Valeria Tron and ‘Sweet Stone’, the "hatching of a promise"

There are books that stay with you after reading them, you feel like you have lived that story, that you have been there, that you have heard the sound of those footsteps, the hissing of the wind, smelled the burning wood, the roar of the waterfall. This is the case of “Pietra Dolce”, published by Salani, the novel by Valeria Tron, the author of the very successful “The balance of fireflies”, one of the most read novels in 2022.

Tron, writer, musician and artisan, returns with all the beauty of a writing that is in some ways onomatopoeic, simple but effective, direct. The author takes us to Val Germanasca where nature dictates its will: in the talc mine, in the vegetable gardens, in the woods, in the villages overlooking the waterfall. One day three explosions make the mountain tremble. Two miners are missing and people dig through the debris in the square. The last to emerge from the hole in the rock is a young man who everyone knows. His name is Lisse, without the U, and much of his life is already written in that missing letter.

He is wounded, yet it is other cuts that make Lisse’s soul bleed. That man born in a meadow, welcomed and nourished by his people, is also the invisible, the storyless, exiled within the confines of his Valley. Distraught by yet another disaster, Lisse takes refuge in a shack in Paraut, where he was born. Giosuè Frillobec, the lifelong friend who limps on words, cannot stand by and watch. And with him not even Mina, who raised them both like a mother; and Lumiere, the giant who gives oracles; and Tedesc, the old luthier who speaks three languages. Together they will devise a plan to bring Lisse home and give him back hope, imagining himself still possible. The arrival of Alma, who left Argentina with a guitar on her shoulder, will bring the song of the Andes and a gentle dream to cultivate into their lives.

“Promise that one day you will give me back,” Tron’s father said to his daughter, as he planted a rowan tree. There is so much in that sentence: “Indeed, Sweet Stone – Valeria Tron tells AGI – is the hatching of a promise. Sixteen years have passed since that afternoon when my father was planting a small rowan tree next to the woodshed. The seed of this novel was planted in the same furrow of the rowan shootbut had to wait to take root and voice, precisely because the request was anything but trivial. My language (patois) does not know the verb ‘return’, to which he prefers the verb ‘to return’, which necessarily requires movement, a journey, attention to the journey. I only understood last autumn, while I was cutting wood under the house, that ‘returning’ has to do with ‘undermining’, that is, setting the void to music, extracting something precious from it and giving it shape, exploring the musicality of silence. Here, this was the initial act to plant the novel: give voice to non-verbal languageand in this case to the things, perhaps even intimate and heavy, that had not found a sound between me and my father. Fifteen years after his death, I managed to orchestrate our silences.”

Valeria Tron has a writing that flows like music: “The word is already Music, and it is so in a preponderant way in an oral language like the one that nourished my senses, where without that harmonic binder the words are lost, or are not internalized with their fair share of refraction. My language, which I familiarly call patois – explains the author – is one of daughters of the ancient language of Ocand has the innate need to translate itself into poetry, images and melodies hidden among things. Music and Poetry are therefore two vanishing points that he left me as a gift and that allow me to inspect the world in a sensorial way and investigate it by harmonious instinct, naturally conveying things not so much as we synthesize them, but as we feel them linked to one another. ‘other. So my writing, metabolized through the patois, it is the rumen of what I collect over the days and try to retranslate. For this reason, perhaps, I leave free the multidimensionality that I perceive and that the reader, equally free to imagine, draws through his personal sensitivity. A resonance is created, and it lies in the freedom to put notes of color to the words on the sheets.”

What is patois?

“It is a milk language. Like every land language – continues the author – it has a concrete and an imaginative lifeblood within it. I cannot exclude it from my life, because it is to it that I owe the freedom to feel like a sister to the many land languages, to other cultures, capable of conveying without hesitation beauty and fragility, courage (in its intimate meaning, that is, putting the heart in) and hope. The tongues of land are reservoirs of hope, and therefore precious in connecting us to each other: as it is the root. Here, for me the root is a constant continuation for build relationshipsi, ferrying vivifying materials such as resonance and proximity. I have never felt the root as something that “forces” you in a static way, but as a web of natural extensions to feel the other even at distant latitudes. I could say that the root is an important starting point because it is exactly there that our sprout takes root, but completely useless if we don’t stretch it to communicate, contaminate ourselves, broaden the memorable dimension that we are. I never use the word tradition, which, moreover, patois does not contemplate.

