Penultimate meeting of the seventh edition of the Reading Group "The Garden"
"The University of Rebibbia" by Goliarda Sapienza.
Reading and commentary by Lucia Bruni
The work:
To write his masterpiece novel "The Art of Joy." Goliarda Sapienza reduced herself to absolute poverty and even went to jail for stealing a handful of jewelry. And that literary frisson for which she was willing to desperate ung esto is maintained in these pages, in which she recounts her imprisonment in Rebibbia, a school of life, a real university that teaches, without illusions and the hypocrisies of ordinary life, the hard and authentic dimension of human coexistence. But in that cold and ruthless universe, Goliarda also discovers what solidarity, warmth, friendship, and spontaneity mean, impossible in the world outside where one is less free and less safe. A free and nonconformist intellectual, Goliarda Sapienza offers us, with a lucid and penetrating gaze, a surprising glimpse that overturns all our stereotypes about an unknown reality and for this reason so revealing.
Author:
Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996) was born in Catania to a revolutionary socialist family. From the age of sixteen she lived in Rome, where she studied at the Academy of Dramatic Art. In the 1950s and 1960s she acted as a theater and film actress, working with Luchino Visconti (in Senso), Alessandro Blasetti and Citto Maselli, among others. Her first novel, Lettera aperta (1967), was followed by Il filo di mezzogiorno (1969), L'università di Rebibbia (1983), La certezza del dubbio (1987), and, posthumously, L'arte della gioia (1998), the short stories of Destino coatto (2002), I, Jean Gabin (2010), The Vice of Talking to Myself (2011), My Share of Joy (2013), the poems of Ancestral (2013), In Praise of the Bar (2014), Three Pièces (2014) and Appointment in Positano (2015). The Goliarda Sapienza Literary Prize "Tales from Prison" was established in her name.
Texts and event by The Garden Social Center