Breaking the mold of traditional introductions, Sumana Roy and Matteo Trevisani, editors of Bridge of Stories, engage in a candid conversation delving deep into the editorial choices that shape their unique literary landscape.
Here is the complete introduction/conversation:
Sumana:
I am looking at the etymology of the word “bridge”. I discover that the original notion involved a log laid down for crossing. Naming is a retrospective gesture, even when it involves the naming of someone or something that is due to arrive. I am thinking of the title of this anthology that you now hold in your hands. Bridge of Stories. The phrase came from Francesca Amendola, who, with Andrea Baldi, is responsible for this, both the bridge and the stories.
Nearly a couple of years later since his first email to me, and since our first Zoom conversation, I still remember Andrea’s enthusiasm. It was contagious, a word I’m less scared of using now than I was then, living as we were, amid the curse of contagion of the pandemic. To counter this sense of isolation, the forced separation of people, of countries and continents, as borders began to be sealed, the need for a bridge must have arisen inside Andrea and Francesca’s minds. What was the way to establish contact? For this they turned to the oldest metaphorical bridge we know: stories.
Matteo:
When Andrea Baldi and Francesca Amendola first told us about the project they had in mind, I thought it was a leap of faith. We asked twelve Italian and Indian debut writers for a short story, with plans to make it a bilingual publication. The writers all had to be first-time writers and never published before—that was to be the only criterion. The stories would have no forced commonalities, the authors must not know each other (but they would get to), their ages were to be different and so too their approaches to reading and writing. This project would be called Bridge of Stories, a bridge between two countries, Italy and India, which would allow the passage of knowledge, the multiplication of possibilities. What Sumana Roy, my Indian counterpart, and I would find in those stories, and whether we would be able to steer the ship in port, was all to be discovered. Where I live, in Rome, bridges are important; they have a special symbolism. The spiritual leader of the Romans was the pontifex, the bridge builder, because he was able to connect two sides of reality, make a passage a sacred passage. Every bridge is, in essence, an initiation, and to understand it to its fullest extent we can only cross it.
So Bridge of Stories began as an attempt to connect two parts of the world that until recently did not know each other. After identifying and choosing participants, we let them write, let them get to know each other, and then we waited, letting something to be generated, something germinate. I’m going to jump forward and then come right back. We are all in Mumbai, in the Somaya School lecture hall, and the presentation of the project has just begun. Twelve people, including the writers, are sitting in a semicircle on the small stage, smiling at each other, talking about their stories, and it seems to me that everything fits together perfectly, as if they have known each other for years. The night before, in Delhi, after their debut, they had dinner together and talked about books, their lives, exchanged invitations and book titles and invited each other, hoped to meet again, almost already cultivating nostalgia for something they had not finished living. We put the last brick of the bridge in those days, and all their stories arranged themselves to support it.
Sumana:
Since it was impossible to have diverse linguistic cultures and literary traditions of the Indian subcontinent reflected in the limited scope of this anthology, I decided to turn to those whose writing had stayed with me, whether from the classroom or from social media. The Indian writers, as Matteo was quick to note, write about the circumstances of their lives—it is autofiction for all purposes, except that the impulse in them is not to document their lives with rigour but to watch and record other moving creatures, including shadows, which share their world. Whether it’s Kashmir or the taut space inside a house, we feel the pellets of violence puncture us as we read. Since this was an anthology necessitated by Covid-enforced lockdown, there are stories about its impact on the survivors (all of us are, in this sense, survivors, those who have written these stories, and those of us who are reading them), one written by a doctor, another in the domestic space. Home, the city and the village; homecoming, both return and refrain. We find their mormorio in these stories. In the stories by the Italian writers, I discovered, with delight and curiosity, the acrobatics of the human imagination, its changing tastes, including sourness, and the risky abandon of the artist, the joyous risks that make creation possible.
Matteo:
It has now become an accomplished work, a real book, which for each of them is their first publication, their debut on paper, one of the most important moments in their lives as authors. I am delighted and admired by the work they have done: Filippo Ferraresi, and his dreamlike story between children and Brazilian filmmakers, Ilaria Gradassi and her dreamy black fable, Flavio Natale and the road that runs between and (perhaps) leads to the end of oneself, Eleonora Daniel with her myths and mothers, Sharon Vanoli’s intimate and incredible voice, and finally Francesco Quaranta’s drunken adventures and on the road. To all of them I want to say thank you. They gave their best in the little time they had and they did it with joy. I am convinced that all of them will be the authors, in the near future, of some of the most beautiful books we will read in Italy.
At the same time, getting to know the Indian writers has been a blessing. Their stories, chosen and edited by Sumana Roy, are dazzling. I think of Muddasir Ramzan recounting the tragedy of war in his Kashmir, Vighnesh Hampapura and his priestless altar, Abhijit Khandkar’s explosive voice, the tragic sweetness of Rakhi Dalal’s tale, Madhurima Vidyarthi’s homecoming, and Suhasini Patni’s taste of things not forgotten. To witness the creation of these stories and to see them mixed with those of the Italian authors was ultimately to witness the final experimentation of a work that began almost two years. Two years of emails and video conferences, during which we tried to imagine together what it would be, repeating to each other a thousand times the beauty of this idea. For me it was like coming home, and realising that in literature there is a citizenship, a nation, in which I recognise the streets and the names of things, even if they were written in a language other than my own.
Sumana spoke often about this aspect in the project, making her depth in reading reality available to everyone. The stories are very different from each other, it is true, but taken in their nationalities of origin some differences stand out more than others. While the Indian stories are rooted in reality, talking about real things, about personal or national tragedies, and minimal experiences, about kitchens and temples, and returning home, and have everyday objects and words and voices, the stories of the Italian authors and authors have a disconnect from reality that was hard to predict at first: their stories have a tension toward something less defined and less definable, in the most obvious cases (I am thinking of Eleonora’s, Ilaria’s, and Flavio’s stories) as well as in those where this tension appears to be more hidden, below the surface.
Everywhere there is the allusion to something else, to something beyond the protagonists that is not immediately identifiable. I believe that in this, the more realist narrative of the Italians, that of Francesco, and the more imaginative narrative of the Indians, that of Madhurima, can be used as picks or ciphers for understanding the project, which must in any case be seen as a whole. Sumana, during the presentations and panels, proposed solutions to think about this strange “collection”: India is a young nation, in spite of its millennia-old culture, which has within it many cultures and languages. This literary youthfulness coupled with the English given by colonisation may influence the imagery of writers. I do not know enough about India to say if she is right and therefore I believe her, but I do know that the Italians wrote in their native language and then were translated, and the Indian writers wrote in English. Already in this hiatus is much of what should be talked about in the future, and many of the questions that this project leaves as a legacy to those who will come after, to you who read, to us who write.
All my gratitude goes to the director of the Italian Institute of Culture in New Delhi, Andrea Baldi, and her counterpart in Mumbai, Francesca Amendola: their hard work, commitment, vision and generosity have been phenomenal guides on this journey. I guess that’s how the work they do should be done, and I’m glad to know they are back at work.
As for us, Sumana and me leave you with this book of stories. Read it as you cross bridges, arriving on the other side a little different.
~
Bridge of Stories is available here.
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