Alberto Moravia
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
novelist
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
, and existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
.
He is best known for his debut novel
Debut novel
A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...
Gli indifferenti
Gli indifferenti
Gli Indifferenti is a novel by Alberto Moravia, published in 1929.-Background:After a meeting with friends at which it was agreed that each should produce a novel, the young Moravia began writing the story that would become Gli Indifferenti...
(published in 1929), and for the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista (The Conformist
The Conformist
The Conformist is a novel by Alberto Moravia published in 1951, which details the life and desire for normalcy of a government official during Italy's fascist period. It is also known for the 1970 film adaptation by Bernardo Bertolucci....
), the basis for the film The Conformist
The Conformist (film)
The Conformist is a 1970 political drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The screenplay was written by Bertolucci based on the 1951 novel The Conformist by Alberto Moravia. The film features Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli, among others...
(1970) by Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers...
. Other novels of his translated to the cinema are Il Disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon or Contempt) filmed by Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
as Le Mépris (Contempt
Contempt (film)
Contempt is a 1963 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on the Italian novel Il disprezzo by Alberto Moravia. It stars Brigitte Bardot.-Plot:...
) (1963); La Noia (Boredom), filmed with that title by Damiano Damiani in 1963 and released in the US as The Empty Canvas
The Empty Canvas
The Empty Canvas is an Italian drama film directed by Damiano Damiani. The screenplay by Damiani, Tonino Guerra, and Ugo Liberatore is based on the best-selling novel La Noia by Alberto Moravia.-Synopsis:...
in 1964; and La Ciociara filmed by Vittorio de Sica
Vittorio de Sica
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement....
as Two Women (1960). Cedric Kahn
Cédric Kahn
Cédric Kahn is a French screenwriter and film director. His films include L'Ennui , from the Alberto Moravia novel Boredom and Red Lights , from the Georges Simenon novel...
's L'Ennui
L'Ennui
L'Ennui is a 1998 dramatic film directed by Cédric Kahn, starring Charles Berling and Sophie Guillemin. It follows the life of a bored philosopher as he becomes jealously obsessed with the much younger lover of a dead painter....
(1998) is another version of La Noia. He was an atheist.
Early years
Alberto Pincherle (the pen-name "Moravia" is the surname of his maternal grandfather) was born on Via Sgambati in Rome, Italy, to a wealthy middle-class family. His Jewish VenetianVenice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
father, Carlo, was an architect and a painter. His Catholic Anconitan
Ancona
Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche region, in central Italy, with a population of 101,909 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region....
mother, Teresa Iginia de Marsanich, but of Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
n origin. Her brother Augusto De Marsanich
Augusto De Marsanich
Augusto De Marsanich was an Italian National Fascist Party politician and the second leader of the Italian Social Movement ....
, Moravia's uncle, was an undersecretary in the National Fascist Party
National Fascist Party
The National Fascist Party was an Italian political party, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of fascism...
cabinet.
Moravia did not finish conventional schooling because, at the age of nine, he contracted tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
of the bone that confined him to bed for five years. He spent three years at home, and two in a sanatorium at Cortina d'Ampezzo
Cortina d'Ampezzo
Cortina d'Ampezzo is a town and comune in the southern Alps located in Veneto, a region in Northern Italy. Located in the heart of the Dolomites in an alpine valley, it is a popular winter sport resort known for its ski-ranges, scenery, accommodations, shops and après-ski scene...
, in northeastern Italy. Moravia was an intelligent boy and devoted himself to reading books: some of his favourite authors included Dostoevsky, Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Ariosto, Goldoni
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...
, Shakespeare, Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
. He learned French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, and wrote poems in both languages.
In 1925 he left the sanatorium and moved to Brixen
Brixen
Brixen is the name of two cities in the Alps:*Brixen, South Tyrol, Italy*Brixen im Thale, Tyrol, AustriaBrixen may also refer to:*Bishopric of Brixen, the former north-Italian state....
