The Masks of Success and the Facets of Love

„Now I know that there are many kinds of beauty, and this applies to places too, not just to people.” (Benedetta Cibrario)

With over thirty thousand copies sold right after it was published, but also thanks to the Campielo Award which it was awarded in 2008, Benedetta Cibrario’s debut novel „Ruby-Coloured Wormwood” („Rossovermiglio”, 2007) rapidly became one of the buzz books in Italy (being translated, in fact, into several foreign languages in the years that followed) and pushed the writer to the centre of the cultural scene in the Peninsula. Which is apparently a paradox, since, in the context of an age characterized by a propensity for the boldest narrative experimentation or for intendedly shocking topics, Benedetta Cibrario opted for a rather traditional narration, quite unassuming in terms of topic or relations between characters but which, in spite of these – or for all of these! – equally wins over and convinces its readers. For „Ruby-Coloured Wormwood” tells a story which in fact we all know from a plethora of older or latter-day novels. But she tells it with outstanding charm and sense of place and atmosphere, while simultaneously mastering to perfection the technique of the point of view and the permanent wavering between temporal instances, with episodes from the past exquisitely blending with present ones.

It all begins in 1928, when a young aristocratic girl from Turin is confronted by her father with a situation she has not anticipated: she must choose a husband from a list of five suitors. These are men whom she knows quite vaguely and by whom she is, however, not in the least attracted, as one is too old, another one is too rich and so on… Reluctantly, but also without even considering a refusal, she chooses Francesco Villaforesta, with whom she thinks she will share, if not feelings (let alone love!), at least her love of horses. So that, before she turns twenty, she is already married to a man of good birth with a considerable fortune, but whom she does not love or even know and whom, alas, she will never even try to truly get to know beyond the surface. But, while the couple are on their honeymoon in Paris, the young woman meets Trott, an enigmatic (and married) man, to whom she is attracted and whom she cannot forget. After a while, they meet again in Turin and their meeting leads to the gradual break-up of the young Villaforesta family. The woman takes flight far from the city, settling at Bandita, near Sienna, where, despite the general opinion, not only does she survive and make herself respected by the villagers, but she also starts producing wines of exceptional quality – hence the title of the novel, as Rossovermiglio is the name of a remarkable type of wine, a ruby-coloured wormwood ‘the colour of the Moon in certain clear nights.’ It is also here that she starts living her love story with Trott, but her partner will always remain veiled in mystery, lonesome and quiet, keeping to himself lots of secrets that will eventually make their relationship split apart.

Apart from all these incidents that impact on the protagonist’s life, Benedetta Cibrario sets up an outstanding, all-encompassing background for momentous historical events, as „Ruby-Coloured Wormwood” covers a highly complex – more often than not highly complicated – period in the history of twentieth-century Italy and Europe. A time in which everything changed completely and none of the things that the beautiful protagonist had been taught, since her childhood and adolescence, to take for granted, would remain the same. Now, the aristocrats of Turin and northern Italy are forced to face changes that imperceptibly take the counts and dukes out of their sheltered everyday leisure, confronting them at first with the rise of Fascism and of Mussolini’s bands and then with the disaster, the suffering and the privation of World War II, immediately followed by the Referendum of 1946, whereby Italy would become a Republic. Large fortunes, which used to be bequeathed to the next generation or, on the contrary, lost in gambling before the War, would now often be lost overnight because of inflation, unpaid debts or because of their owners’ inability to manage them in a world no longer working by the rules of the previous decades. Symbolically, an entire nation’s desire for rebirth encompasses and articulates that of a woman determined to make her way in a world of social conventions and in a field – viticulture – traditionally reserved exclusively to men. The Bandita winery becomes hugely successful, the wines made here gain universal recognition, but, beyond her success in business, the protagonist of Benedetta Cibrario’s novel hides huge failures, as her life is defined by constant loneliness, by an unfulfilled need for communication and by her desire to know that she is loved for what she is, not for what others would like to see her turn into. And if, in her youth years she used to live under the impression that she was defying the rigors of a patriarchal society, in time, she has fathomed that this was, by and large, a mere illusion fostered by Trott, the selfish lothario. And, more than half a century after she settled in Bandita, this woman, who has now reached old age, decides to throw a party, a last supper that will bring back together, in her house, the people she has cared for or felt close to from the very beginning. Including Trott.

But, in an absolutely unexpected turnaround of events, this will be the moment when many masks will fall and when what she has so far regarded as a clear-cut border between appearance and essence, illusion and reality, truth and lie will dissipate all at once. Trott turns out to be completely different than she has thought (more precisely, hoped), while Francesco Villaforesta, who has also arrived at Bandita and whom she meets again after many years, proves to be capable not only of understanding the feelings his wife nurtured in her youth, but also of – however belatedly – bringing her solace, which happens, however, after the painful revelation of the lies that have tagged her along all of her life, as if she had been blessed with a curse. Francesco’s letters, which she comes across in an unexpected moment, change not only the protagonist’s view of her own life, but also of the world she lives in, making her, perhaps for the first time, aware of the dangers to which she has exposed herself. And at the same time she understands now, when it is already much too late, the true nature of the feelings that the apparently cynical and blasé Villaforesta has nurtured for her his entire life: ‘I thought I was a rational, intelligent woman, capable of judging those around her correctly. I could have known it a long time ago. I could have realized it in Turin, in 1928 and then in Paris, a few days later, hadn’t the anguish and fear which that marriage had bestowed upon me blinded and deafened me. And then I met Trott and I saw nothing else.’

Written in the first person, marked by flash-backs that refine or, on the contrary, sometimes complicate the narration, this story, depicting the failure of a marriage and the success of a business, enjoys the advantages –and equally so the challenges – of the varying perspectives on the events, depending on the moment in which the protagonist narrates them. The novel highlights the contrast between two ages, two ways of life and two worlds – pre- and post-War, Royalist and Republican, addressing issues such as routine and non-conformism, courage and cowardice, indifference and engagement. A difficult moment in the history of Italy, a turning point in many ways – it was then, for instance, that women became (and felt) protagonists, rather than mere witnesses, of history, be it solely an intimate one, hence the urge to take upon themselves the choices that they made and, as the case may be, their successes or failures. Like so many women of those years and decades, the protagonist of this novel creates, by an act of recollection, a personal history made up of hopes and regrets, aspirations and loss, all of which she musters her courage to analyse in detail. Ill at ease in the high-life drawing-rooms, she feels alive only at Bandita, where she takes refuge in work and genuinely breathes in tune with the seasons, with the earth which she loves as if it were a human being and with good wine-making. Convinced that she has always made her own decisions and that she has mastered her life, the protagonist will understand only at the end that she, too, has been a puppet at the hands of fate and especially at the hands of the people around her, whom she has unfortunately never managed to fully understand. It is by means of certain touches or of details suggestive of Luigi Pirandello’s best writings that Benedetta Cibrario’s outstanding debut novel makes a stand, telling a story that is utterly impressive in its apparent simplicity, utterly appealing and illustrative not only of the tormented decades of Post-War Italy, but also – if we read between the lines – of the world we live in.

Benedetta Cibrario, „Ruby-Coloured Wormwood”/ „Pelin rubiniu” („Rossovermiglio”), translated into Romanian by Gabriela Lungu, Casa Cãrții de Ştiințã, Cluj-Napoca, 2021

Translated into English by Mirela Petrașcu