Liala

After 1950, the contempt for the bourgeois novel, which now aspires to be part of literature, ceases. But first, in the Fascist period and beyond, there was a clear division between mass and entertainment literature, with large-scale novelists (Zuccoli, D’Ambra, Pitigrilli, DaVerona) and novels written by intellectuals for other intellectuals (Gadda , Landolfi, Bilenchi, Vittorini, Bersani).

Thus, a double market for literature is formed. While Guido da Verona sells two and a half million copies, thanks above all to the success of “Mimì Bluette flower of my garden”, Palazzeschi, Moravia of “Gli indifferenti”, and Bontempelli always remain under one hundred thousand copies. Only “Sorelle Materassi” reaches two hundred thousand.

In the first half of the century, successful fiction continues to practice structures already tested at the end of the nineteenth century, with the addition of new genres such as the heroic fascist novel, the “pornographic” one by Pitigrilli, the humorous one by Achille Campanile and, finally, romance.

The first novel by Liala, pseudonym of Liana Cambiasi, Negretti Odescalchi, (1897 -1995)is from 1931

“I was born in Carate Lario”, she tells us, “in the beautiful villa that my grandparents had on the lake.” She marries the Marquis Cambiasi but the marriage does not work out and Liala finds love in a young aviator, Vittorio Centurione Scotto, with whom she has a little girl. Unfortunately, in 1926, the officer died in an accident, falling into the lake with the plane, and Liala vented her pain by writing her first novel: “Signorsì”, “not to go crazy”, she says. The novel focuses on aviation, a subject never dealt with by a woman before and has an immediate success with the public.

“I owe my fame to my aviator. It was to be with him again that I wrote Signorsì, which immediately made me famous, because I spoke of those flights that he loved so much. But the name “Liala” I got from D’Annunzio. Even before Signorsì came out, the great Arnoldo Mondadori had talked to d’Annunzio about a young woman who had written an aviation novel, which was exceptional for those times. The Commander wanted to meet me: I went to the Vittoriale with Mondadori and, signing a photograph of him, d’Annunzio immediately changed my Liana into Liala: because, he said, a wing is fine in the name of someone who speaks with so much love of wings. He put a wing on it and I flew. “

After twenty days, the publisher calls her upset: the first edition is already sold out.

From 1930 to 48 she was romantically linked to another officer, Pietro Sordi, although her husband welcomed her back and gave her another daughter.

In addition to the military environment, the individual characters, such as Lalla Acquaviva, protagonist of the trilogy of the same name, in addition to the plots, what remains of her novels is more the image of a style, made up of multiple shades.

First of all the characters. Whether they are officers like Furio di Villafranca, or painters like Milo Drago or sculptors, they are always aristocrats, tall, beautiful — dark with blue eyes or blond with black eyes — able to dominate you with their eyes (nothing to do with the sadistic Christian Gray) to woo you with gallant gestures that have in their very DNA.

The women are models with fire-colored hair and green eyes, or shy demure girls with braids and low gazes. They have high-sounding and strange names — they are said to have been taken from horse racing magazines: Beba, Coralla, Pervinca, and have a more sanguine and Dannunzian aspect than pre-Raphaelite.

“She gave a final brush to the fluffy, light and wavy hair, which touched her shoulders, she licked her lips. She put on her coat. On the dark blue of the heavy cloth, the marvelous tawny hair sparkled, of a beautiful dark tawny, which divinely framed her white face, on which her red lips, full of healthy and violent blood, put a lively note of ardent color. “ (From L’Arco nel cielo)

The environments are described with visual and aesthetic minutiae that appeals to all five senses. Every detail is shown of architecture, furnishings, clothing, food. The tables are set sumptuously, or in a rustic way, the bread is fragrant, the chicken crisp. You can feel penetrating scents, noises, smells, you can see the colors stand out on each other like in a painting.

“On a white tablecloth, of beautiful Flanders canvas, she had placed plates and glasses almost luxurious, the cutlery was of base metal, but shiny and clean. Only, in the middle of the table, stood a silver jar, in which a purple chrysanthemum was immersed. “ (from Melody of ancient love)

“A great silence weighed on all things, dominated the hall. And in that silence, two clocks ticked. The small one that was on a topaz-colored opaline table, and the large, electric one, embedded in the antechamber wall. Two rhythmic and dissimilar sounds that gave a sense of the transience of time. “ (From Like kisses on the water)

The sensuality that exudes from the scene is overbearing as it is withheld.

“They walked close, when the wind lifted Mabel’s coat and made it touch Arno Dala’s legs. And he, for that caress of the beloved woman’s dress, enjoyed. “ (From Like kisses on the water)

Eroticism takes the form of “blood that flows faster in the wrists”, in murky looks, in a repressed but tangible desire. Those same mothers and grandmothers who passed us the books, about which they had cried and dreamed in secret, feared that the reading was too risky for young ladies, wanting to stay on the subject and quote Wanda Bontà.

“Her face bore the traces of the long night of love, but her eyes were full of joy. Never, like that night, had Beba belonged to him, never had he had so strong and terrible the sensation of possession. Beba’s placid sensuality had sparked and quivered, her beautiful flesh had unusually animated, and never had Beba’s face been so worn and devastated by kisses. “ (From Signorsì)

The style is clean but redundant, plethoric, played on synonyms: “I want to know what languages ​​you speak, what idioms ​​you know.”

Liala is an underestimated writer, a skilled storyteller, capable of making you see, hear and touch what she tells about, capable of creating atmospheres that are never forgotten. It is an exponent in all respects of decadence, caught in its aestheticizing, baroque aspects, in strong colors made of sex, love and death, of great otherworldly passions (“Lalla who returns”), of libertine men in search of pure girls, of virgins to crease.