I couldn't begin to tell the story of Maria Bellonci's life without starting from the end: from the Strega Prize – her prize, which she established in 1947 – that was awarded to her posthumously in 1986 for Private Renaissance. The recognition, after over fifty years of writing, came when the driving force behind the award was no longer there: as if these two souls, one dedicated to literary imagination and historical research, the other to the promotion of other people's books, could not peacefully coexist within her.
But how to narrate the life of one who was a great writer, a woman who wielded real power in the literary field and at the same time was extremely protective of her private life? Maria did not leave behind a memoir and her diaries are too sporadic to consider her a reliable narrator of her experiences. However, we know that Private Renaissance arises from a real event: the memory of meeting a Canadian priest, dating back to nine years before she began working on the novel, allowed her to organize a vast material collected over time on Isabella d'Este, inspiring her to create the fictional character of Robert de la Pole.
From this premise, I explored the book, discovering numerous other correspondences with central points in her existence, and that the entire work can be read as a true autobiography narrated through an intervening historical character: the private novel of the author's life.
As Elsa Morante writes, “novels are more autobiographical than anything else that can be told about oneself.” Stefano Petrocchi
9:30 a.m. At the Vivaio, the key word is hospitality: we welcome and cultivate people, ideas, words. Given the time, we start chatting over breakfast. Coffee, tea, all the good things needed to start the day off right: cookies made with organic flours baked in a wood-fired oven, local yogurt and cheeses, fruit jams from the garden, and whatever the awakening and the season inspire (for example, chiffon).
12:30 p.m. a light lunch, greetings, and toasts. In between, conversations, questions, beautiful ideas. As much as you want.
