Testo, Oggetto 313

Carla Lonzi Armande sono io! Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1992 Editors' note. Carla Lonzi begins research on the "Preziose" in 1979. She moves between the libraries of Milan, Paris and Rome. She plans to publish the work under the title Armande sono io!: "a classic of psychology in line with the author's approach", as she herself described it in the 1981 catalogue. Soon afterwards, illness interrupts the project. Of her research we are left the following: a page-long manuscript which begins "In the spring of last year ..."; a manuscript of twenty-four pages "Writing to Alice ..."; another manuscript of three pages "When did I feel the desire to return to the past?" which we have not published because it deals with the same subject-matter contained in the reel wholly transcribed and attached to the book; a notebook full of handwritten notes made in the various libraries. Deciphered and transcribed, these constitute the appendix which we have given the title "On the trail of the Preziose", following a concept expressed by Carla Lonzi (see p. 16). The material left us by the author is completed by a recording of the meeting in Rome in March 1981 with her friend Anna Piva of Rivolta Femminile. This is a work therefore that comes to us in the form of notes and reflections, a draft not yet in its definitive version but destined undoubtly for publication. Written over a period of about two years, they reflect different states of mind with regard to the project. Our principal criterion in ordering and transcribing the manuscripts was that of presenting them in the unfinished state in which Carla Lonzi left them, so that her thinking recorded in these pages would be authentic in terms both of her fulfilled and unfulfilled intentions: an "active thought", transcribed without mediation up until the point the work was interrupted. This criterion has been followed even at the cost of clarity, as may be evident in the final part of the notes. As far as possible, these have been cross-checked by us in the libraries of Milan, Paris and Rome. However, we do not rule out the possibility that there may be errors both of transcription by Carla Lonzi and of interpretation by us regarding the authors and texts that it was not possible to check. Marta Lonzi Angela De Carlo Maria Delfino