While reading this book, I thought about a former friend of mine. We haven’t been in touch for a long time, but I still see things the way she does. If you borrow someone’s eyes for a long time, you can’t tell what you see for yourself and what she sees. This is probably the deepest entanglement. It’s not hatred or love. When you judge many things, you can’t help but stand in her position and look at them.
My Brilliant Friend is written about this kind of entanglement.
Many people interpret the relationship between Lila and Elena as the intertwining of jealousy and love. Of course, that’s right, but I think there’s another layer. Elena was drawn to Lila not only because she was smart and dangerous, but also because she represented a way of being that she longed for but could not attain. Lila doesn’t obey any rules, but she can always get to the truth of the matter. Elena obeys the rules and works hard step by step, but she always feels that she lives a borrowed life. One person lives as a mirror of another person.
The slums of Naples provide the grimmest setting. Lila’s rebellion is dazzling and dangerous. She doesn’t want to escape, but wants to rewrite the rules on the spot. Elena followed the opposite path, studying, leaving, and becoming the one who went out. But Ferrante didn’t write an inspirational story. Elena’s success has always brought guilt. She envies that Lila is more like a true creator than she is, even though Lila never writes. Elena, who left, was always entangled by Lila, who was left behind.
I was deeply impressed by the words of a reader. Lila doesn’t need to become anyone, while Elena has been a certain kind of person all her life. Elena wrote Lila not to commemorate her, but to completely break away from her. Writing itself is about turning an unclassifiable relationship into something that can be understood and let go of.
But can this really be let go of? There is an image in the book. Elena is writing in the room, and Lila is shouting at her downstairs. That voice was always there, becoming the background sound of her writing. Some friendships are like this. It’s a dark river. You think it’s dry, but it suddenly surges up one night.
The strongest feeling of reading this book is not emotion, but a kind of panic of being seen through. You will think of people in your life who can’t be simply called friends. You used to be so close that you hurt each other. Later, you took different paths, but you realized that your judgment of many things is still in conversation with that person.
Ferrante doesn’t judge. She doesn’t beautify Lila or deify Elena’s escape. Two people who have shaped and consumed each other have been entangled for a lifetime. No one can save anyone, but no one can let go of the other. Writing is not salvation, but just a record. Admitting that this relationship has shaped you, which is much more profound than the path you choose.
So the sixty-six-year-old Elena is still waiting for Lila’s news. Not because she is still jealous or missing, but because Lila is the starting point of her life. Some friends are not for hanging out, but to look up to. You resisted her, imitated her, escaped from her, and wrote about her. Finally, you found that you became someone who keeps seeing through her eyes. This may be the deepest form of friendship, not together, but a presence neither can shake.
