Alberto Pincherle (the pen-name 'Moravia' was the maiden surname of his paternal grandmother) was born in Via Sgambati in Rome, Italy, to a wealthy middle-class family. His father, Carlo, was an architect and a painter.
His mother, Teresa Iginia de Marsanich, was of origin. His family had interesting twists and developed a complex cultural and political character. The brothers and, founders of the, murdered in France by 's order in 1937, 5 were paternal cousins, and his maternal uncle, was an undersecretary in the cabinet. Moravia did not finish conventional schooling because, at the age of nine, he contracted of the bone; this confined him to bed for five years. He spent three years at home, and two in a sanatorium near, in northeastern Italy. Moravia was an intelligent boy and devoted himself to reading books: some of his favourite authors included,.
He learned French and German, and wrote poems in French and Italian. In 1925 at the age of 18, he left the sanatorium and moved to. During the next three years, partly in Bressanone and partly in Rome, he began to write 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 and, and started his career as a journalist with the magazine 900, which published his first short stories, including '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, costing 5,000 Italian. Literary critics described the novel as a noteworthy example of contemporary Italian narrative fiction. 6 The next year, Moravia started collaborating with the newspaper, then edited by author. In 1933, together with Mario Pannunzio, he founded the literary review magazines Caratteri ('Characters') and ('Today'), and started writing for the newspaper.
The years leading to World War II were problematic for Moravia as an author; the prohibited reviews of Le ambizioni sbagliate (1935), seized his novel La mascherata ('Masquerade') (1941), and banned publication of Agostino ( Two Adolescents) (1941). In 1935 he traveled to the United States to give a lecture series on. ^ Accrocca, E.F.
Roma allo specchio nella narrativa Italiano da De Amicis al primo Moravia, Istituto Storia Romana, Rome 1958. Reprinted in Giuliano Dego, Moravia (Writers and Critics Series), Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1966, page 3, ASIN B0000CN5PF. ^ Viola, Carmelo R.
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' 'Alberto Moravia o del 'realismo borghese. Fermenti (in Italian) (Rome: Fermenti Editricce) (203). Retrieved 2013-12-04. ^ Dego, Giuliano (1966).
Moravia (Writers and Critics Series). Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd.
^ Burnside, John (8 July 2011). 'My hero Alberto Moravia'. The Guardian (Guardian News and Media). Retrieved 2013-12-04. ^ Rose, Peter Isaac (2005). The Dispossessed: An Anatomy Of Exile.
Amherst & Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. ^ Moravia, Aberto (1985). L’uomo che guarda.
Milan: Bompiani. Foreword by Giorgio Cavallini. External links. Media related to at Wikimedia Commons. Quotations related to Alberto Moravia at Wikiquote. The Paris Review Interview.
Petri Liukkonen. 'Alberto Moravia'. Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Archived from the original on 4 July 2013.
by Alberto Moravia Pioggia di MaggioListen to free download on mp3. Romolo e RemoListen to, one of Moravia's Racconti Romani. PEN International Non-profit organization positions Preceded by International President of 1959–1962 Succeeded.
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The main objective of the research was to elicit and evaluate the occurrences of text relating to the images/descriptions of interiors in stories and novels by Alberto Moravia in the recent critical edition edited by Casini-Serra for Bompiani. These titles counted: Racconti dispersi (1927-1940); Gli indifferenti (1929); La bella vita (1935); L’imbroglio (1937); La mascherata (1941); L’amante infelice (1943); Agostino (1946); La disubbidienza (1948); Racconti dispersi (1950-1959); Il conformista (1951); La ciociara (1957); La noia (1960).
The research work has also been divided into four chapters preceded by a comprehensive introduction of the reference corpus (7 novels and 54 short stories). At the end of chapters, an important section is represented by the Moravian ‘lemmario’ in which they were lemmatized items related to the culture of living through 56 lexical units divided chronologically and each accompanied by its own number of occurrences (480).
