Two Friends

NOTE ON THE TEXT

I. MATERIALS

The typescript pages of the three unpublished drafts of Sergio and Maurizio’s story are in the archives of the Fondo Alberto Moravia in Rome. They consist of 258 typescript pages, on Fabriano Extra Strong paper measuring approximately 28 × 22 centimeters (11 × 8½ inches), unnumbered by the author. The numeration, provided by the archive, reflects the order in which the pages were discovered. Many pages had been damaged over the years and were recently restored.

A REDISCOVERED SUITCASE

The pages were found in a suitcase which was discovered, in poor condition, in the spring of 1996. According to Moravia’s heirs and the directors of the Fondo, it was in the basement of Moravia’s home on the Lungotevere della Vittoria. Another suitcase — which can be seen in photographs taken by Serafino Amato in the special edition of the Quaderni del Fondo Moravia (journal of the Fondo Moravia) dedicated to the exhibit Moravia and Rome (November 2003, pp. 2–3, 201–203), had been discovered, in better condition, a few months earlier, in September 1995. The two suitcases contained various pages written by the author, including materials relating to several novels, such as La ciociara (Two Women), La noia (Boredom), and L’attenzione (Attention), as well as stories which were later included in Racconti romani (Roman Tales), Nuovi racconti romani (New Roman Tales), and L’automa (The Fetish). Thus all of these papers date from the fifties and early sixties, and certainly before 1963, the year Moravia moved out of his home on the Via dell’Oca and into his new home on the Lungotevere. It is possible that the writer, or someone else, filled the suitcases during the move in a somewhat disorderly fashion, packing recent and relevant texts and documents, not to be confused with material Moravia was actively working on at the time. It is also possible that these papers remained in the suitcases, untouched, from 1963 until they were discovered thirty years later.

This may explain their survival. As has been noted by several sources, the writer was known to destroy his preparatory materials once a book had been published. We recall the account of Sebastian Schadhauser (a German sculptor and friend of Moravia’s), transcribed from a video at the Fondo Moravia. Schadhauser accompanied Moravia on several trips during the seventies and eighties, and assisted him during his convalescence from a hernia:

During that period I often lit the fireplace in order to burn manuscripts. When [Moravia] finished writing something, he was in the habit of burning the manuscripts. He didn’t keep manuscripts, he burned them. Also the corrected proofs. When he received proofs from a newspaper, he would correct them, and then when they came back from the editor, he would burn them. There is a fireplace in the corner of his house on the Lungotevere della Vittoria. It’s set at a diagonal, like this. He would light a fire there and burn papers. During that period, I did it because he couldn’t get up. But he burned all of his manuscripts. I don’t think there are many manuscripts in circulation. He had this habit. For him, the finished work was the published work. The rest, he burned.

Up to the present, no other drafts or notes related to Moravia’s novels from before the seventies have been found; there are only a few clean proofs, kept by his editor, which reflect the final version of the work (there is one typescript of La romana (The Woman of Rome) and one of La noia). The situation with the more recent novels is somewhat different; the Fondo Moravia has several drafts that survived in the writer’s home. Of course, it is possible that in the future other lost typescripts or manuscripts will be found, especially if they were given by the author to friends, relatives, or editors, as in the case of a typescript of Il disprezzo (Contempt), that was discovered in 2002. This was an almost final draft of the novel, and it is now in the collection of the Fondo Moravia. But until now the only texts that have survived from the writer’s office are those discovered in the suitcase at the house on Lungotevere della Vittoria, which escaped the flames thanks to the vicissitudes of the move.

In order to understand the dimensions of Moravia’s directive and to evaluate the typescript pages that have survived, we must pause to reflect on the very small number of pages that have been discovered.

It is of course impossible to quantify the total number of typescript pages produced by the author over the course of preparing a novel, but based on the meager resources — letters and interviews — to be found in the “Notes on the Texts” in Bompiani’s Classici edition of Opere complete di Alberto Moravia (Complete Works), volumes 1–4, we could estimate the number to be around one thousand pages, over two thousand in the case of the longer novels. For example, the typescript pages relating to the composition of La ciociara, La noia, and L’attenzione found in the two suitcases represent only a small fraction of the total preparatory materials relating to those works (about a fifth). This would mean that the 258 pages relating to the three versions of this unpublished novel would have been only one small part of the complete preparatory work. If they represent early versions of the novel, that would mean that there was still much work to be done before the completion of the final version.

The pages found in the two suitcases were immediately handed over to the Fondo Alberto Moravia, which was new at the time. The Fondo, in turn, passed them on to the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence (directed by Enzo Siciliano) in September of 1995 and April 1996. There, they were numbered, indexed, and partially restored. In April 1999 they were returned to the Fondo Moravia, where they still reside, and where we were able to refer to them during the preparation of the multivolume “Classici Bompiani” edition.

