent herself while crying, a sort of cry which is true and false at the same time: an act of consciousness and self-revelation which includes body and emotions. While facing a totally new language, far from safe and familiar shores of written words, Lonzi intends to uncover herself, to lay bare of all the certainties and inflexibilities of a theoretical approach, diving into cinema without being a film maker in the same way as she had dived into poetry without being a poet. With cinema as well as with poetry, ‘la Carla’ chooses not to fall within any aesthetic, artistic or representative code. In her poems (Lonzi, 1985) she experiments with herself feeling ‘without content, without arguments’ and the inescapable ‘experience of fitting’ (Lonzi, 1978: 117) with herself. For this reason she obstinately submitted her notebook to her female friends, hoping to obtain resonance. With similar intentions she showed them her copious cry’s film, with its sense of ‘catastrophe which has no reason to be, yet’ (Lonzi, 1978: 637); she was probably hoping that where words had failed, the silent and truthful impact of moving images would be given attention. This is what happens sometimes because the cry provokes emotions and affinity; but in other situations the short film engenders perplexity and refusal (Lonzi, 1978: 690). Following the destiny of her poetic words, filming, which represents continuity and further enquiry into subjectivity, seems to be heading towards communicative failure. The shade of incomprehension is certainly always lurking, however it cannot restrain the need to share individual authenticity with the collective one, as this would sacrifice in the name of a false decency those moments of circularity, of sharing, which have proved to be decisive and un-deferrable in feminist practice. Laying bare and transformed into celluloid, Lonzi offers herself to the female gaze: she literally puts herself into women’s hands, suffering and yet abandoning herself, still full of hope. The hidden sequence of this painful cry shimmers ghost-like, unassailable, emerging from the pages of Taci, anzi parla with the intensity of the image Lonzi discovered in the hitherto unfamiliar language of the cinema.