The novels that the great Italian writer Alberto Moravia wrote in the years following the World War II represent an extraordinary survey of the range of human behavior in a fragmented modern society. Boredom, the story of a failed artist and pampered son of a rich family who becomes dangerously attached to a young model, examines the complex relations between money, sex, an The novels that the great Italian writer Alberto Moravia wrote in the years following the World War II represent an extraordinary survey of the range of human behavior in a fragmented modern society. Boredom, the story of a failed artist and pampered son of a rich family who becomes dangerously attached to a young model, examines the complex relations between money, sex, and imperiled masculinity. This powerful and disturbing study in the pathology of modern life is one of the masterworks of a writer whom as Anthony Burgess once remarked, was 'always trying to get to the bottom of the human imbroglio.' Boredom by name, most certainly not by nature, Alberto Moravia has written a fascinating, thought-provoking and often deceptive novel that explores the relations between boredom, sexual obsession and wealth in the social classes of 1950's Rome. Dino, a thirty five year old failed painter, who is caught in some sort of existential crisis. Bored he is, but it's more of an empty and disengaged predicament of the world around him.
His feelings are that boredom originates from the absurdity of a real Boredom by name, most certainly not by nature, Alberto Moravia has written a fascinating, thought-provoking and often deceptive novel that explores the relations between boredom, sexual obsession and wealth in the social classes of 1950's Rome. Dino, a thirty five year old failed painter, who is caught in some sort of existential crisis. Bored he is, but it's more of an empty and disengaged predicament of the world around him.
His feelings are that boredom originates from the absurdity of a reality that is insufficient, boredom is the inability to escape from ones own consciousness. He would display some of the most bizarre behaviour I have ever come across in a literary character. His mother is rich, living a high life in an affluent part of the city, while Dino chooses to live in an apartment elsewhere. He is partly a pampered, spoiled mummy's boy when he so wishes, and can get hold of large amounts of money if he wants, but generally lives with little contact with anyone, and eventually gives up painting as it no longer interests him, if it ever did. But then enter Cecilia, a teenage, sexually promiscuous model, who he meets by chance, when an old painter (Balestrieri) dies in his block. In a brief moment he invites her into his apartment studio and is drawn to her adolescent body, not quite a woman, but no longer a child, with a disturbingly obsessive mind.
Cecilia is as much an interesting character as Dino, and Moravia portrays a young woman who is a step or two above the poverty line, but not yet middle class, someone who can use money, and have a practical attitude towards the possibilities of sex, and yet also exhibit an absence of envy that would make her situation the more lamentable. Dino and Cecelia would regularly engage in love-making, Cecilia out of pleasure and love, Dino out of wanting to possess her, not just physically, but totally after learning she has and had other lovers, including the late Balestrieri, who was her drawing teacher.
Sounds like a powerful and disturbing read?, but what made this such a joy was Moravia's ability to evoke such a wonderful sense of humour throughout, his fiction is not really considered humorous, however in Boredom, it was difficult not to chuckle, or at least crack a smile at some point. When I think of boredom I think of a flat blankness and sensory living-deadness; a kind of soul emptiness so empty that there’s not even enough passion to be tormented by it. But this isn’t Moravia’s boredom. His boredom is what I often refer to (during my own episodes of it) as alienation: a pervasive alienation from all things and all people that stifles the still straining passions thus causing quite a soul’s load of torment. If his boredom had been what I typically think of as boredom then t When I think of boredom I think of a flat blankness and sensory living-deadness; a kind of soul emptiness so empty that there’s not even enough passion to be tormented by it.
But this isn’t Moravia’s boredom. His boredom is what I often refer to (during my own episodes of it) as alienation: a pervasive alienation from all things and all people that stifles the still straining passions thus causing quite a soul’s load of torment.