I prefer the word “Farmer”, direct root of Culturewhich patois invented centuries ago to invite us to care for each other. Here, we can be farmers and therefore water the beauty of diversity together to renew each other.

In “Sweet Stone”, nature is mother, all the characters feed each other, help and nourish each other. Is this ‘maternitè’ typical of the people of Val Germanasca or is it a wish?

“Growing up in small villages can potentially broaden (it’s a beautiful paradox) the sense of motherhood and attention towards the collective. Motherhood as I feel it is a rainbow of feelings aimed at nurturing life, taking care of it. In Pietra dolce I outlined eight of these feelings, without restricting them in genre or species, because it is important that we all feel involved in the care. I will try to summarize them. The Gift of life: the woman who gave birth to Lisse in the meadow; Listening to life: Beretta, the goat who first nurses him and warms him. Responsibility: the old Ghit who welcomes him and gives him a name; theObedience to life: young Denise who feels called to raise him; the Cure: Mina, the woman who is the mother of everyone even without having generated natural children; the Fidicia: mining men who place their lives in the hands of others; Gratitude: Lisse and Giosuè, brothers by choice and maternal to each other; the Promise: the highest song that moves us to the prospect of new life. Even Nature, for me, is the sum, the fertile womb of all the vital propulsion that we breathe together with other living beings and asks us to be collaborative, interactive, participants. There val Germanasca It’s my starting point and I’m proud of it. Despite its remote and barely sketched geography on the maps, seen with my very personal and bizarre magnifying glass, it becomes expandable wherever there are collective feelings. The mountains, for me, are therefore a question of attitude, not of altitude”.

Are the places described real?
“In my two novels the setting is real – explains Valeria Tron – only the toponymy has been reinvented to allow everyone to feel it as possible or refracted in their own internal baggage. the Balance of fireflies, the inner village that I have described and renamed Aigo (water) is Rodoretto, the paternal half, where I have my home. In Pietra Dolce there is the Vallone di Massello: the maternal half, where I lived the happiest and most relaxed moments with Memè (grandmother) who blew out ninety-seven candles today. The mine described in Sweet Stone certainly exists. One part can even be visited (Val Germanasca Mining Ecomuseum). My father, like many men of the valley, spent more than half of his short life in the belly of this land, digging talc”.

And we come to the title: Sweet stone, why?

“Sweet stone (Peiro douso), is not only the literal translation of talc – he underlines – but is an exact metaphor of that attitude that the men and women who raised me have witnessed. However, we need to know how this mineral works: the talc can also be fragile, he is not afraid to give in, to let himself be affected, become dust, if necessary. However, when subjected to heat it becomes stronger than marble. We could say that fragility, once welcomed, becomes a fortress, especially if it transforms into hope. Exactly the opposite of marble: so beautiful, shiny, apparently strong and expensive, but when exposed to high temperatures it crumbles and becomes lime.”

Could the next novel be set outside your homeland? Have you ever thought about it?

“Certainly – states Tron – although I thought it was important to start from here, a rural valley, away from modernity or massive tourism, to try to convey a message that was as universal as possible: not ancient or linked to the past, but projected into the themes and in contemporary times. Sweet Stone, for example, touches on themes such as acceptance, gratitude, the need for peace, proximity, clandestinity, the response to pain and the need to get rid of as many superstructures as possible. possible to regain their space of desire and humanity. It is no coincidence that in the narrative the Germanasca valley is above all a starting point, and every character (except one) will need to travel and move I’m curious to get to work.”

What if “Pietra Dolce” became a film?

“It would be an immense gift to be able to reread Sweet Stone or The Balance of Fireflies through other interpretative channels. If I can dream – says the writer – and dream hard, I imagine a sensitive, poetic and meticulous direction like that of Giorgio Diritti. An actor I admire to give voice to Lisse? the very good Elio Germano comes to mind: he has the nature of a miner, and you can see it in how he is able to dig and probe the personality of subjects he interprets. These are dreams – he concludes – it is evident, but about dreaming well”.