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Alberto Moravia
1907-1990
Pseudonym
of Alberto Pincherle
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 Italian
journalist, short-story writer, and novelist who's work explored
sex, social alienation, and other contemporary issues - he was a
major figure in 20th-century Italian literature. Moravia was married
to fellow author Elsa Morante (1941-1963), best known for her novel
LA STORIA (1974).
"Alas, Fausta had told the truth: everything was left exactly
as it had been on the day I went away. One seemed to be poking
one's nose into the study of one of those long-dead writers whose
rooms have been transformed into museums, which are visited by
people reverently and hat in hand. Except that there was a difference:
those writers whose rooms have been transformed into museums were
for the most part real, genuine writers; or were, in their lifetime,
sublimated artists of the first water, and their studies are faithful
mirrors of their sublimation. I, on the contrary, am desublimated,
and my study was clearly a museum of mediocrity, of approximation,
of self-didactism, of foolish aspirations, of the near miss, of
amateurishness."
(from The Two of Us, 1971)
Moravia was born in Rome into a well-to-do middle-class family.
His mother was Teresa (de Marcanich) Pincherle, and his father,
Carlo Pincherle, an architect and a painter. At the age of nine
Moravia was stricken with a tubercular infection of the leg bones,
which he later considered the most important factor in his early
development. From 1916 to 1925 he spent considerable periods in
sanatoriums. During these years Moravia started to write and published
his first major novel, GLI INDIFFERENTI (Time of Indifference) in
1929. It was perhaps the first European Existentialist novel.
The story focuses on three days in the life of a Roman family,
who keep up a bourgeois front while living at the edge of poverty.
The condemnation of the Roman bourgeoisie under fascism became sensation.
In order not to arouse the authorities' disapproval, Moravia wrote
in an allegorical style, but his increasing involvement in politics
led to his books being banned.
 Later
Moravia employed his archetypes; an impotent intellectual, his virile
rival, a voluptuous seductress, and an aging mistress, in his other
books. Generally Moravia regarded women as being superior to men.
He saw sex as the enemy of love. Variations on the women of Gli
indifferenti are found in LA ROMANA (1947, The Woman of Rome),
in which the protagonist, Adriana, is a prostitute, LA CIOCIARA
(1958, Two Women), which recounts the war experiences of a middle-class
businesswoman and her daughter who flee into the mountains to escape
Allied bombings. Moroccan soldiers rape the daughter; she becomes
a prostitute and her mother a thief. Moravia's criticism of society
in presented on an allegorical level - proletariat is raped by capitalism.
In the 1930s Moravia worked as a foreign correspondent for La
Stampa and La Gazetta del Popolo. He travelled in the
U.S., Poland, China, Mexico, and other countries. His works were
censored by Benito Mussolini's fascist government, and placed by
the Vatican on the Index librorum prohibitarum (Index of
Forbidden Books). Moravia criticized sharply the dehumanised, capitalist
world. He was especially influenced by the thoughts of Marx and
Freud. After the publication of LE AMBIZIONI SBAGLIATE (1935, The
Wheel of Fortune), Moravia lost his job at the Gazetta del Popolo.
In 1937 appeared Moravia's L'IMBROGLIO, a collection of short stories,
which included L'Architetto, La Tempesta, and La
Provinciale. Several of his stories were first published in
newspapers. RACCONTI ROMANI (1954, Roman Tales) and NUOVI RACCONTI
ROMANI (1959, More Roman Tales) include some of Moravia's best sketches
of working-class characters in everyday situations.
From 1941 to 1943 Moravia lived in Anacapri (Capri). In 1943 he
fled into the mountains of Ciociaria. He had written in 1941 a comic
parody of the Mussolini government, LA MASCHERATA, attacked fascism
in his articles in Il Popolo di Roma, and was in danger of
being arrested. He went into hiding in the peasant community in
Fondi, near Cassino, until the Allied Liberation.
In 1953 Moravia edited, with Alberto Carocci, Nuovi Argomenti,
from 1955 he was the film critic for L'Espresso, and in 1955
he was a State Department lecturer in the United States. Between
the years 1958 and 1970 he travelled throughout the world. In 1982
he edited with Leonardo Sciascia and Enzo Siciliano Nuovi Argomenti.
 Among
Moravias later works are LA NOIA (1960, The Empty Canvas), L'ATTENZIONE
(1965, The Lie), and IO E LUI (1971, The Two of Us), a story of
a film writer who tries to understand his independently behaving
large penis. LA VITA INTERIORE (1978, Time of Desecration) was composed
in the form of an interview between the ostensible narrator and
the interviewee, Desideria. He wrote for several magazines, contributing
Corriere della Sera regulary from 1946. From his wide travels
Moravia produced several articles and travel books, including UN
MESE IN URSS (1958), LA RIVOLUZIONE CULTURALE IN CINA (1968), and
VIAGGI. ARTICOLI 1930-1990 (1994).
Moravia's autobiography ALBERTO MORAVIA'S LIFE was published in
1990. In 1984 he was elected Italian representative to the European
Parliament. Moravia died in Rome on September 26, 1990. He lived
most of his life in Rome; the city played an important role in his
fiction.
For further reading: Moravia by Giuliano Dego (1966);
Three Italian Novelist by D. Heiney (1968); The Existentialism
of Albeto Moravia by J. Ross and D. Freed (1972); Selected Essays
by E. Montale (1978): Vita di Moravia (Alberto Moravia's Life)
by Alberto Moravia and Alain Elkann (1990); Woman as Object by
S. Wood (1990); The Architecture of Imagery in Alberto Moravia's
Fiction by J.M. Kozma (1993); Homage to Alberto Moravia, ed. by
Rocco Capozzi and Mario B. Mignone (1993); Alberto Moravia by
Thomas Erling Peterson (1996)
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This biography was written by Petri Liukkonen.
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