If his boredom had been what I typically think of as boredom then this novel would’ve probably been intolerable, especially at 320 pages, but well, it was far from boring, it was fascinating. It’s the story of a rich, highly analytical man, an artist who has abandoned painting, who, while suffering through a protracted case of “boredom”, gets involved with a teenage woman with big tits and womanly hips who has not a single analytical nerve in her lovely headpiece. She is in fact a psychic blank with grinding hips, and she is far too much for our analytical protagonist to handle. There is one very telling passage somewhere near the middle of the book where Dino, our protagonist, observes that Cecilia, our hips, suffers from the same boredom as he, but doesn’t know it as she’s never known anything but that boredom, and so she is not tormented as he is tormented. This is just one of many sticking points that prevent Dino from fully possessing/understanding Ceclia, and the novel is propelled by his attempts to possess/understand her so that he can discard her and disentangle himself and get on with his life of boredom. It’s an excruciating tale, relentless in its coldly analytical momentum, but it’s also humorous in its own way. It’s humorous in the way that only the humorless can be.
That is to say, there is no attempt at humor, but there’s something inherently humorous about obsessive analysis confronting that which eludes analysis, such as sex or a purely instinctual woman who only lives moment to moment. There is also something inherently humorous about the after-the-fact analysis of such encounters, as of an alien entity describing life on a distant planet where every little rule of conduct is different from a previously known norm; a transformation of the mundane into the inalterably odd. I’m not saying that I laughed out loud while reading Boredom, but there was enough of this humor to maintain the narrative at a jaunty pace. And what a pace it was!
I could not put this book down. There’s a cool crispness and clarity to the narrative voice, with every sentence inevitably linked to the next, so that even the excessive detail that is invariably the product of over-analysis was just so much more to enjoy. But I did have one gripe with the translation, though this nit might’ve been in the original; and that was a weird dialogue tic expressed through the contraction “d’you”, as in “do you”. Why this was insisted on I couldn’t figure out, as the rest of the book is written in a clean and orderly way.
Even the dialogue is clean and orderly besides this little tic. I found myself trying to pronounce “d’you” and it just sounded stupid, as I couldn’t entirely cut out that initial “o”. Try it and you’ll see.
It seems a more appropriate title for this book would have been Obsession, as it chronicles the pathetic tale of a 35-year-old painter (who doesn't paint) who is madly in love with a maddening 17-year-old girl who has already showed an older painter to his death (he died of 'obsession,' too, it would appear). But maybe boredom and obsession are more closely aligned than one would think. Only through boredom does one become an addict, whether of another person or a habit doesn't matter. People are It seems a more appropriate title for this book would have been Obsession, as it chronicles the pathetic tale of a 35-year-old painter (who doesn't paint) who is madly in love with a maddening 17-year-old girl who has already showed an older painter to his death (he died of 'obsession,' too, it would appear). But maybe boredom and obsession are more closely aligned than one would think.
Only through boredom does one become an addict, whether of another person or a habit doesn't matter. People are hardwired for such penchants, I guess. Look at smoking (if it doesn't get in your eyes). All out of the rich fertilizer of boredom. What about texting? The cellphone itself?
Social networking? Like the girl in this book, all objects of obsession. Still, 2-start credit goes to Moravia for getting me through, start to finish, despite the fact that I loathed both painter and his nymphomaniac friend (in fairness, they both qualify for that particular branch of 'boredom').
I should have known, reading a book of this title. I was asking for it. In obsessed spades lifting chunks of boredom from the roots. I want to go as far as to say that this has got to be one of the finest, most psychologically captivating novels I have ever read. I've given it 4 stars, because although necessary in hindsight, the beginning was very difficult to read. I almost bailed out because of the slow and in some places stagnant narration, which made it hard to tell which direction the novel would ulitimately end up taking.
I'm so glad that I stuck it out. Boredom is the story of Dino, a rich, failed painter who is discon I want to go as far as to say that this has got to be one of the finest, most psychologically captivating novels I have ever read. I've given it 4 stars, because although necessary in hindsight, the beginning was very difficult to read.
I almost bailed out because of the slow and in some places stagnant narration, which made it hard to tell which direction the novel would ulitimately end up taking. I'm so glad that I stuck it out.