Even if further study of these pages relating to the story of Sergio and Maurizio might have suggested the possibility of an alternative order, we decided to keep the original numeration provided by the archive because it documents the order in which the pages were originally found (in the suitcase). If in fact this order was determined by Moravia himself, we can derive useful information from it, as we will see, in the task of identifying the texts.

THE “DUE AMICI” TYPESCRIPTS

Among the pages found in the first, more battered, suitcase were those related to an unfinished project. In the absence of a title, they are identified in the Fondo Moravia under the heading “Sergio Maurizio.” For this edition, we decided to use the title I due amici (Two friends). These pages date from the period 1951–1952 and are the oldest example we now have of Moravia’s compositional methods. The aforementioned typescript for La romana (The Woman of Rome), in the collection of the late Valentino Bompiani, is different: it is in a completed draft, ready to be be sent out to readers.

Before reconstructing the biographical and narrative context, we must describe these texts carefully, pointing out the details which are most useful for dating them and determining their internal order.

VERSION A

The first group of pages, which we have called Version A, consists of sixty-two typescript pages, unnumbered and unmarked by the author, plus nine more abandoned, rewritten, or substituted by him. According to the current numeration in the archive, this corresponds to pages 162–225 and 231–37 in Dossier 6 (Incartamento 6). Many pages, now restored, had deteriorated over time and include lacunae, especially near the margins.

Regarding the text, there are frequent typewritten corrections but none by hand, with the exception of page 214. The narrative sequence, which can easily be reconstructed despite a few lacunae which we will discuss later, is the following: pages 231, 162–215, 221–22, and 216–20. However, it is difficult to establish a date for the composition of these pages, because there are no material clues nor clues within the text itself — except for a generic reference to post-conflict events. The only clues can be derived from the order in which the pages were assembled and conserved within the suitcase; for example, page 161, a discarded or misplaced page (found) near a typescript identifiable as “II Monumento” (see Opere, volume 3, and in particular page 1118), a story that was published in the newspaper Il Mondo on March 24, 1951. Of course, this proximity does not allow us to date the typescript, in that it may well be accidental and may have occurred at a later date, but it may possibly indicate a terminus post quem, if we were to imagine a progressive accumulation of pages on the writer’s desk. In general, Version A seems to date from the period after March 1951. Another element, which we will consider later, is the obvious connection between this text and themes and characters in Versions B and C.

The missing sections comprise, for the most part, the beginning and the end of the text. The pages — or page — containing the true incipit of the narration have been lost. The top of the first page we do have, typescript page 231, which precedes all others from a narrative perspective, is severely damaged and probably does not contain the beginning of the story. In the present edition, after a lacuna, the beginning of the text seems to suggest a previous event (line 18 of page 231). In the preceding lines, Moravia had written a passage in triplicate, something he often did in the initial phases of composition. The text of lines 1–17 follows:

[…] The opportunity arose e […]<…>o; when their o […] completely under […] automobile […][…] arose quite a bit earlier […] their hostility was […] stood. They had […] and Sergio decided one day […] mobile that Maurizio’s parents haght […]<…>st birthday. The opportunity arose quite a bit earlier than t […] en their hostility had not yet […] completely understood. That year, when Mau [V] gio eighteen, also marked the beginning, for Maurizio, of […] he had a foreign lover, te older […] he was moderately infatuated, while she was in love and […].

There is another missing passage between typescript pages 231 and 162. The passage probably comprises a single missing page, which in all likelihood contained the conversation between Emilia and Sergio, the outcome of which is described on page 162.

The story proceeds from there onward without interruptions for fifty-four typescript pages (162–215), which constitute the main body of the text that has survived. After page 215, one or more pages are missing. The two brief remaining sections (pages 221–22 and 216–20) have a clear, if not completely identifiable, connection to the earlier scenes and themes. In the first (pages 221–22), the two characters are still in the park of the Museo Borghese. This connects the scene to preceding events; we can hypothesize that there is perhaps only a single typescript page missing between pages 215 and 221. The final section (pages 216–20), in which Sergio accompanies the young girl to her new lodgings, clearly takes place later. What is more difficult to understand, because of the missing pages, is the scene in which the two characters shop for a bathing suit — perhaps they were planning to go swimming in the Tevere, given the August heat.

