one of those questioning lenù's self-perception moments for me is... lenù is not the one who constantly turns people into deities. apart from lila and partially nino, she rarely describes things in blinding awe that is so characteristic to lila, even though lila tries to fight it constantly. lenù claims to exist as half a person due to her tie to lila, but lila turns putting her entire life's worth in any person who presents as an anomaly to her (self-taught and not inherent) pessimism... rino will get her out of the neighbourhood... stefano will undo the damage of the past... pasquale will explain the world to her with a force that will be able to fix it. she sees nino's mind as the library she's lost access to as a little girl. enzo is an antithesis to everything experience has taught her so she naturally turns him into a god with a passion so painfully similar to child lila. she thinks she can turn elena into the embodiment of all of her childhood wishes and considers her to be the only part of herself worth loving. it's all about lila's childhood idealism fighting with the pessimism she understandably forces on herself in adulthood. elena is more of her own person than lila is, but elena is also entirely blind to that which in turn intensifies her dependency on lila and the way she presents herself to us through writing. not saying elena IS her own person entirely, but WHO IS??? we all have people that feel like parts of our soul. i am just saying that elena is better at this than lila is precisely because lila runs away from analyzing herself in such excruciating detail the way elena does. the only part of herself lila will allow to exist is the light others offer because she considers it to be so rare and to find it is like a revolution to her the same way little women was growing up. she loves people the way she loves ideas. also she is me <3
you are SO right, and i think this could be what comforts her ultimately once she learns stefano had been in contact with the solaras way before their wedding. i think she can stomach having completely made up a better version of him in her head (mostly due to him showing her only this side, but still) but she couldn't have handled if stefano just changed for the worse. it's why whenever rino disappoints her she loses all kinds of respect for him and demotes him to a childish ticking bomb. like you said, it's her childhood idealism fighting with this pessimism, but like, everything she does, her pessimism is also extreme and if she accepts the things in her life she once idealized are rotten, she has to believe they have always been.