Boredom is the story of Dino, a rich, failed painter who is disconnected from and unable to grasp reality, and so, overcome with boredom, a boredom he thinks is not in-line with the type people usually mean when they employ the term. He happens upon Cecila, an attractive, elusive, seventeen-year old girl and ultimately destroys himself through trying to possess her. This novel is rife with fascinating character relationships. First, there is Dino's pitiful relationship with his mother, of whom we are afforded only a glimpse of character, but Moravia's skilfull weaving of diaologue with first person narrtive allows us to peer far enough into her psyche tp understand her emotional turmoil and leave us curious as to how deep the troubles in her relationship with Dino go. Amongst these, you are again only afforded glimpses of Dino's relationship with Cecila, Cecilia's with the deceased artist Balestrieri, and the also Cecilia's with her parents.
I'd like to say that Moravia's work is a careful and self-conscious analysis of the desperation of love and the destructive nature of intense carnal desire, but really it's about much more than that. Really, it's a bold statement about what one should find if they are to unashamedly explore the recesses of the human soul.
It's a piece of work that I feel I can't do the justice it deserves in a rushed review, written off the back of drunken infatuation, at 9am on a Monday morning. For the last ten years my older sister has been telling me to read this book. It’s her favourite.
Is it about boredom? She gave me that look, are you stupid, obviously not. Will I be bored? She and I, well, we don’t have similar tastes. It’s a story about 35 yr.old prick Dino, Italian dandy, who is bored out of his f.ucking mind. He is filthy rich, has a Mommy dear who loves him very much and who is paying everything for him, but he hates his Mommy, because Mommy loves money. He wants to be a pa For the last ten years my older sister has been telling me to read this book.
It’s her favourite. Is it about boredom? She gave me that look, are you stupid, obviously not.
Will I be bored? She and I, well, we don’t have similar tastes. It’s a story about 35 yr.old prick Dino, Italian dandy, who is bored out of his f.ucking mind. He is filthy rich, has a Mommy dear who loves him very much and who is paying everything for him, but he hates his Mommy, because Mommy loves money. He wants to be a painter. I mean he doesn’t really want to be a painter, but at least, with a brush he feels like he is at least doing something (although ‘doing something’ is not an imperative to him), and the truth is - he is doing nothing.
He is just smoking and thinking about having sex with a glass of water, because that’s how bored he is. His boredom has a face and it’s everywhere. He is not depressed, but utterly lethargic and disgusting. He meets intellectually inferior 17 yr.old girl, a lover from his deceased painter neighbour. And she starts milking the life, mind, sex, money and any decency that he has as a man.
Screw you Dino, you prick with no spine, you so deserved that. Now, this sounds easy and predictable, but don’t be fooled. Alberto Moravia is a magician. He is not just like that being recognized as one of the most influential Italian writers of all times. Boredom in this case is being hardcore ridiculed.
Alberto Moravia Novel
For me, this book is horrible, I despise Dino, but this is the point of Boredom. Existentialism in its worst form. Yet another 'existential' novel about a disaffected rich prick going through an existential crisis. Like Sartre's protagonist in or Huysmans', the protagonist here is a spoiled twit who feels disconnected with the world, but he calls it 'boredom.' Our poor little rich boy has stopped painting (it's boring) and really isn't doing much other than spying on his neighbors (but only half-heartedly since that's also boring).
Enter one 17 year old vamp who, except Yet another 'existential' novel about a disaffected rich prick going through an existential crisis. Like Sartre's protagonist in or Huysmans', the protagonist here is a spoiled twit who feels disconnected with the world, but he calls it 'boredom.' Our poor little rich boy has stopped painting (it's boring) and really isn't doing much other than spying on his neighbors (but only half-heartedly since that's also boring). Enter one 17 year old vamp who, except for sex, is even more disconnected than he is, but has none of his intellectual curiosity (but even then, he's only interested in himself and his boredom, not in the rest of the world). He decides to dump her (she's boring) but she starts acting weird which annoys the shit out of our protagonist because he thought he, like, totally possessed her, but now she's acting on her own.
So he becomes obsessed and no longer bored and realizes that she is a stand in for the mystery and abject otherness of the world. He decides he must possess her and then, and only then, can he dump her (because she's boring).
