I have written this page as personal appreciation for this great landscape,  force of inspiration and of creation of my novels.

In every season of the year, under any kind of weather  moving my eyes over it  I have received that inner peace necessary to foster my  concentration  and push my ideas ahead.

From the windows where I work, in the heart of the Agriturismo, I see le wide inlet of the gulf of Follonica, with the circle of the hills that enter the sea down to the pointed tip of Punta Ala.

Suvereto is just there, almost hidden behind a gentle verdant slope.  I can imagine it, a crib of stone houses, set in the circle of its ancient walls, the Municipality, the cloister of the old monastery, the narrow streets, the alleys, the flights of steps:  charm of the past that becomes life and touch.

I think of the crowd of men and women that lived there in the past ten centuries.  I see them, just in front of me, in their poor farm clothes, so strange to my eyes,  their working instruments on their shoulders,  the monkeys with their hay laden pack saddle. I can imagine their tiring existence, the joys and sorrows that imprinted the rolling by of their days.

I wish I could ask them, have everyone of them tell me their stories, bring them to life in my novels.

Because, as our philosopher Croce says, every story real and vibrant is always current and of our present days.

 

Carla Maria Russo

2008