There are a few clear breaks in the text — indicated with empty spaces or typewritten symbols, demarcating sections, however provisional these may be (on pages 164, 188, and 214). Based on these breaks, we can hypothesize regarding the basic structure of the narrative:

I. (pp. 231, 162–64): Maurizio breaks off relations with Emilia and Sergio.

II. (pp. 165–70): Sergio in the years leading up to the war

III. (pp. 170–88): the war years and the fall of Fascism

IV. (pp. 189–214): the visit to Maurizio’s house; the air raid

V. (pp. 215, 221–22, 216–20): the meeting with Nella

From a narrative standpoint, one can surmise that the first two sections are a kind of prologue, in which Maurizio and Sergio are presented to the reader and the story of their friendship before the war is recounted. The actual story begins in 1943, when Sergio is faced with the choice between taking a political stand and leaving Rome, between Federico’s proposal and Maurizio’s. It continues with the visit to Maurizio’s house and the scene in which Sergio and Maurizio meet Nella.

At the bottom of page 185 we see the only compositional note present on these typescripts: “He goes to Maurizio’s villa, decadence, dog and cat, Maurizio’s family.” This note clearly indicates what is to come in the following pages.

VERSION B

The second typescript consists of eighty-seven unnumbered pages. The archive subsequently numbered the pages, according to the order in which they were found: pages 55–66, 68, 70–74, 76–121, and 123–43, all from Dossier 6 (Incartamento 6). Among the tranches of Moravia’s project, the second is the most complete. Most of the corrections are inserted by typewriter, very few by hand (only on pages 62 and 105).

A few visual markings in the text clearly indicate narrative breaks. They consist of either typewritten symbols or empty spaces on pages 62, 84, 90, 108, 118, 131, and 140. The following structure is revealed:

I. (pp. 55–62): Sergio and Lalla

II. (pp. 62–84): Sergio and Lalla visit Maurizio’s house.

III. (pp. 84–90): dialogue between Sergio and Lalla

IV. (pp. 90–108): Sergio and Maurizio’s pact regarding Lalla

V. (pp. 109–18): the party at Moroni’s

VI. (pp. 118–31): the drive to Olevano

VII. (pp. 131–40): events at Olevano

VIII. (140–43): Sergio and Maurizio’s return to Rome

Regarding the dates of composition of this version, we have the following clues:

1) Two of the pages were reused by Moravia and contain, on the back, traces of earlier texts, which can be dated (pages 96 and 115). Typescript page 96 contains a brief narrative note on the back, which, due to its format, appears to be part of a movie script (“An investor visits a textile factory; the owner of the factory is hoping for an investment. During the visit, the group”). As we will see, we can hypothesize that this note refers to the screenplay for a film by the French director Claude Autant-Lara, but we cannot exclude the possibility that it comes from an updated adaptation of Giovanni Verga’s story “La lupa,” which Moravia completed in 1953 for the director Alberto Lattuada. According to one critic, this consisted of “a complete revision of the narrative material, containing a new character, invented by Moravia: the owner of the Manifattura Tabacchi” (Agnoletti, 1953).

2) Two lines appear on the reverse of page 115 (“more and more, and everything was useless because the more I spent, the more she said I was stingy and that I hated to spend money, and on and on”). These lines belong to a draft of the “Roman tale” “Sciupone” (“Spendthrift”), which was published in the Corriere della sera on April 18, 1953 (see Opere, volume 3, page 519). Since Moravia usually completed his stories not long before they were published in the newspaper, this page gives us a terminus post quem: the writing on the reverse of the page cannot date from before April 1952. This is perhaps the most certain and significant clue we have regarding the dating of this text.

3) Two letters intermixed with the pages of Version B probably reflect the accumulation of papers on Moravia’s desk (pages 75 and 112). Page 75 contains an invitation to an exhibition, written on letterhead from the Centro Nazionale di Studi Umanistici di Roma and dated May 15, 1952. Page 112 is a typewritten letter dated May 16, 1952, and addressed to “Riccio,” probably Attilio Riccio. In the letter Moravia discusses the contract for a screenplay (perhaps the one that appears on page 96).

4) Two pages (67 and 69) belong to Version C but are mixed in with the pages from Version B. This too is an important clue, because the intentional placement of these two pages among the pages of the second draft confirms the chronological precedence of Version B (written in the third person) with respect to Version C (written in the first person). In Version C, Moravia returns to characters and situations from Version B (such as the arrival at Maurizio’s villa on page 68 and the description of Maurizio on page 70), but he leaves pages 67 and 69 unfinished, mixed in with the pages of Version B, and decides to write them again. The new pages are placed in Version C (273 and 272*). (To avoid confusion, the pages from Dossier 4 are indicated with an asterisk; the pages without this symbol are all from Dossier 6.)

It appears that the typescript of Version B may date from the period April — May of 1952 and was subsequently used as a draft for Version C.

VERSION C

The third draft, which we have called C, consists of eighty-two pages, plus twenty-two additional pages abandoned or rewritten at this stage of composition. These are clusters of unordered pages whose narrative continuity can be easily reconstructed: pages 226–29, 230, 238–41, and 242–96 from Dossier 6 and pages 260*–74*, 238*, 237*. 236*, 235*. and 234* from Dossier 4. There are only a few corrections, written in pen on (pages 229, 255, 293, and 273*). Pages 144, 148–60, and 217*–33* were all discarded by the author. There are no page numbers or other notes.

