Hello,
Before the year ends, I wanted to share the book I loved most in 2019, and one of my favourite books of all time. The prose and content are a bit unconventional, so I’m not sure everyone will like it... but here it goes.
Happy holidays!
mariana
Why did I read this book?
I’m very lucky to be part of a small group of girlfriends who also love reading. There’s four of us and we get together as often as we can. This group is one of the biggest sources of joy in my life.
Last year, my friend Alejandra read The Art of Joy and recommended it to us. Her description and love for the book made me buy it straight away. However, when it arrived and I saw the size of the book and the cover, I decided to postpone reading it for a bit. For some strange reason, I assumed it was going to be some sort of non-fiction theoretical book. It was definitely not, things got intense from page 2.
If you decide to read it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I included too many quotes because I couldn’t bring myself to delete any of them.
What is the book about?
The Art of (finding) Joy (everywhere): Our main character has a rough start in life. Born in an underprivileged background, through her creativity and resilience, she manages to turn around her life and improve her circumstances. She starts developing a unique way of thinking and a particular way of finding joy in every aspect of her life.
Freedom: A fictional autobiography featuring an extraordinary character free from the social ties and stigmas of her time. A remarkable woman who went against it all, challenging dogmas and established moral codes in order to be free. The story of a woman who, through critical thinking, broke free from the strongest establishments of her time: the church, communism, fascism.
An incredible approach to motherhood and family: Modesta’s mindset, so unattached, free of prejudice, and full of lessons, led her to create a sui generis family structure. I found her relationship with motherhood, her children, and herself, incredibly healthy and refreshing.
“We decided many years ago that we would be different from all those families who pretend to love each other while instead, all they do is oppress one another.”
― Goliarda Sapienza, The Art Of Joy
Why should you read it?
A remarkable author: Goliarda Sapienza (which ironically means something along the lines of “joyful wisdom”) was born to a socialist anarchist family in Catania. As a result, her parents didn’t send her to school, since they wanted to make sure she was free of fascist influences. This book was written over a span of nine years! The author struggled to get her manuscript published while she was alive since the book was perceived as “immoral” and portraying feminine roles that were not accepted at the time. Her husband finally managed to get it published in 2005, nine years after Goliarda passed away.
A wonderful journey through Italy’s past and moral code: Through Modesta’s eyes, we can appreciate society’s way of thinking through the most relevant events in Sicily, Catania and Italy in the 20th century.
A timeless social critique: It’s always healthy to reassess what we believe in and why. This book is definitely not for everyone, and there’s a reason why it took so long for the world to be ready to publish it. It contains original passages of sexual discovery and an unheard-of way of living and seeing life at the time. Even though the book aims to criticise last century’s mainstream values, and many things that were unacceptable then are mostly OK today, I still think the narrative’s strength challenges today’s values and beliefs.
“By now I was beginning to understand the human animal, and I knew that any intent others have seems like madness to us if it is contrary to our wishes, while that which serves our purposes and leaves content with our way of thinking appears reasonable.”
― Goliarda Sapienza, The Art Of Joy
Links to buy the book
Amazon UK
Amazon MX
Pasta blanda ($679.52 MXN)
Amazon US
Paperback ($11.99 USD)
In Italian
L’arte della gioia - Kindle (£6.72)
L’arte della gioia - Hardcover (£8.49)
//As an Amazon Associate, I earn a commission from qualifying purchases via the above links.//
Favourite quotes
//The purpose of this section is to share some of my favourite book bits, so you can come back to them when you finish a book if you wish to do so. I’ve put in bold my favourite ones, in case you want to read a few (or all) ahead of the book.//
“Because affection, once it’s gone, doesn’t return.”
“So sorrow, humiliation and fear were not, as they said, a source of purification and beatitude. They were slimy thieves that took advantage of sleep to creep to your bedside in the night and rob you of the joy of being alive.”
“...it was necessary to study the emotions that others awaken in us, just as we study grammar or music.”
“The truth is that when you find the right woman or the right man, then it’s your duty to get to know one another. The body is a delicate instrument, more so than a guitar, and the more you study it and attune it to the other person, the more perfect the sound and the more intense the pleasure.”
“Fear, like destructive thoughts, is a hardy weed and you must uproot it from your body immediately.”
“Suddenly I knew what the thing called destiny was: the unconscious desire to continue what for years has been insinuated, imposed and repeated to us as being the only right path to follow.”
“I would no longer worry about death, that final destination which, once it’s no longer feared, makes each hour enjoyed to the fullest seem eternal.”
“The harm lies in the words which tradition presents as absolute, in the distorted meanings those words continue to hold. The word ‘love’ is a lie, just like the word ‘death’.”
“I found what all the poets know: that you can kill with words.”
“No, no, it’s just that my past doesn’t interest me. It’s only the present that counts.”
“Love is not a miracle, Carlo, it’s an art, a skill, a mental and physical exercise of the mind and of the senses like any other. Like playing an instrument, dancing or woodworking.”
“Having experienced disappointment myself over the end of a good thing, I began to understand. He no longer loved me either, but he couldn’t resign himself to having been the cause.”