But until he possesses her, she's not boring. Like any good existential novel, there is no real ending. I mean, he does half-heartedly try to kill himself, and very briefly attempts to kill her, but only barely. And he's still bored at the end, but not as much. Oh yeah, I forgot: he hates his mother because she's rich and is obsessed with money. It is well written and it is compelling, but it drove me insane - which is what it wanted to do. 'One can only love what he can’t possess”- Proust.
La Noia Alberto Moravia
The novel starts with the boredom of the central character Dinno which differs from ordinary way in which this word is used. This is the boredom due to which he finds is impossible to relate to the external object as if things and people don’t even exist. Due to this boredom he even fails to paint and there is an empty canvas lying in his studio which awaits brush. In turn of events he meets an young women who fails to put any impression on hi 'One can only love what he can’t possess”- Proust. The novel starts with the boredom of the central character Dinno which differs from ordinary way in which this word is used.
This is the boredom due to which he finds is impossible to relate to the external object as if things and people don’t even exist. Due to this boredom he even fails to paint and there is an empty canvas lying in his studio which awaits brush. In turn of events he meets an young women who fails to put any impression on him and he after making love to her he decided to tell her that he wants to leave her. He is too convinced that women is in love with her and that possibly is reason why she appears boring to him just like other objects. Things gets really problematic for Dinno when he realise that the women is not that interested in him as he imagined her to be. From then on begin a deeply physiological study about the nature of love.
The more indifference and mystery that girl shows, the more he becomes dangerously attached to her. For the first time he seems to abate the feeling of boredom as he is finally getting curious and attached about something, but this feeling disturbs him so much that he wishes to go back to original stage of boredom. He even contemplates to marry her so that her aura ends and he becomes a domesticated element with usual monotony of every day life and in that way he will become boring for him again. 'The whole idea of marriage is unending love but mine was to end this love.
Character of the girl is more fascinating than the dunno specially because of her terrible indifference to everything. In the end it became a quest for me to understand the psychology of the female character but like Dinno I too failed miserably. Probably one of the best novel I read.
My fave line from The Boredom: 'Boredom, for me, was like a kind of fog in which my thought was constantly losing its way, catching glimpses only at intervals of some detail of reality: like a person in a thick mist who catches a glimpse now of the corner of a house, now of the figure of a passer-by, now of some other object, but only for an instant, before they vanish.' No one writes like Moravia.
This book is the one that makes your head feel just right fuzzy! My fave line from The Boredom: 'Boredom, for me, was like a kind of fog in which my thought was constantly losing its way, catching glimpses only at intervals of some detail of reality: like a person in a thick mist who catches a glimpse now of the corner of a house, now of the figure of a passer-by, now of some other object, but only for an instant, before they vanish.'
Alberto Moravia Movies
No one writes like Moravia. This book is the one that makes your head feel just right fuzzy! My first experience with Moravia was another NYRB Classic release of his entitled Agostino which I thoroughly enjoyed. One notices immediately from these books that Moravia is an author who is interested in exploring the depths of the human, male psyche. He is not afraid to explore taboo subjects and depict flawed characters who are trying to grapple with the trappings of their own minds. Dino has grown up in the lap of luxury due to the fact that his mother is rather wealthy.
She lives in an opu My first experience with Moravia was another NYRB Classic release of his entitled Agostino which I thoroughly enjoyed. One notices immediately from these books that Moravia is an author who is interested in exploring the depths of the human, male psyche. He is not afraid to explore taboo subjects and depict flawed characters who are trying to grapple with the trappings of their own minds. Dino has grown up in the lap of luxury due to the fact that his mother is rather wealthy. She lives in an opulent home on the Via Appia in Italy and employs several servants, a gardener and a cook. Dino, however, decides that he wants to be a painter and he rejects his mother’s wealth and lives on his own in a shabby apartment in Rome.
Since he is a thirty-five year old man, it should come as no surprise that he wants freedom from any type of parental control. But his rejection of wealth does not come from an altruistic motivation to spread social and economic equality.
His basic problem, as he tells us, is that he is bored. Dino has been bored for as long as he can remember, going all the way back to early childhood.
