Prophet of the word

by Laura Eduati

During his lectures at Cambridge in the 1920s, novelist E.M. Forster claimed that only a handful of writers are truly prophetic, by which he means capable of speaking to the deep human truth in a way that is both universal and biblical. These authors he cites as Melville, Dostoevsky, and Emily Brontë.

Had he delivered those lectures after the 1950s, thus giving time for Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away to be published, Forster would have had no doubts that the American writer Flannery O’Connor, with her incandescent faith in God and in literature, would have joined that small prophetic circle: «I write the way I do because I am (not though I am) a Catholic».

It is this gift, woven from pain, sacrifice, and literary talent, that inspires Romana Petri’s novel La ragazza di Savannah [The Girl from Savannah] (Mondadori), which brings to life the childhood and then her adult years. Flannery O’Connor was born in Georgia in 1925 and cared for by her mother due to an autoimmune disease that would lead to her death at the age of 39. Mary Flan was her real name, she is today regarded as a towering figure in American literature, who spent her life studying Scripture, keeping peacocks and chickens, and writing.

«What is faith if not the drama of a man who entrusts himself to God after having rejected Him?», the young O’Connor asks her mother as she tries to explain the novel Wise Blood, which she was writing from her bed. «They’ll think she’s crazy», warns a relative who knows about the plot, that of a man who wants a Church without God, a blind preacher, a story of redemption with moments of violence that feel like scenes from the Old Testament. Mary Flann wasn’t crazy; instead, she shaped her writing by drawing inspiration from the Bible. Petri follows O’Connor as if present in that life, that of being exceptionally provincial and universal all at once. She recounts the events and the soul of the author, of her literary success, the lectures she gave at universities, and her certainty that illness was a necessary path. As Flannery stated, «I’m lame. So what? Why should I be discouraged? There’s no life without suffering», Petri has her say on this. O’Connor even wrote a Prayer Journal: «I want to be the best artist I can be, in the service of God». The Girl from Savannah is, in the end, a faithful image of Mary Flan’s spirit, a creature full of biting wit, raw vitality, and a wicked sense of humour. In short, a prophet who also knew how to laugh.