, where he wrote his first novel, Gli Indifferenti (Time of Indifference), published in 1929. The novel is a realistic analysis of the moral decadence of a middle-class mother and two of her children. In 1927, Moravia met Corrado Alvaro
Corrado Alvaro
Corrado Alvaro was an Italian journalist and writer of novels, short stories, screenplays and plays. He often used the verismo style to describes the hopeless poverty in his native Calabria...
and Massimo Bontempelli
Massimo Bontempelli
Massimo Bontempelli was an Italian poet, playwright, and novelist. He was influential in developing and promoting the literary style known as magical realism.-Life:...
, and started his career as a journalist with the magazine 900, which published his first short stories, including "La Cortigiana Stanca" ("The Tired Courtesan" or in French as "Lassitude de Courtisane", 1927), "Delitto al Circolo del Tennis" ("Crime at the Tennis Club") (1928), "Il Ladro Curioso" ("The Curious Thief") and "Apparizione" ("Apparition") (both 1929).
Gli Indifferenti and Fascist ostracism
Gli Indifferenti was published at his own expense of 5,000 Italian liraItalian lira
The lira was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. Between 1999 and 2002, the Italian lira was officially a “national subunit” of the euro...
. Literary critics welcomed the novel as a noteworthy example of contemporary Italian narrative fiction. The next year, he started collaborating with the newspaper La Stampa
La Stampa
La Stampa is one of the best-known, most influential and most widely sold Italian daily newspapers. Published in Turin, it is distributed in Italy and other European nations. The current owner is the Fiat Group.-History:...
, then edited by author Curzio Malaparte
Curzio Malaparte
Curzio Malaparte , born Kurt Erich Suckert, was an Italian journalist, dramatist, short-story writer, novelist and diplomat...
. In 1933, together with Mario Pannunzio, he founded the literary review magazines Caratteri ("Characters") and Oggi ("Today"), and started writing for the newspaper, La Gazzetta del Popolo.
The years leading to World War II were problematic; the Fascist regime
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
seized La Mascherata ("Masquerade") (1941), prohibited reviews of Le Ambizioni Sbagliate (1935), and banned publication of Agostino (Two Adolescents) (1941). In 1935 he traveled to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to give a lecture series on Italian literature
Italian literature
Italian literature is literature written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian....
.
L'imbroglio ("The Cheat") was published by Bompiani in 1937. To avoid Fascist censorship he wrote mainly in the surrealist and allegoric
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
genres, among the works is Il Sogno del Pigro ("The Dream of the Lazy"), however, the Fascist seizing of the second edition of La Mascherata, in 1941, thereafter forced him to write under a pseudonym. That same year, he married the novelist Elsa Morante
Elsa Morante
Elsa Morante was an Italian novelist, perhaps best known for her novel La storia .-Biography:...
, whom he had met in 1936; they lived in Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
, where he wrote Agostino.
After the Armistice
Armistice with Italy
The Armistice with Italy was an armistice signed on September 3 and publicly declared on September 8, 1943, during World War II, between Italy and the Allied armed forces, who were then occupying the southern end of the country, entailing the capitulation of Italy...
of 8 September 1943, Moravia and Morante took refuge in Fondi
Fondi
Fondi is a city and comune in the province of Latina, Lazio, central Italy, halfway between Rome and Naples. Before the construction of the highway between the latter cities in the late 1950s, Fondi had been an important settlement on the Roman Via Appia, which was the main connection from Rome to...
, on the border of Ciociaria
Ciociaria
Ciociaria is the name of a traditional region of Central Italy without a defined border nor historical identity. The name was adopted by a fascist movement of Frosinone as an ethnical denomination for the province of Frosinone, when it was created in 1927....
; the experience inspired La Ciociara ("The Woman of Ciociara") (1958).
