Meeting in Positano by Goliarda Sapienza (tr. Brian Robert Moore)

This is such a gorgeous novel, as luminous as a hazy summer’s day, shimmering with beauty and sensuality. Its author, the Italian actress and writer Goliarda Sapienza, started her career in theatre and film, working with Luchino Visconti among others in the 1940s and ’50s. Moreover, it was a film that first brought Sapienza to Positano, the magical Italian village on the Amalfi Coast, which she viewed as her spiritual home. In his excellent afterword to the novel, Sapienza’s husband, Angelo Pellegrino, conveys the history behind Meeting in Positano and his wife’s relationship with the region, offering us a window into the past. The novel was written in 1984 but failed to secure an Italian publisher until 2015, nearly twenty years after Sapienza’s death. All credit then to Other Press for issuing this radiant translation by Brian Robert Moore – it really is a very evocative read.

The novel, which is narrated by a young woman named Goliarda, has a semi-autobiographical feel, tapping into Sapienza’s world of 1950s Italy. During a visit to Positano, while scouting for locations for a film, Goliarda glimpses a beautiful woman, flitting around the café bars and restaurants of the village, holding onlookers in her sway. The woman in question is Erica Beneventano, known locally as ‘Princess Erica’, a charming widow from a (once) very wealthy family. While Goliarda doesn’t meet Erica in person during the trip, she remains captivated by this vision of loveliness, like a destiny she is yet to meet.

…that curious creature whom everyone in Positano loved—something already rare in and of itself—always fluttered at the edges of my imagination, like a meeting that I could not miss. (p. 15)

Sometime later, when Goliarda returns to Positano for a break, she comes across Erica on the beach, sparking a friendship that ultimately lasts for several years. Following their chance encounter on the beach, Erica invites Goliarda to her house—a luxurious mansion with a secret bolt-hole—where the two women talk about culture, politics and art, the latter being a topic particularly close to Erica’s heart. Unsurprisingly, Goliarda is enchanted by her intelligent companion, leading to an intimate (although not explicitly sexual) bond between the two women.

Like that sunset or Giacomino’s personality, she too is eternal—with her timeless gesturing, her melancholy as old as the world itself. Or her beauty, which every hour is renewed and changes its appearance: sometimes a slightly withered flower, sometimes a soft cloud, or—as it is now—a beautiful, colourful orange, pulsing with a joy for life. (p. 78)

During their discussions, Erica shares with Goliarda the story of her rather eventful life, with Sapienza skilfully shifting her focus from one central character to another as the novel unfolds. Erica, it seems, is the middle sister of the Beneventano family, whose wealth and land were lost by the men of her father’s generation. Rewinding to the time of their parents’ deaths, we find the sisters have been left virtually penniless, necessitating their move to a small apartment in Milan, where Erica and her older sister Fiore must work to earn a living. Tragedy strikes when Fiore commits suicide, no longer able to cope with the narrowness of her life. It’s a development that acts as a clarifying filter for Erica, revealing the misguided nature of their previous highly privileged lives, cocooned from the realities of the outside world.

A reconciliation between Erica and her estranged Uncle Alessandro swiftly follows, ultimately resulting in her marriage to Alessandro’s business associate, Leopoldo; not out of love but for financial security, leaving Erica’s younger sister, Olivia, free to marry for more romantic reasons.

Erica reveals her previous experiences of love as largely unhappy ones, highlighting her marriage to Leopoldo as a prime example of this emotional state. To say anything more about the nature of the couple’s marriage would be unfair of me at this stage (I’ll leave you to discover this for yourself, should you decide to read this excellent book). Suffice it to say that the relationship contributes to the air of darkness surrounding Erica, a hint of something unsettling that Goliarda clearly detects. As Goliarda notes at one point, Erica seems distanced from those around her—a sense of being dignified and deeply troubled at the same time.

As it so happens, I’m generally not shy with men or with women, so why this deranged feeling of uncertainty every time I see her? Is she too beautiful? Too full of passion? It’s fear, I conclude in a flash, remembering the near whiteness that gleaned from her eyes yesterday in front of the window. Am I afraid for her, or for myself? No, it’s for her that I fear something. (p. 32)

As the friendship between the two women evolves, Erica is reunited with Riccardo, her first love from the adolescent days of her youth. It’s another development that signals heartache for Erica—and ultimately for Goliarda, too—as events from the past come back to haunt her.

Sapienza has written a beautiful novel here, full of nostalgia and yearning for the enchantment of the past. It is at once a paean to the allure and intimacy of female friendship and a love letter to Positano itself, a village that exerts its pull over those who visit.   

“Positano can cure you of anything. It opens your eyes to your past suffering and illuminates your present ones, often saving you from making further mistakes. It’s strange, but sometimes I get the impression that this cove protected by the bastion of mountains at its back forces you to look at yourself square in the face, like a ‘mirror of truth,’ while this vast sea, usually so calm and clear, similarly inspires self-reflection…” (p. 130)

With its long sunsets, shimmering sea and rusted red cliffs, Positano is almost another character in the novel, casting a languorous spell over inhabitants and visitors alike. Again, there is a sense of the village exerting a kind of dominance or hold on people— ‘the more you solemnly announce your departure—the harder it becomes to leave’. As a former actress and a writer, Sapienza has a filmic eye for detail, conveying the Positanesi with ease and authenticity.

Giacomino Senior—legendary cook of Positano, who at ninety-five years old still basked on the sunny steps next to one of the large stone lions, at times looking like an in-the-flesh copy of those statues, especially when he’d doze off— (p. 9)

Her prose, too, is evocative and sensual, perfectly capturing the allure of Positano as the setting for this radiant narrative. The intensity of the bond between the two women is beautifully conveyed, encompassing joy, desire, regret, longing and tragedy. Meeting in Positano is a wonderfully elegiac book, full of subtlety and complexity—the more you read, the more profound it reveals itself to be.  

It’s also my first read for Meytal’s Women in Translation (#WITMonth) event, which takes place every August—more details about that here, along with my previous recommended reads for #WITMonth.