July/August 2011
in-library use, Literature Division
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A Conversation with Dacia Maraini
Interview by Monica Seger
Following the performance of her play Mary Stuart at the University of Oklahoma this Spring, Dacia Maraini invited the director, Susan Shaughnessy, and the actresses who performed the roles of Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth, Anna Fearheiley and Emily Jackson, to perform the play at the Festival delle Due Rocche in Arona, Italy, in September 2011. Photo credit: Yousef Khanfar
"A renowned novelist, playwright, essayist, and social activist, Dacia Maraini is one of the most important voices in Italian culture today, just as she has been for the past many decades. In March of this year, Maraini visited the campus of the University of Oklahoma to meet with the OU community and attend a performance of her 1980 play Mary Stuart. We were lucky to have two days with her, discussing her craft as well as her thoughts on Italian society past and present. On the final afternoon of her visit, I had the opportunity to sit down with Maraini and ask about her rich career, her relationship to Italian society, and her most recent publication, La seduzione dell'altrove (The seduction of the elsewhere), a collection of reflective travel essays published by Rizzoli in 2010.
Monica Seger: Your first novel, La vacanza, was published in 1962, almost fifty years ago now (see Books Abroad, Summer 1962, 311). How would you say your writing has changed over time?
Dacia Maraini: Well, I think I'm rather faithful to myself. I haven't changed much, but certainly the world has changed around me. You have to deal with the mutability of the world, and so, as I consider myself a witness of my time, I have to speak about what I have in front of me, and those things are changing a lot. The world changes so quickly that you don't have time to adjust. I believe that I have a fidelity to my profound being and my profound style and way of looking at the world, and my way of dealing with the world outside..." continued