The psychiatrist Crepet: “With her courageous and revolutionary interview, Michela Murgia gives the floor to the dying”

«Michela Murgia gives the floor to the dying. And she does it with secular, courageous words. Beautiful and revolutionary.” Thus the psychiatrist Paolo Crepet comments on the interview of Corriere della Sera in which the writer tells of having stage four renal cell carcinoma with metastases to the lungs, bones and brain. “I’m being treated with biopharmaceutical immunotherapy. It does not attack the disease; stimulates the response of the immune system. The goal is not to eradicate evil, it’s late, but to gain time. Months, maybe many »she says.

When Aldo Cazzullo asks her if death doesn’t seem like an injustice to her, Murgia replies no, and says «I’m fifty years old, but I’ve lived ten lives. I’ve done things that the vast majority of people don’t do in their entire lives. Things I didn’t even know I wanted. I have precious memories.” Why do her words contain a revolution?

“We are immersed in a Catholic culture that tells us that pain redeems. It always seemed like a rough thought to me. Religion has made death a marketing tool. At least in my time, a death row inmate was exposed in all classes. I’ve always wondered why a smiling little boy wasn’t chosen instead. Even in our diaries, a tortured dead is remembered every day. This obsession with death as the pinnacle of life makes how you die more important than how you lived. Michela Murgia’s words are secular, revolutionary. So she represents and makes the dying speak, who are not given a voice. We have told our children strange and absurd stories about the death of their grandparents, so the moment of the end must remain veiled by culture, by tradition. She unveiled the gallows. And she did it by talking about herself and it takes courage to do it. Some cretin might say it’s exhibitionism, but I’m very far from these miserable chants».

Is it an interview that can “do good” to those in your same situation?

«Of course yes, but not only. Even those close to them. Death poisons a family nucleus. And on this, Murgia manages to touch on another aspect that as a citizen I find fundamental. And also in this case with elegance».

On his imminent marriage he says: «The state will eventually want a legal name that makes the decisions, but I’m not getting married just to allow someone to decide for me. I love and am loved, the roles are masks that are assumed when needed».

«Not getting married is a choice of love, which avoids the shadow of any interest, unlike marriage. As a citizen and layman, I find it absurd that at some point in life one has to get married “to make things right”. This says a lot about our medieval culture».

Is the courage to tell the story on the side of women?

«Generalizing is always wrong and it is also in this case. However, it can be said that women are more prone to introspection. Those who do my job see it. And I also see it as a writer. Women read more, not only essays, but also novels. And what is the novel if not an introspection? Women have a monthly relationship with grief and loss. An old physiologist said that “menstruation is the crying uterus”. It is obviously a metaphor, which should be read in the sense of seeing menstruation as an occasion that forces us to confront our body. Even when they start menopause, women have always and always been forced to come to terms with the body, with their own lives. There is one more thing I would like to say to Murgia».

What would he like to tell her?

«I would like to say thank you. For words and courage.’