Even when he takes up something for which he has an initial passion, like painting, he inevitably becomes bored with it. Dino’s long and tiresome explanation of his boredom was, indeed, boring. He is not a sympathetic character at all and at times his boredom comes across more as depression than as boredom. He has no interest in things around him, he alienates himself from his family, especially his mother, and he suddenly wants nothing to do with tasks that he used to have a passion for. This sounds more to me like depression than boredom.
When Dino meets a very young woman named Cecelia he begins an intense sexual relationship with her. She shows up at his flat every day at the same time, takes her clothes off, and they instantly make love. But after a while, Dino finds all of this terribly mundane and he becomes bored with her. In order to make her seem more interesting he even experiments with treating her cruelly, but he quickly comes to his senses and decides that the best thing to do is to end the relationship.
This is the point in the story where things become interesting for Dino. Just as he is about to break the affair off with Cecelia she starts to become detached from him and begins missing their daily meetings. Dino is convinced that she is having an affair with someone else behind his back. All of a sudden Dino’s boredom has turned to an obsession- an obsession to find out more about this woman, an obsession to find out what she does when she is not with him and an obsession to find out what her family is like.
At this point Dino can’t think of anything but Cecelia and he actually longs for boredom and to be rid of what he calls his love for Cecelia. He proposes marriage to her because, in his twisted sense of logic, he feels that she will settle down and have children and then he will finally be bored of her and can finally cure himself of this love. To use marriage in order to fall out of love and become bored with one’s spouse is Dino’s twisted, ridiculous and morally backwards plan. The book does not have a conclusive ending, as one might expect with an existential novel such as this one. But Dino does vow to get over Cecelia, one way or another. But in the end, it was I who became bored with his never ending desire to attain boredom in his relationship with Cecelia.
This is my third Moravia novel ('Contempt' and 'The Conformist') and so far my favorite. The narrator suffers from boredom (Italian 'noia'), which he defines in a very particular way: 'A sense of the absurdity of a reality which is insufficient or anyhow unable to convince me of its reality' (p5). Alienated from his world, and particularly his wealthy mother, he begins an affair with a very young woman who had previously been the lover of his neighbor and perhaps even caused that neighbor's deat This is my third Moravia novel ('Contempt' and 'The Conformist') and so far my favorite. The narrator suffers from boredom (Italian 'noia'), which he defines in a very particular way: 'A sense of the absurdity of a reality which is insufficient or anyhow unable to convince me of its reality' (p5). Alienated from his world, and particularly his wealthy mother, he begins an affair with a very young woman who had previously been the lover of his neighbor and perhaps even caused that neighbor's death. She is a person of astounding superficiality, which seems to hide some mystery that threatens to disrupt the very boredom to which the narrator has become so attached. The conversations between the compulsively interrogating narrator and his young lover, who maintains a stubborn grasp of only the most flat reality, are very funny and reflect a vision of the world so surprisingly different from that of the narrator that he feels compelled to find some way to reduce her to the 'irreality' that constitutes his boredom (for example, marrying her and turning her into a 'wife').
Moravia is a very good novelist who finds ways to tell a story of sometimes rather philosophical content in a fashion that maintains tension and keeps the reader moving forward. This was stimulating, sometimes quite funny, and a very quick read. This book should have been titled “Possession” for it deals with obsessive-possessive love spawned by the boredom of the disengaged. Dino is a 35 year-old painter who has lost his touch, a spoiled only-child of a doting but rich mother. He hates the lifestyle she represents yet willingly settles for a generous “allowance” so that he can live apart and “poor.” This pseudo-poor state does not do his soul any good (for he can always go back to mama for a stake if times get tough) and he drifts into This book should have been titled “Possession” for it deals with obsessive-possessive love spawned by the boredom of the disengaged. Dino is a 35 year-old painter who has lost his touch, a spoiled only-child of a doting but rich mother. He hates the lifestyle she represents yet willingly settles for a generous “allowance” so that he can live apart and “poor.” This pseudo-poor state does not do his soul any good (for he can always go back to mama for a stake if times get tough) and he drifts into an obsessive relationship with a seventeen year old working class girl, Cecilia, who was the model for an older painter and neighbour, Balastrieri.