There are very few clues to the dates of composition. The draft includes pages from another typescript (pages 145–47), that of the Roman tale “Il pensatore” (“The Thinker”), which was published in the Corriere della sera on May 4, 1962. But it is impossible to pinpoint the moment at which the pages were mixed together. However, since Version C was written after Version B and before Moravia began work on Il disprezzo (Contempt), as we will discuss, the composition of this version can be dated sometime between May and July 1952.

A few breaks in the text, which we have preserved, indicate breaks in the narration, some of which were probably temporary. The breaks are indicated with blank space or typed symbols and occur on typescript pages 229, 240, 249, 259, and 268*. Page 259 suggests a continuation, after the final line, “I would have liked to s.” Thus, it is possible to theorize the following sequence, in six chapters:

I. (pp. 226–29): the “first important event”: Sergio’s inscription into the Communist Party

II. (pp. 230, 238–40): the “second important event”: the encounter with Nella

III. (pp. 241–49): life with Nella

IV. (pp. 249–59): the encounter with Maurizio

V. (pp. 260–96 and 260*–68*): the party at Maurizio’s house

VI. (pp. 268*–74*, 238*. 237*. 236*. 235*, and 234*): Sergio’s conversation with Maurizio

Again, this is only a provisional breakdown. If we consider the structure of Moravia’s novels from this period, we can imagine that the author intended to include a prologue, distinguishable as such from the start, in which the narrator would illustrate the “two important events” in his life during the period after the end of the war; in other words, Sergio’s inscription into the Communist Party and his encounter with Nella. This would be followed by the first real narrative event; in other words, the “first chapter,” in which Sergio describes Maurizio’s invitation and the party.

The composition of Version C evolved in two phases, as suggested by the change in the name of the female character, from “Lalla” (as in the previous version) to “Nella.” Her characterization is profoundly different in each phase. As we will see, we are talking about an important rethinking of the character. This new version introduces, for the first time, the theme of “contempt” which will eventually lead to the abandonment of this project and the starting point of a new novel. For reasons of clarity, we will refer to phases C1 and C2.

The draft of C1 proceeds, without interruption, for about ten pages (226–29, 158–60, and 242–44). Lalla is self-assured, “rough,” provocative. But beginning on page 245, she becomes Nella, and is characterized by her timidity and gentleness. In this context, Moravia rewrites the pages describing their first meeting in the offices of the Allied Services, but does not bother to rewrite the pages that precede or follow this scene. He replaces pages 158–60 of C1 with pages 230 and 238–41 of C2. He hastily ties the the new pages together with the previous pages, crossing out (with a pen) the sections of page 229 in which the young woman first appears under the name “Lalla.” But he does not bother to do this on following pages. This creates a confusing deformation of the text, caused by a lack of agreement between pages 241 (C2) and 242 (C1). The sequence and the author’s intentions are clear, but it seems that a revision parallel to the one on page 229 never took place.

In accordance with our decision to publish the text in its most advanced form, we have adopted phase C2, while including the corresponding pages from C1 in the appendix. In addition, we have made a few indispensible changes in order to connect pages 241 and 242. To begin with, we eliminated the first seven lines of page 242 (which appear in the appendix), just as the author did on page 229. As we have already observed, in this phase of composition, Moravia was not overly concerned with eliminating earlier versions but was careful to distinguish between abandoned versions and more recent ones. Once again we can theorize that the author was simply saving time and was planning to correct the draft in a later revision. Secondly, we changed the name “Lalla” to “Nella” in the three pages from C1 preserved with C2 (242–44). Despite these small edits, there are a few spots in which these pages refer to elements that have been either cut or altered. For example, the beginning of page 243 (“I said earlier that this was a difficult period in my life but in truth it was probably the happiest time I had known”) refers to a phrase that the reader will not find in the text but rather in the version that appears in the appendix. The same is true of the reference to the “radio service” (page 243), rather than to a generic office of the Allied Services, which refers back to one of the abandoned pages. Nella’s “clumsiness,” to which Sergio refers on page 243, is also a leftover from the character of Lalla.

In C2, as we have indicated, the theme of “contempt” is developed for the first time (page 240). It is mentioned only in passing in C1 (page 160). The importance of the appearance of this theme is clear in Moravia’s process — this is the point at which the author probably decided to abandon the project at hand, which was centered on the ideological rivalry between two friends, and to instead proceed with a different novel, which would eventually be titled Il disprezzo (Contempt). Thus, the development of Il disprezzo can be said to have begun in July 1952, at the moment the current project was abandoned. We should keep in mind that the feelings of contempt described by the narrator Sergio are quite different from the contempt which provides the subject of the subsequent, eponymous novel. In fact, the original title of the latter novel was Il fantasma di mezzogiorno (A Ghost at Noon). One significant difference: in the earlier novel, the feeling is experienced by the narrator toward the woman whom he is using as a means to an end, while in the later book, published in 1954, the feeling is experienced by the woman toward her husband.

