on ferrante

February 01, 2026

A few points I'm not sure Ferrante tried to make but I understood regardless:

[1] "Volitional strength" does not increase with age so much as "volitional complexity" does.

[2] Reminds me of my mom's stories about las colonias. From the basics (community units are families led by patriarchs) to particulars (the Lina / Melina friendship, fancy car as status symbol, loan-shark as resident, the names).

[3] The "respect for the interiority of self" that Lina possesses --- is this an authorial artifact? Faithful developmental description? Does it look like "respect" from the inside as well as the outside?

[4] Characters' relational generators flummox me.

[5] First fifty pages were the most intense reading experience of my life?