“CHE POTREI DIRE DELLA SESSUALITÀ?” UNA LETTERA INEDITA DI ANNA MARIA ORTESE A GUIDO ALMANSI

Abstract

In 1969, Guido Almansi invited Anna M aria Ortese to contribute to a special issue of 20th Century Studies devoted to the representation of sexuality in the modern novel. While many prominent European and American writers accepted the invitation, Ortese replied with a brief but remarkable letter refusing to participate. This paper examines that unpublished exchange and situates it within Ortese’s literary poetics. Rejecting sexuality as a privileged literary “topic”, Ortese argues that writing is not about choosing subjects but about “unconsciously seeking the relations between things”. Through a reading of her response alongside Poveri e semplici (1967), the paper show erotic experience in Ortese’s work is displaced from bodily representation toward affective, ethical, and symbolic relationships. Far from celebrating the sexual revolution of the late 1960s, Ortese proposes a radically different understanding of literature, one grounded in invisible connections rather than thematic categories. Her letter thus offers a rare and concise statement of a poetics that resists both critical classifications and contemporary cultural fashions.