APHASIA|The Memory of a Friend: Reconstruction of Another’s Language in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet

Memory, language, and the psychology of friendships between women form the core ideas of the narration of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet.

In the story, as Lenu attempts to reconstruct hers and Lila’s lives, and the extent to which the two were intertwined, it is difficult to escape the role that lived memory plays, especially since towards the end of the quartet, Lila is determined to be forgotten and simultaneously, Lenu must ensure that their friendship is never forgotten. She plays with the ideas of oblivion and the possible psychological motivations that Lila could have had behind orchestrating her own elaborate disappearance without a trace, and despite having known her friend for almost the entirety of their lives, Lenu isn’t able to say why. She must rely entirely on memory, that capricious faculty without which human beings would not know themselves, and which is nonetheless so capable of performing everyday deceptions.

An interesting takeaway from the Neapolitan quartet is that memory itself can be coloured by language — as Lenu is writing, she constantly wonders whether her writing style is more of a reflection of the ‘more brilliant’ Lila, or whether she has come into her own as a writer, letting go of imitation and memory of her brilliant friend, and creating her own insights. She is, however, constantly aware of the influence that Lila’s memory, or spectre, exercises on her work as she sees that the primary motifs she talks about are still their friendship and their lives, and in the process reveals the kind of enmeshed relationship she continues to have with her friend, even as the friend has obliviated herself from their beloved Naples.