Among the abandoned pages, a few (219*–220*, included in the appendix) suggest a different narrative direction. Instead of bumping into Maurizio and being invited to a party at his house, Sergio and Nella are invited to “a little gathering at the house of a man called Moroni, a friend, or more specifically a student, of Nella’s” (page 219*). As we know, this character and situation already appear in Version B, and it would seem that early on, Moravia intended to continue along those lines. Nella refuses to attend Moroni’s “little gathering” because of the poor state of her wardrobe, and Sergio becomes violent. The writer picks up this scene once again in Version C, but in reference to Maurizio’s party. One can therefore posit that these three pages were meant to follow the “prologue” (after page 249) and to constitute the first version of the party. The party will later become a gathering organized by Maurizio, and Moroni will become a guest, a small-time cinema producer.

II. EXTERNAL HISTORY

In order to reconstruct the external history of these typescripts, we must first gather all the information that can illuminate Moravia’s working process in the period between Il conformista (The Conformist), which he finished in November 1950 and published in April 1951 (see Opere, volume 3, pages 2972–82) and Il disprezzo (Contempt), which was begun, as we shall see, in July 1952 and published in 1954 (see Opere, volume 3, pages 2127–36). We will try to reconstruct, as far as the documents allow, the temporal arc spanning the period from the end of 1950 to the summer of 1952. We must consider the rare references in interviews and letters, even though, as we shall see, they are vague and contradictory.

THE INTERVIEWS

Two interviews are particularly relevant. Moravia was interviewed by Pasquale Festa Campanile on January 8, 1952, for the journal La Fiera Letteraria (The book fair) and one year later, on February 8, 1953, for the journal Il Lavoro Illustrato (Illustrated work). The first interview allows us some insight into the author’s literary and publishing situation during those years. Moravia says:

I have been suffering from insomnia. I work in the morning, and in the afternoon I rest. I’ve never been a very assiduous worker. It took me two years to finish Il conformista. I think it will take me some time to recover from this book. After all, I’ve written fifteen books. I’m preparing a volume of 600 pages for Bompiani, an anthology of stories […] all of the stories I have written from 1927 onward. I am currently writing a very modern play; I’d rather not say any more about it, perhaps I’ll never finish it. And besides, I don’t even know what the title will be, or how many acts it will have. On the other hand, I’ve been writing a lot of stories for the Corriere della sera. Have you seen them? They are all set in Rome. I am very attached to these stories; I’ve written fifty so far; I’m from Rome, I know it well, and I like its inhabitants. So I love to write about them in my own way […] I’ve been publishing these stories in the Corriere, and toward the end of the year I’m planning to gather them all into a volume. I think I will simply call it Racconti romani. I’ve also been thinking about a very short novel; but this is a project that I am not yet ready to discuss.

It seems that in early 1952 Moravia was mainly thinking about stories. The omnibus volume (I racconti) was in fact published in April 1952. Meanwhile, almost every month, Moravia published twenty more Roman tales in the Corriere, in addition to the fifty he had already published; they were all collected in a single volume in 1953. The reference to a project for the theater is more mysterious; it was probably abandoned. Even more mysterious and probably more relevant is the mention of a “very short novel,” which he is still “thinking about.” It seems that at this point early in 1952 Moravia had not yet begun work on the novel, and that he was still feeling tired and discouraged in the aftermath of Il conformista.

But a year later, in the 1953 interview, a different picture emerges. In the interviewer’s words:

Between 1950 and 1952, for example, [Moravia] wrote a long novel; he was not happy with it and decided to burn it. This novel recounted the story of a group of young Communists and the relationship between their romantic lives and their political ideologies. In other words, he wanted to show the degree to which a political party which does not allow space for individuality can influence the relations of the heart. The novel that Moravia is currently writing is entitled Fantasma di mezzogiorno; it too deals with a romantic episode. Fantasma di mezzogiorno is now finished, but Moravia is writing it again from the beginning, and he has not yet decided whether he will publish it.

Fantasma di mezzogiorno was the original title of Il disprezzo; in fact, the English edition was published under the title A Ghost at Noon. But the reference to a “long novel,” written between 1950 and 1952 and then incinerated, is a mystery. All we know is its subject (“the story of a group of young Communists and the relationship between their romantic lives and their political ideologies”) and the overriding idea (“the degree to which a political party which does not allow space for individuality can influence the relations of the heart”).