Return to Rome and national popularity
In May 1944, after the liberation of Rome, Alberto Moravia returned and began collaborating with Corrado Alvaro, writing for important newspapers such as Il Mondo and Il Corriere della Sera; the latter published his writing until his death.At war's end, his popularity steadily increased, with works such as La Romana (The Woman of Rome) (1947), La Disubbidienza (Disobedience) (1948), L'Amore Coniugale e altri racconti ("Conjugal Love and other stories") (1949) and Il Conformista ("The Conformist") (1951). In 1952 he won the Premio Strega for I Racconti, and his novels began to be translated abroad. That same year "La Provinciale" was cinematically adapted by Mario Soldati
Mario Soldati
Mario Soldati was an Italian writer and film director.-Biography:Soldati studied Humanities in his native city, Turin, and History of Art in Rome. He started publishing novels in 1929 although his fame came with America primo amore, published in 1935, a diary about the time he spent teaching at...
; in 1954 Luigi Zampa
Luigi Zampa
Luigi Zampa was an Italian film-maker.- Biography :Son of a worker, Zampa studied film making from 1932 to 1937 at the Italian film school Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in Rome....
directed La Romana, and in 1955 Gianni Franciolini directed I Racconti Romani ("The Roman Stories") (1954) a short collection that won the Marzotto Award. In 1953, Moravia founded the literary magazine Nuovi Argomenti ("New Arguments"), which featured Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
among its editors.
In the 1950s, he wrote prefaces to works such as Belli's 100 Sonnets, Brancati
Vitaliano Brancati
Vitaliano Brancati was an Italian writer. He was born in Pachino and died in Turin. In 1950 he won the Bagutta Prize.-Selected bibliography:* Don Juan in Sicily * The Handsome Antonio...
's Paolo il Caldo and Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
's Roman Walks. From 1957 onwards, he also reviewed and criticised cinema for the weekly magazines L'Europeo
L'Europeo
L'Europeo was a prominent Italian weekly news magazine launched on November 4, 1945, by the founder-editors Gianni Mazzocchi and Arrigo Benedetti. The magazine stopped publication in 1995.-Orientation:...
and L'Espresso
L'Espresso
l'Espresso is an Italian newsmagazine. It is one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies, the other being Panorama. Since the latter has been acquired by right-wing tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi, l'Espresso enjoys the reputation of being the main politically independent newsmagazine...
; it is collected in the volume Al Cinema ("At the Cinema") (1975).
La noia and later life
In 1960, he published one of his most famous novels, La Noia (Boredom or The Empty Canvas), the story of the troubled sexual relationship between a young, rich painter striving to find sense in his life and an easygoing girl, in Rome. It won the Viareggio PrizeViareggio Prize
The Viareggio Literary Prize is a prestigious Italian literary award, whose first edition was in 1930, and is named after the Tuscan city of Viareggio...
and was filmed by Damiano Damiani in 1962. An adaptation of the book is the basis of Cedric Kahn
Cédric Kahn
Cédric Kahn is a French screenwriter and film director. His films include L'Ennui , from the Alberto Moravia novel Boredom and Red Lights , from the Georges Simenon novel...
's film L'ennui ("The Ennui") (1998).
Several films were based on his other novels: in 1960, Vittorio De Sica
Vittorio de Sica
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement....
cinematically adapted La Ciociara with Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...
; in 1963 Jean-Luc Godard filmed Il Disprezzo (Contempt
Contempt (film)
Contempt is a 1963 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on the Italian novel Il disprezzo by Alberto Moravia. It stars Brigitte Bardot.-Plot:...
) ; in 1964 Francesco Maselli
Francesco Maselli
Francesco Maselli or Citto Maselli is an Italian film director and screenwriter. He has directed 38 films since 1949...
filmed Gli Indifferenti (1964).