The old painter has just died, reputedly in the throes of wild and compulsive sex with his model. Dino rationalizes that if he can quickly love and dump Cecilia, without any emotional entanglement, he should emerge the superior.
The reality is that our weak hero quickly takes Balastrieri’s place by falling for the young woman’s deadly mix of indifferent affections, apparent naivety and primal carnality. What follows is a chase in which Dino attempts to possess Cecilia so that he can discard her, while she leads him on a dance of jealousy as she openly shares his affections with a younger actor. Despite a thin story line, psychological tensions run high in this novel as each character is trying to gain possession of another: Dino’s mother of her son through money; Dino of Cecilia via sex, money, marriage, even contemplated murder; Balastrieri of Cecilia via his health-destroying romps in the sack and obsessive painting of her half-woman, half-child body—none of which work and only lead to more emptiness and desire. And it takes a knock on the head for Dino to come to his senses and realize that people can be loved even if they stand separate from each other, and that this is the most endearing and satisfying form of love.
Cecilia represents the childlike beacon, steering those who come across her path towards this epiphany. I found the writing dense with long narrative passages relieved only in places by staccato dialogue. Dino (like the author, I suspect), the first-person narrator, is obsessive about detail and gives us too much information most of the time, particularly around his thoughts and motivations. To his credit, the author gives us the painter’s appreciation for form in his descriptive passages; Dino analyses Cecilia’s physical frame into a myriad of dimensions and characteristics: “the thinness of the torso, the vigorous curve of the lower back, the superabundant masculinity of the loins” etc. A subtle vein of humour also permeates, especially when the jealous Dino gets constantly sucked into ridiculous interrogations of his lover’s activities and associations, and when he futilely spies on her movements.
And the class distinctions between the working class and the aristocracy are well drawn. I wasn’t bored with this book, despite its overbearing style. The character studies presented were intriguing and realistic, and mildly scary. Moravia, Alberto. (1960; this ed. Dino is a 35-year-old son of a wealthy family.
He disdains being rich and leaves home to rent a studio in Rome to become a painter. Dino’s problem is that he is bored with everything.
Not just bored on the surface, he’s bored in a way that allows him no contact with material things or people or ideas. After painting for a while, he becomes bored with that, too. The artist who rents the studio next to his, Balestrieri, is an older gentleman Moravia, Alberto.
(1960; this ed. Dino is a 35-year-old son of a wealthy family.
He disdains being rich and leaves home to rent a studio in Rome to become a painter. Dino’s problem is that he is bored with everything.
Not just bored on the surface, he’s bored in a way that allows him no contact with material things or people or ideas. After painting for a while, he becomes bored with that, too. The artist who rents the studio next to his, Balestrieri, is an older gentleman – 65 or so. Dino sees that his model visits him almost every day, and suspects that more than painting is going on. He’s right, of course, and in due course the older artist dies from overexertion. The model, Cecilia, then comes to Dino’s studio and wants to know if he wants to paint her, since Balestrieri, her lover, is now dead. Dino takes her up on it, but soon finds that he wants more from her than to be a model.
He becomes infatuated with her. She doesn’t help things, though, since she is totally vapid and doesn’t seem to have any sense of observation or any long-term memory. Dino reaches the point, after starting an intense sexual relationship with her, that he now wants to possess her totally, since by possessing her he can then regard her as an object and subsequently reject her as boring.
First, though, he has to get over his love/lust. As Dino explains to himself: “.boredom, as usual, destroyed first my relationship with outside things and then the things themselves, rendering them empty and incomprehensible. But the new fact this time was that, in face of a Cecilia reduced to an object of absurdity, boredom – possibly owing to the sexual habit which I had formed and which I did not consider necessary to break off, anyhow for the moment – did not merely fill me with coldness and indifference but went beyond these feelings, or rather this lack of feeling, and was transformed into cruelty.” This is a complex novel that attempts to explore the vague relationships that exist among money, sex, and imperiled masculinity. It is a profound and disturbing study of the pathology of modern life.