There are no other explicit references to this project in other interviews, unless we include a mention in the first autobiographical interview given by the author to Enzo Siciliano, published in 1971. The author recalls a sketch for an abandoned novel with a similar plot but dates it to the period after the publication of Il disprezzo and before La ciociara (Two Women); in other words, between 1954 and 1956:

Q: So, with La ciociara you returned to a Roman subject.

A: Yes. Well, if not a Roman subject, at least a choral theme, like the rest of my Roman writings. I had begun writing a very different novel: I had already written about two hundred pages, but I didn’t like them. It was the story of a very rich man who is responsible for the disillusionment of a young Communist because he manipulates him into going to bed with his wife, a very beautiful woman. Some time later I made a story out of it.

The plot sounds similar to the one regarding “a group of young Communists and the relationship between their romantic lives and their political ideologies,” or at least it seems to emerge from the same thematic intention. This sketch for a novel, which could be dated to the period 1954–1956, seems to be linked, like the one from the period 1950–1952, to the idea of the romantic life of a young Communist. Among the pages from the suitcase that appear to date from the period of La ciociara and La noia (Boredom), there are none that contain a similar plot featuring a Communist character (see Opere, volume 4), nor has a story with a similar subject been identified. This discrepancy could be explained simply by a lack of chronological precision on Moravia’s part during the interview, which took place twenty years after the fact. It is possible that in this interview Moravia was in fact referring to the project which he undertook in the period 1951–1952.

But we have no further details with which to support this hypothesis.

LETTERS

Leaving behind the contradictory references in his public declarations, we turn our attention to possible clues in Moravia’s private correspondence, especially the correspondence with his editor (see Opere, volume 3, pages 2063–2087 and 2126–2149). In this case too there are possible distortions, which may result from the fact that Moravia was attempting to obtain more advantageous conditions and financial assistance, especially during the years after the enormous success of La romana (The Woman of Rome), when he was seeking financial autonomy.

The failure of Il conformista, which the author attributed, not incorrectly, to the hostility of the critics, caused a kind of depression in him, thereby rendering the second half of 1951 unproductive. He writes, in a letter dated July 20: “A great listlessness has come over me after the Italian critics’ unjust and stupid reception of my last novel. I have almost no desire to work” (Archivio Bompiani). The first interview with Festa Campanile confirms this state of mind (“I think it will take me some time to recover from this book”) as well as his diffidence toward the critics: “Most of the critics are against me; they would be happy if I were to slip on the banana peel of a misguided book.”

He seems to have gone back to work around December 1951, after two weeks in Paris, whence he wrote a Christmas letter to his editor: “I feel well again after the exhaustion of the past months, and I’ve begun to work” (Archivio Bompiani). As we can decipher from fragmentary references over the following months, between January and March 1952 Moravia worked on and off on the “very brief novel” which he later refers to in the January 8, 1952, interview and completed a first version of the book.

But work on the novel was rendered more difficult and later interrupted by financial difficulties, the leitmotif of his correspondence with Valentino Bompiani during these months. It makes sense to take these difficulties into consideration, because they have a real effect, as well as a thematic influence, on the novel. After a first alarm bell sounded in a letter dated January 30 (“I would be very grateful, given that I find myself in a tight spot, if you could speed up the payment of those five hundred dollars”), the author blames the editor for his fiscal problems on February 27:

Dear Bompiani, having declared my income, as you advised me to, I now find myself in a very unpleasant situation which, in part, I had predicted: I must pay so much in taxes that I don’t know if I will be able to pull it off. And, even if I am able to do so, I will have to begin writing for money, articles, screenplays, in other words quick projects etc., etc., etc., and no novels. Therefore I will not be able to exercise the profession for which I was born, that of writing novels. I leave it up to you to judge how useful this is to me at this time, when I could, with greater financial tranquility, have produced my best work. So be it. […] I feel that I have many things to say, important things, but unfortunately I am oppressed by material needs. When I think that Armenise, the producer of penicillin, declares a lower income than I do, it makes me laugh.

The complaints return again and again, and Moravia threatens to suspend his literary efforts in order to dedicate himself to screenplays, as in a letter dated March 18: “What will suffer will be my literary output. The taxman must be paid. So for the past two months or so I’ve been working on a screenplay and have set aside all my beloved manuscripts.” The message to the editor is clear: if you want me to write novels, you must offer more support. It is important to note how Moravia distinguishes between the literary work of the novelist and the commercial work of the screenwriter, which will later become an important structural element of Il disprezzo, set in the early years of the postwar period.

But despite his work on a screenplay, Moravia did not completely abandon his “beloved manuscripts” (by which he means both the handwritten and the typed scripts). In fact, he completed the first version of a novel, as he writes in a letter dated March 20, 1952, to Bompiani: “I have finished a short romanzetto [novella]. But who knows when I will be able to revise it and clean it up. Woe is me, I work to pay the taxman.”