“...the heart is a pocket, a huge basket that can hold everything. [...] When it breaks, it means that it’s carried enough burdens and pleasures.”
“Even if you’re aware of the years, youth calls you, and you’re driven to pursue it.”
“But you have to be careful, because feeling old makes you old.”
“It’s easy to afford the luxury of acting like a lamb, when nature has favoured you with being born a wolf.”
“Well, you can teach a lot of things: how to ride a horse, how to make love, but you can’t give your own experience to someone else. Each of us must gain his own, over the years, making mistakes, stopping, going back and starting all over again.”
“Love sucks you dry; it makes you like glass!”
“A person can run from anything if he learns to recognise what can harm him.”
“Things we can’t say fester inside us.”
“Youth is more astute than old age and knows how to use every means.”
“...childhood dreams should be cherished.”
“Like in the convent: laws, prisons, history erected by men. But it’s women who have agreed to be the keepers of the keys, uncompromising guardians of men’s words.”
“Remember when I told you that only women can help women, and you, with your masculine pride, didn’t understand? Now do you see? Now that you have a daughter, do you understand?”
“...the dead don’t want us to die with them. They want us to keep them alive, in our thoughts, in our voices, in our gestures.”
“Only later on, during the golden age of fifty, an age soundly vilified by poets and registry clerks - only then do you realise how much richness there is in the peaceful oases of being by yourself, alone. But that comes later.”
“What was I doing among those pens and pencils lined up on the desk? Or was it an altar? I had started it for pleasure… But looking within myself I saw my future: caught in that snare, legs broken by the trap of ‘being someone’.”
“When you make your children happy, they promptly return the happiness a hundredfold.”
“It’s no use squandering your energies on misguided fear. You just have to be wary…”
“What harm can there be in colours?”
“Since when have doctors been able to help someone who’s in love?”
“And whereas you described love as an illness, he actually says it’s a drug more powerful than religion.”
“Since she wants to be unreachable, let her go!”
“Now I understood how a perfect face can look ugly, just as an irregular face can seem beautiful. It’s the coherence that counts.”
“Unfortunately people lose each other, bambina! Life separates even those who are most alike. At times we are torn apart, déchirés, even from ourselves…”
“The dead are wrong if no one defends them after their death.”
“If we are denied the right to die, the pressure of living becomes an atrocious prison.”
“Every ten years we must re-read the books that shaped us if we want to understand anything.”
“Memory, as key to a new vision, now becomes the prime means of enabling a backward journey into the subterranean woods of seemingly forgotten memories. Brought to light, rearranges and cleansed of mould and incrustations, they reveal mosaics of glittering gems for the understanding of one’s own life and that of others.”
“That word, ‘love’, had an inevitability as certain as unalterable as birth and death, and you had to accept it, aware of not knowing why, when or how it came to be, or toward which bleak shores or green fields it might lead you.”
“I’m Tree, and I have the power to console, like all forms of greenery and stone. I belong to the race of those who stand and observe, not the human race, which fumes and frets, farts and knows no peace.”
“I watch the sun sink, yet night always takes me by surprise, as if the darkness were lurking there, waiting for the right moment to leap out.”
“To consider oneself indispensable to young, defenceless human beings, just because you feed them, is the most atrocious paternalism.”
“You’re right. It’s the mother in me that won’t allow me to recognise his intelligence simply because it’s different from mine.”
“What does that mean? When you love, it’s always for the first time.”
“Mistaking passion for a prison at the time, I fought you, rather than surrender to the rare sweetness of loving.”
“You expressed my thoughts perfectly. Words nourish us, and like food they should be carefully chosen before they are swallowed.”
“Nature doesn’t allow us to repair in an hour what we’ve done wrong for years.”
“Harbour an egoism so absolute that it kills those who aren’t strong enough to fend off the fury that constantly possesses us.”
“But at the first slight confrontation with reality you want to drag me into the panic that seizes you as it does all intellectuals at the sole idea of putting into practice the theories so often expounded.”
“And doesn’t Bambolina’s future, and Mela’s too, hinge on our thinking and the few battles that have been won? Or would you rather I teach them the convenient old practice of saying one thing and doing another?”
“...since I assume that all relationships are without a future, given that people change and as we change relationships grow stale for us, making us require fresh emotions… Come to think of it, in fact, maybe people age prematurely because they limit themselves to a few hallowed relationships and scenery that never changes.”
“As you can see, if you love someone, you can’t avoid being either sentimental or ridiculous.”
“All lengthy cohabitations create tensions.”
“Learn to question your feelings. War is not an adventure. Adventure is something an individual chooses, not something you’re forced to do.”
“There’s a precise limit to helping others. Beyond that limit, invisible to many, there is only a desire to impose one’s own way of being.”
“She’s not evil, she’s ignorant. Kindliness, not being cruel, is a luxury. The poor have no time to be kind. I was poor so I know it.”
“Each of us is the result of a unique past and of our upbringing.”
“...isn’t an absolute denial exactly the same as an absolute affirmation?”
“The best things can come to you out of the darkest corner where you never thought to look.”