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Alberto Moravia
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Alberto Moravia
Italian writer
pseudonym of Alberto Pincherle
born Nov. 28, 1907, Rome, Italy
died Sept. 26, 1990, Rome
Main
Italian journalist, short-story writer, and novelist known for his
fictional portrayals of social alienation and loveless sexuality. He was
a major figure in 20th-century Italian literature.
Moravia contracted tuberculosis of the bone (a form of osteomyelitis
usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis) at the age of 8, but,
during several years in which he was confined to bed and two years in
sanatoriums, he studied French, German, and English; read Giovanni
Boccaccio, Ludovico Ariosto, William Shakespeare, and Molière; and began
to write. Moravia was a journalist for a time in Turin and a foreign
correspondent in London. His first novel, Gli indifferenti (1929; Time
of Indifference), is a scathingly realistic study of the moral
corruption of a middle-class mother and two of her children. It became a
sensation. Some of his more important novels are Agostino (1944; Two
Adolescents); La Romana (1947; The Woman of Rome); La disubbidienza
(1948; Disobedience); and Il conformista (1951; The Conformist), all on
themes of isolation and alienation. La ciociara (1957; Two Women) tells
of an adaptation to post-World War II Italian life. La noia (1960; The
Empty Canvas) is the story of a painter unable to find meaning either in
love or work. Many of Moravia’s books were made into motion pictures.
His books of short stories include Racconti romani (1954; Roman
Tales) and Nuovi racconti romani (1959; More Roman Tales). Racconti di
Alberto Moravia (1968) is a collection of earlier stories. Later
short-story collections include Il paradiso (1970; “Paradise”) and Boh
(1976; The Voice of the Sea and Other Stories).
Most of Moravia’s works deal with emotional aridity, isolation, and
existential frustration and express the futility of either sexual
promiscuity or conjugal love as an escape. Critics have praised the
author’s stark, unadorned style, his psychological penetration, his
narrative skill, and his ability to create authentic characters and
realistic dialogue.
Moravia’s views on literature and realism are expressed in a
stimulating book of essays, L’uomo come fine (1963; Man as an End), and
his autobiography, Alberto Moravia’s Life, was published in 1990. He was
married for a time to the novelist Elsa Morante.
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A Ghost at Noon
Alberto Moravia
1907-1990
Like most of Moravia's work, this novel is a political
accusationrcapitalist culture reduces the intellectual to a mere
producer of goods. Riccardo Molteni, the protagonist, is a
failed intellectual who betrays his ambition to become a
playwright and sells his soul to consumerism to make money by
writing screenplays. He convinces himself that he does this to
pay for the apartment he bought to make his wife, Emilia, happy.
Molteni increasingly loses sight of reality and becomes
incapable of noticing what is happening around him, unable to
see that his wife no longer loves him. In a nostalgic and
regretful way, he carries on loving a semblance, or a "ghost,"
of what Emilia once was (hence the English translation
ofthenovel's title).
Molteni takes refuge in Greek myths, with their protagonists who
lived in a world where the relationship with reality was
straightforward and unmediated. When faced with the challenging
task of transforming the Odyssey into a movie, Molteni discovers
that a text such as Homer's holds the key to his existence.
Odysseus and Molteni are united by a similar destiny. Their
wives, Penelope and Emilia. despise their passivity and
self-assurance. Molteni is excessively confident that Emilia is
faithful and disregards the producer's courtship of her. She is
hurt, and feels she is being sold cheaply to secure her
husband's occupation. Her contempt for him grows and is finally
shouted into his face before she abandons him on the island of
Capri.
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The Time of Indifference
Alberto Moravia
1907-1990
Moravia's early masterpiece, produced when he was eighteen, was
written after the murder of Matteotti, who openly opposed
Mussolini in parliament, when the Fascist regime enjoyed popular
consensus. Although the work does not contain explicit
references to the Italian political situation, the story of a
middle class family, depicted as helpless victims of the
corruption of their social entourage, clearly has a political
message. The novel's central motif highlights the inadequacy and
incapacity of the characters to deal with reality, marked by an
indelible and congenital weakness. Mariagrazia, her son Michele,
and daughter Carla, although afflicted by a serious financial
crisis, keep up appearances and carry on a life of ostentatious
bourgeois wealth. Slowly but inexorably they drift toward a
miserable end. Michele, the central character, is oblivious to
the dramas around him, indifferent to a reality that is
disintegrating before his eyes. He is painfully unable to play
by the social rules of his class or find the moral energy to
react and rebel against them. He tries to eliminate Leo, his
mother's—and later his sister's—loathsome lover, but
(farcically) his gun is not loaded. With this novel, Moravia
commenced his long-term investigation into the existential human
condition. He went on to pursue the themes of conformism,
contempt, and tedium as he portrayed the limitations of a social
class at the end of its historical trajectory yet profoundly
unable to renovate and transform itself.
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