Note the wording: “short novella.” This does not seem to match the “long novel” that, according to the second interview with Festa Campanile, Moravia completed in 1952, but rather the “very brief novel” mentioned in the first interview. In other words, he is referring not to one of his lengthy novels, such as La romana and Il conformista, but rather to one of his so-called novellas, such as La mascherata (The Fancy Dress Party), Agostino (Two Adolescents), La disubbidienza (Disobedience), and L’amore coniugale (Conjugal Love), none of which exceeded 150 typewritten pages and which Moravia would collect in 1953 in a volume titled Romanzi brevi (Short novels). (In the same letter, he refers to the English editions of Agostino and La disubbidienza as romanzetti, “novellas.”) Note also two other terms—“revise” and “clean up”—which further illuminate Moravia’s working methods. A revision refers to a complete rewriting, resulting in a text substantially different from the previous version; cleaning up, on the other hand, refers to small adjustments to the narrative and to the expressive coherence of a definitive text.

It is difficult to ascertain which screenplay in particular was draining time and energy from Moravia’s novella. According to the letter dated March 18, he had already been working on it for “the past two months or so.” In the March 20 letter he announces his departure for Paris, where he would spend two weeks at Transcontinental Film working on this particular project. On his return from France on May 2, he wrote to Giacomo Antonini, Bompiani’s man in Paris: “I spent only three or four days in Paris, and the rest of the time I was in Monfort d’Amaury, working on this accursed film with Autant Lara and a screenwriter […] I’ve been very involved movie projects lately, while also working on a short novel.” (Archivio Vieusseux)

Unfortunately, it has been impossible to establish the title of the “accursed film” by Claude Autant-Lara that Moravia was working on during this period. In the midst of his work for the movies, the literary project was advancing slowly. It would seem that in this letter he is referring to revisions of the “brief romanzetto” he had completed in March; in other words, Version B.

In order to fully reconstruct the months between April and July, we must recall two important, connected episodes. First, the publication in April of the volume of collected stories (I racconti), which Moravia would have seen on his return from France and which constitutes the first volume of the Opere complete, with its blue and black dust jackets. And, perhaps more important, the Church’s condemnation of Moravia’s entire oeuvre, which, along with André Gide’s, was placed in the Index of Forbidden Books maintained by the Congregation of the Holy See, with a decree published in the Osservatore romano newspaper on May 27. This ban would be removed only in 1966, after the abolition of the Index during the Second Vatican Council. The ban would cause intense public discussion and a general feeling of solidarity toward the author, especially in cultural circles. This support would be translated into an award, the Premio Strega, for I racconti in July of the following year, and Moravia’s subsequent liberation from economic worries and the need to work in the film industry. The day after the Strega award ceremony, Moravia left for Sorrento and Capri, where he planned to “finish preparing the novellas for the second volume of the complete works,” as he wrote to Bompiani on July 15. It is possible that the project of collecting his four earlier romanzetti or “brief novels” (La mascherata, Agostino, La disubbidienza, and L’amore coniugale) was somehow connected to his work on the mysterious new romanzetto, which would have become the fifth work in the collection.

But, as we have seen, it was in July of that year that Moravia began his new novel. In a letter to Bompiani from Anacapri dated September 7, he writes: “This summer I completed a hundred pages of the novel I began writing in July. I’ve abandoned the other one I was working on, after writing about three hundred pages, at least for now. This new novel looks promising.”

It seems likely that this “new novel,” begun in July 1952, was Fantasma di mezzogiorno, or Il disprezzo, which, after several drafts, Moravia would finish in August 1953

and send to the publisher at the beginning of 1954. In this letter, the “abandoned” novel is not referred to as a “very brief novel” (as on January 8), a “brief romanzetto” (as on March 20), or a “brief novel” (as on May 2), but rather as a three-hundred-page text, perhaps the “long novel” mentioned to Festa Campanile in February 1953.

III. INTERIM CONCLUSIONS

The contradictory, inconclusive data we have been able to collect does not permit us to completely elucidate the evolution of Moravia’s process in the early fifties, or to identify with utter confidence the typescripts in our possession. That said, it is possible to propose the following hypotheses.

THE STORY OF SERGIO AND MAURIZIO

It is likely that the typescript we have called Version B is in fact the “very short novel” referred to by Moravia in his first interview with Festa Campanile as well as in his March 20 letter to Valentino Bompiani, the same book which he referred to as a “brief novel” in his May 2 letter to Giacomo Antonini. More specifically, it appears to be a “revision” of an earlier draft, written between March and May 1952.

Since the two other versions, A and C, can be placed before and after Version B, they can also be considered part of this “brief novel” Moravia was working on. Version A would therefore be a section of the first draft; since the March 20 letter to Bompiani refers to a “finished” text, we can conclude that many pages have been lost. Version C could then be dated to the period between May and July 1952.

