The Sibyl

Poet, translator, writer, historian, intellectual front-line combatant in the Italian resistance movement, with a silver medal of military valour for her fight against Nazism and Fascism. Silvia Ballestra writes a life of Gioconda Beatrice Salvadori Paleotti, better known as Joyce Lussu, in her book La Sibilla (The Sybil). Many adopted this name to describe Joyce, because she was able to anticipate the course of history and the huge changes that took place over the 20th century. The title also pays tribute to a figure from the folk culture of Le Marche, the Apennine Sibyl, to indicate the great extent to which both Joyce and the author belong to the area. Hers was a life full of travel, from Africa to Portugal, from England to France, beginning from the time she was forced to flee to Switzerland with her family as an adolescent after her father was beaten up by a gang of squadristi in Florence. It was in Switzerland itself, during a secret mission for Giustizia e Libertà, that she met the man who was to become the love of her life: Emilio Lussu, with whom she will share a great part of her adventures. After the end of the war, Joyce chose not to pursue party politics like Emilio does, but to continue her struggle through grassroots politics, becoming revolutionary also in the world of poetry. After a meeting with poet Nazim Hikmet, Joyce decides to translate his poetry despite not knowing Turkish, but through a process of exchange and dialogue with the author, as well as sharing ideas and views of the world. La Sibilla is a biography written with the care of a historical essay – resulting from in-depth research and the author’s personal meetings with Joyce – but deserves to be read as an adventure novel due to the extraordinary intensity of the subject’s life story.  

La Sibilla. Vita di Joyce Lussu
Silvia Ballestra
Laterza, 2022