Emma Fenu's "La Madre del Vento"

“La madre del vento”, by Emma Fenu, a writer I admire for her talent and lyricism — just think of the beautiful incipit, borrowed from the last words of her husband’s grandmother, “Hold my hand, Mother. Tonight I’m afraid” or, a little further on, the powerful “helichrysum wounded by the sun” — revolves around the figure of Dalida Nissei, a woman who ended up in a mental hospital because she was different, because she was unloved and because she was self-convinced that she was a bearer of death. Her mother Maddalena never loved her, on the contrary, she openly detested her, forcing her not to love herself.

Beautiful, delicate, wild — in a word, free — she was vilified and distanced from everyone. She has such an extreme sensitivity that it brings her into contact with the invisible, with the afterlife, with atmospheric agents, with premonitions. Too attractive not to be in league with the devil, her irises too light to belong to this world of ours, her love for the one who will become her husband, and who will hate her like everyone else, is too passionate.

The only one who would not have abhorred her, who would have loved her instinctively, is the one she was not able to know, the daughter she was not allowed to raise, Lucia, the second narrator of the story, who, in turn, can be connected to the devil but only in the Luciferian aspect, that is, as a bearer of light and knowledge.

Dalida and Lucia, mother and daughter, but also Dalida and Maddalena, Lucia’s grandmother. Three women through whom a curse of suffering is perpetuated that would have been avoidable. It would have been enough to interrupt the chain, to make different choices, like the one made in the end by Lucia. A choice that redeems, transfigures the sneer of madness into a smile of absolution and pacification at the point of death.

Fenu analyzes the concept of Motherhood in depth. Maddalena is a stepmother, evil, superstitious and selfish; Dalida is an unaware and denied mother; the Mother of the Wind is a protective mother, an ambiguous mythological entity that governs the sea and storms, that contains compassion and danger, calm waters and rough waters, which, after all, all mothers are a bit, not always as perfect as we prefer to imagine them.

This novel reminded me, by free association, of “At the Back of the North Wind”, by George Mc Donald. There too there is a different child, “a child of God”, brilliant but so candid as to appear retarded, who entrusts himself to an entity feared by all, but not by him, which is none other than Death itself.

A novel, this one by Fenu, mixed with ancient legends, reworked family stories, Jungian archetypes, unfulfilled desires, Sardinian traditions. Another confirmation, if ever there was any need, of the extraordinary storytelling abilities of this magnificent narrator.