Letter to a Child Never Born

You belong neither to God nor the state nor me. You belong to yourself and no one else.

And yet, or just for this reason, it's so fascinating to be a woman. It's an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that's never boring. You'll have so many things to engage you if you're born a woman. To begin with, you'll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you'll have to struggle to explain that it wasn't sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple, what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience.

To be good or bad doesn't count: life out in this world doesn't depend on that. It depends on a relation of forces based on violence. And survival is violence. You'll wear leather shoes because someone has killed a cow and skinned it to make leather.

I've found what I was looking for, Child: what people call love between a man and a woman is a season. And if, at its flowering, this season is a feast of greenery, at its waning, it's only a heap of rotting leaves.

One day you and I will have to have a little talk about this business called love. I still don't understand what it's all about. My guess is that it's just a gigantic hoax, invented to keep people quiet and diverted. Everyone talks about love: the priests, the advertising posters, the literati, and the politicians, those of them who make love. And in speaking of love and offering it as a panacea for every tragedy, they would and betray and kill both body and soul.

No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruellest, the least generous who win.

Life is such an effort, Child. It's a war that is renewed each day, and its moments of joy are brief parentheses for which you pay a cruel price.

I know ours is a world made by men for men, their dictatorship is so ancient it even extends to language.

How can a man understand a woman who is expecting a child. He can't get pregnant. Is that an advantage or a limitation? Up until yesterday it seemed to me an advantage, even a privilege. Today it seems to me a limitation, even an impoverishment. There's something glorious about enclosing another life in your own body, in knowing yourself to be two instead of one. At moments you're even invaded by a sense of triumph, and in the serenity accompanying that triumph nothing bothers you: neither the physical pain you'll have to face, nor the work you'll have to sacrifice, nor the freedom you'll have to give up.

In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all the heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse.

A lot of women ask themselves why they should bring a child into the world? So that it will be hungry, so that it will be cold, so that it will be betrayed and humiliated, so that it will be slaughtered by war or disease? They reject the hope that its hunger will be satisfied, its cold warmed, that loyalty and respect will accompany it through life, that it will be a devote a life to the effort to eliminate war and disease.

I'll impose upon you the same arrogance that was imposed on me, and on my mother, my grandmother, my grandmother's mother: all the way back to the first human born of another human being, whether he liked it or not. Probably, if he or she had been allowed to choose, he would have been frightened and answered: No, I don't want to be born. But no one asked their opinion, and so they were born and lived and died after giving birth to another human being who was not asked to choose, and that one did likewise, for millions of years, right down to us.

the world changes and remains the same.

Özgürlük adına lime lime kesilmeye, işkence çekmeye hatta ölmeye razı insanlar tanıyacaksın. Umarım onlardan biri olursun. Ancak özgürlük adına işkence çekmekte olduğun anda bile onun gerçekte var olmadığını, olsa olsa sen onu aradığın sürece ve oranda var olduğunu anlayacaksın özgürlüğün. Bir düş gibi, doğmadan önceki yaşamının, özgür çünkü yapayalnız olduğun zamanın anısından doğmuş bir düşünce gibi.

Io perfino nelle pause in cui piango suoi miei fallimenti, le mie delusioni, i miei strazi, concludo che soffrire sia da preferirsi al niente.

Però il rimpianto esiste, e i legami esistono, radicati in noi come alberi che non cedono neanche all'uragano, inevitabili come la fame e la sete. Non te ne puoi mai liberare, anche se ci provi con tutta la tua volontà, la tua logica. Magari credi di averli dimenticati e un giorno riaffiorano, irrimediabilmente, spietati, per metterti la corda al collo più di qualsiasi boia. E strozzarti.

Non ho mai capito come faccia a ridere in quel modo: ma penso che sia perché ha pianto molto. Solo chi ha pianto molto può apprezzare la vita nelle sue bellezze, e ridere bene.

Non è vero che non credi all'amore, mamma. Ci credi tanto da straziarti perché ne vedi così poco, e perché quello che vedi non è mai perfetto. Tu sei fatta d'amore. Ma è sufficiente credere all'amore se non si crede alla vita?