In 1962 Moravia and Elsa Morante parted; he went to live with the young writer Dacia Maraini
Dacia Maraini
Dacia Maraini is an Italian writer. She is the daughter of Sicilian Princess Topazia Alliata di Salaparuta, an artist and art dealer, and of Fosco Maraini, a Florentine ethnologist and mountaineer of mixed Ticinese, English and Polish background who wrote in particular on Tibet and Japan...
. Increasingly, he concentrated on theatre; in 1966, he and Maraini and Enzo Siciliano
Enzo Siciliano
Enzo Siciliano was an Italian writer, playwright, literary critic and intellectual.Siciliano was born in Rome. He was collaborator of Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Elsa Morante and many other famous writers in the 1950s and 1960s.From 1996 to 1998 he was President of RAI...
founded the company called "Il Porcospino", which staged works by Moravia, Maraini, Carlo Emilio Gadda
Carlo Emilio Gadda
Carlo Emilio Gadda was an Italian writer and poet. He belongs to the tradition of the language innovators, writers that played with the somewhat stiff standard pre-war Italian language, and added elements of dialects, technical jargon and wordplay.-Biography:Gadda was a practising engineer from...
, and others.
In 1967 Moravia visited China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
. In 1971 he published the novel Io e lui (["I and He"]The Two of Us) about a screenwriter and his independent penis and the situations to which he thrusts them, and the essay Poesia e romanzo ("Poetry and Novel"). In 1972 he went to Africa, which inspired his work A quale tribù appartieni? ("Which Tribe Do You Belong To?"), published in the same year. His 1982 trip to Japan, including a visit to Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
, inspired a series of articles for L'Espresso magazine about the atomic bomb. The same theme is in the novel L'Uomo che Guarda ("The Man Who Looks") (1985) and the essay L'Inverno Nucleare ("The Nuclear Winter") including interviews with some contemporary principal scientists and politicians.
The short story collection, La Cosa e altri racconti ("The Thing and other stories"), was dedicated to Carmen Llera, his new companion (forty-five years his junior), whom he married in 1986. In 1984 he was elected to the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
as member from the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
. His experiences at Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
, which ended in 1988, are told in Il Diario Europeo ("The European Diary"). In 1985 he won the title of "European Personality".
In September 1990, Alberto Moravia was found dead in the bathroom of his Lungotevere apartment, in Rome. In that year, Bompani published his autobiography, Vita di Moravia ("Life of Moravia").
Themes and literary style
Moral aridity, the hypocrisy of contemporary life, and the substantial incapability of people finding happiness in traditional ways such as love and marriage are the regnant themes in the works of Alberto Moravia. Usually, these conditions are pathologically typical of middle-class life; marriage, in particular, is the target of works such as Disobedience and L'amore coniugale ("The Conjugal Love") (1949). Alienation is the theme in works such as Il disprezzo ("Contempt" or "A Ghost at Noon") (1954) and La noia ("The Empty Canvas") from the 1950s, despite observation from a rational-realistic perspective. Political themes are often present: an example is La Romana ("The Woman of Rome") (1947), the story of a prostitute entangled with the Fascist regime and with a network of conspirators. The extreme sexual realism in La noia ("The Empty Canvas") (1960) introduced the psychologically experimental works of the 1970s.Moravia's writing style was highly regarded for being extremely stark and unadorned, characterised by very elementary, common words within an elaborate syntax. A complex mood is established by mixing a proposition constituting the description of a single psychological observation mixed with another such proposition. In the later novels, the inner monologue is prominent.
See also
- Le Mondes 100 Books of the CenturyLe Monde's 100 Books of the CenturyThe 100 Books of the Century is a grading of the books considered as the hundred best of the 20th century, drawn up in the spring of 1999 through a poll conducted by the French retailer Fnac and the Paris newspaper Le Monde....
, a list which includes A Ghost at Noon
External links
- The Paris Review Interview
- Alberto Moravia biography
- Listen to Pioggia di Maggio by Alberto Moravia free download on mp3
- Listen to Romolo e Remo, one of Moravia's Racconti Romani