It is clear that this is not a finished work. Each version is a revision of the previous one, and there certainly would have been more. At this point it is necessary to shed light on the connections between this “brief novel,” written in early 1952, and the “long novel” that seems to have preceded it, as well as the one that followed, Il disprezzo.

Regarding the “long novel,” we have only a few details of its theme, the effect of political ideology on the amorous relations of young Communists; in addition, we have the information that the draft had reached three hundred pages in July 1952 and that it was subsequently burned, probably sometime between September 1952 and February 1953. The difficulty lies first of all in defining the identity of this unfinished, lost, and burned text. We can exclude the hypothesis that, despite the author’s declarations, it might have survived and could be related to one of the novels that came after Il disprezzo, such as the project mentioned in the 1971 interview with Siciliano or even La ciociara, from 1957, despite that book’s long gestation period, which extended back to the forties (see Opere, volume 3, pages 2150–67).

Thus, there are only two alternatives: either the “long novel” and the “brief novel” are two separate projects, or they are substantially one and the same. In the first hypothesis, Moravia effectively would have written a long novel of around three hundred pages, already in an advanced state in 1951, and then burned it, perhaps saving one section. It is possible that the story “Luna di miele, sole di fiele” (“Bitter Honeymoon”), which was published in the journal Paragone in November 1951 and was subsequently included in the second edition of Racconti 1927–1951 (1953), bears some relation with this project on the subject of Communism (see Opere, volume 3, pages 355–85). The second hypothesis is that the “long novel” and the “brief novel” are actually the same project, and that these contradictory references are the result of different phases, revisions, expansions, or reductions lost to time — or simply of Moravia’s imprecision.

At this time, this second hypothesis appears to be the most likely scenario. What is certain is that there is a thematic affinity between the “story of a group of young Communists and the relationship between their romantic lives and their political ideologies” and the plot found in these typescripts at the Fondo Moravia, in which ideology in fact destroys the relationship between two young lovers. The story that emerges from these typescripts breathes life into the ghost of the previously lost novel regarding the lives of young Communists. It would seem likely that Moravia’s passing mention in his 1953 interview with Festa Campanile is an indirect reference to the typescripts now at the Fondo Moravia.

THE PREHISTORY OF IL DISPREZZO (CONTEMPT)

There is one final aspect to consider: the connection between the “brief novel” of 1952 and Il disprezzo. The first idea for Il disprezzo seems to date from before the composition of the novel on the theme of Communism, as documented by a letter to Valentino Bompiani dated June 1951: “I’m thinking of writing a brief novel that will include a ghost as one of the characters” (Archivio Bompiani). This mysterious note makes sense when one considers the original title of Il disprezzo, Il fantasma di mezzogiorno, referring to a “ghost” who appears in the epilogue (see Opere, volume 3, page 2128). This idea probably emerged from an autobiographical context, Moravia’s conjugal crisis, which is worth exploring insofar as it allows us to identify his narrative process. The most explicit reference comes from an interview with Alain Elkann, after the death of his first wife, Elsa Morante:

MORAVIA: Yes, there were days when I wanted to kill her. Not to separate, which would have been a rational solution, but to kill her, because our relationship was so close, so complex, and so thoroughly alive that violence seemed easier than separation. […] In any case, the idea of killing her soon became a novel, Il disprezzo. In my original idea for this novel the protagonist, reacting to his wife’s unjust attitude, planned and executed her murder. But this idea of killing her disappeared in the process of writing. The wife dies in an accident. The protagonist of the novel that I actually wrote bears no relation to the one I had imagined.

ELKANN: Did Elsa recognize herself in the book?

MORAVIA: No, and how could she? The only thing the book I never wrote had in common with our experience was the theme of uxoricide. The rest would have been pure invention.

From 1951 onward, the author imagined and perhaps began composing a novel based on the idea of uxoricide; however, he didn’t begin seriously working on the book until a year later, in July 1952. Meanwhile, this project intersected and in part absorbed another project on the subject of Communism and the friendship between Sergio and Maurizio. The interaction between these two projects is profound and inevitable, and it is clear that certain narrative elements in Il disprezzo had already been developed in the novel about Sergio and Maurizio: the idea of Sergio’s writing a screenplay, the love triangle, and even the theme of “contempt.” According to the letter dated September 7, 1952, the abandonment of the novel about Communism occurs at the moment that the “new novel” begins to take shape; between July and September the writer has already composed “one hundred pages” and realizes that he is on the right track: “This new novel looks promising.” By a few months later, when he is interviewed by Festa Campanile, the new novel has acquired a title: Il fantasma di mezzogiorno—which, as we have said, would later become Il disprezzo.