A book which delves into what it means to possess a lover. There can be physical possession without emotional possession. Or there can be both, but neither of them exclusive possession.
And does the sense of the reality of someone increase or decrease with the possession of them? Does possession lead to boredom, which Moravia defines as a lack of relationship with reality. Is mystery - the elusiveness of truly knowing someone - what can make a person more real to us? Simply put, this might be a A book which delves into what it means to possess a lover. There can be physical possession without emotional possession. Or there can be both, but neither of them exclusive possession.
And does the sense of the reality of someone increase or decrease with the possession of them? Does possession lead to boredom, which Moravia defines as a lack of relationship with reality.
Is mystery - the elusiveness of truly knowing someone - what can make a person more real to us? Simply put, this might be an analysis of 'familiarity breeds contempt.' And Contempt is the title of another of Moravia's novels. In Boredom, the protagonist seems driven to make his lover predictable, which she thwarts at every turn. His ultimate attempt to make her predictable is to ask her to marry him.
He asks her, not to preserve his love for her, but as a way to end it. That may seem like a very bizarre attitude with which to make that overture, until one considers how many marriages fail. The book is an illustration of how a man can come to want what he doesn't want, always as a way to avoid the pain that the wanting brings him. But, as one desire supplants its opposite, the pain is not supplanted. The poor dumb bastard - he wants to possess her so he can let go of her, but she will not be possesssed, and so he can't let her go. Recuperating in a body cast after driving his car into a tree, he realizes he no longer wants to possess her, but wants to watch her live her life, just as she is. He has learned to love her without complications.
Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle, was one of the leading Italian novelists of the twentieth century whose novels explore matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism. He was also a journalist, playwright, essayist and film critic. Moravia was an atheist, his writing was marked by its factual, cold, precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie, underpin Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle, was one of the leading Italian novelists of the twentieth century whose novels explore matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism. He was also a journalist, playwright, essayist and film critic. Moravia was an atheist, his writing was marked by its factual, cold, precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie, underpinned by high social and cultural awareness. Moravia believed that writers must, if they were to represent reality, assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social, and philosophical attitude, but also that, ultimately, 'A writer survives in spite of his beliefs'. Between 1959 and 1962 Moravia was president of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers.
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Author: Alberto Moravia Editor: New York Review of Books ISBN: Size: 15,88 MB Format: PDF, ePub, Docs Read: 564 Thirteen-year-old Agostino is spending the summer at a Tuscan seaside resort with his beautiful widowed mother. When she takes up with a cocksure new companion, Agostino, feeling ignored and unloved, begins hanging around with a group of local young toughs. Though repelled by their squalor and brutality, and repeatedly humiliated for his weakness and ignorance when it comes to women and sex, the boy is increasingly, masochistically drawn to the gang and its rough games. He finds himself unable to make sense of his troubled feelings.
Hoping to be full of manly calm, he is instead beset by guilty curiosity and an urgent desire to sever, at any cost, the thread of troubled sensuality that binds him to his mother. Alberto Moravia’s classic, startling portrait of innocence lost was written in 1942 but rejected by Fascist censors and not published until 1944, when it became a best seller and secured the author the first literary prize of his career. Revived here in a new translation by Michael F. Moore, Agostino is poised to captivate a twenty-first-century audience. Author: Gaetana Marrone Editor: Routledge ISBN: Size: 13,50 MB Format: PDF, ePub, Docs Read: 164 The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is a two-volume reference book containing some 600 entries on all aspects of Italian literary culture.
It includes analytical essays on authors and works, from the most important figures of Italian literature to little known authors and works that are influential to the field. The Encyclopedia is distinguished by substantial articles on critics, themes, genres, schools, historical surveys, and other topics related to the overall subject of Italian literary studies.
The Encyclopedia also includes writers and subjects of contemporary interest, such as those relating to journalism, film, media, children's literature, food and vernacular literatures. Entries consist of an essay on the topic and a bibliographic portion listing works for further reading, and, in the case of entries on individuals, a brief biographical paragraph and list of works by the person. It will be useful to people without specialized knowledge of Italian literature as well as to scholars.