TWO of Irène Némirovsky 
In the past five years, the Adelphi publishing house has started to publish all the works of Irène Némirovsky (1903-1942), the first writer to have won in 2004, in France, the prize Renaudot with the novel Suite French published posthumously, more than fifty years after the death of the author: An exception in the panorama of French literary prizes for, in principle, to living writers. Writer of great talent, but Russian-born French-speaking, in the twenties he began publishing several novels that open the doors of the Parisian literary salons. Despite the fame and the many recommendations and requests from her husband, Michel Epstein, in literary circles and politicians, Némirovsky will be deported to Auschwitz. Epstein, also a jew, to be able to leave two daughters with a large suitcase containing several manuscripts of their mother.
Last, in order of appearance in Italy, the novel Two (Adelphi, Milan 2010), flowing hot twelve years of the life of a young couple belonging to the high bourgeoisie and Marianne Antoine Carmontel Segré. With quick mind, sharp and clear, Némirovsky recounts the years of their youth and huge crowds in contrast with the years of maturity, when the first rise regrets about what it was but that he could be and early memories of a time can no longer return. Antoine, and Marianne, two young teens have fun with a great desire and the desire to leave behind the horrors of war, children of parents who go to party in celebration, the pursuit of pleasure, beauty and happiness of the winds' years gone forever.
The Némirovsky gives us a superb description of the "années folles" I live the atmosphere, I admire the clothes and allow ourselves to be seduced by the parties and dances that a company of young seedlings can be however, allow " rising from a warm house and glittering light, it was raining outside, sticking just before dawn. The road was sad, dark and sordid. Shreds of a torn old poster flew in the wind in the morning: "They gave their lives. You give your gold. "All this was old, forgotten." But despite the atmosphere and the lights dancing on the coldness we feel that dwells in the families of high society, all aimed to maintain their social position. Where love becomes synonymous with power, selfishness and seduction. Where the dynamics between the couples eat the fragility of the fears and emotional voids, but also the will to live and let live to the full every form of pleasure, letting himself be guided by the impulse and the game of seduction, the only one capable of making the characters alive and young. Two : a marriage where the other is perceived to a certain threshold. Where the spouses applies the covenant not to scratch their barriers to make sure you keep a steady ship. Where the unsaid is more powerful than that. Woe to violate this could breach the levees. Better that everything remains as is. Yet all the characters are alive: human faces in their weakness and inability to love "good." " The woman I loved most is that not - think Marianne Antoine near dying - but, on his deathbed regret what unites me with her more than he did regret the passion. The passion seems to be a gift from God, "too good to be true." He feels that the EC grants only for a while, something like this instead ... it's all our hard-won, slowly accumulated, distilled as a honey. And one day we'll leave, leave, too. What a pity ... "
A book against marriage? I would not say it is, mostly, of invective against marriage-arrangement, against the high finance companies that give little to the feelings, where everything is power - money and seduction. The Némirovsky is not against marriage: just read the story of two other spouses who live in love and loyalty from both sides, understanding the complexity of its analysis and, therefore, the power of this writer. To grasp his thoughts three hundred and sixty degrees, we should browse another novel that seems to act as counterpoint to Two, it is de The gifts of life (Adelphi 2009), where we still feel vibrate the days before his arrest and that of her husband, Michel Epstein, both of Jews have converted to Catholicism, though he had saved life.
