Woman of Rome_A Life of Elsa Morante

by Lily Tuck

  In another piece Morante wrote in 1938, “Mille città in una” (“A Thousand Cities in One”), published in Curzio Malaparte’s* magazine, Prospettive, she asks: “Is there a concrete reality of the world that exists per se, or do we have nothing but an infinity of appearances, a different one for each subjective eye?”12 This essay introduces two other themes that will figure large in her work: travel as a mode of self-exploration and the juxtaposition between inner and outer reality; it also shows how familiar, early on, Morante was with the works of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. And although most Italian critics were not yet particularly interested in her work, by the mid-1930s, Elsa Morante had become friends with a major critic, Giacomo Debenedetti, who was the translator of Proust and an editor at Meridiano di Roma. In time, too, as her stories became more polished, Alberto Savinio—his real name was Andrea De Chirico and his brother was the painter Giorgio De Chirico—who was an important magic realist writer, understood the potential power of her writing. A later critic compared Elsa Morante’s early stories to the paintings of Edvard Munch13—to The Scream, more than likely.

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  DIARY 1938

  For six months in 1938, twenty-six-year-old Elsa Morante kept a record of her dreams in a school notebook that took the form of a diary. She named the diary “Letters to Antonio” (“Lettere ad Antonio”) and the “Antonio” she addresses—although there is only a single reference to him—must necessarily be her brother Mario, who died soon after he was born and who, according to Elsa, “opened his eyes and saw the light and was so disgusted that he quickly closed them again.” “Letters” is a misnomer as well since none of the entries are written in the form of a letter. A quote from Dante on the opening page provided Elsa Morante with the epigraph: “Soon it will be, that to behold these things / Shall not be grievous, but delightful to thee / As much as nature fashioned thee to feel.”1 Next to it, she also wrote “Book of Dreams” (“Libro dei sogni”) and “Life Is a Dream” (“La vida es sueño”), no doubt a reference to Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

  The diary can be read as a quest for Elsa Morante’s identity as a woman. Without following the traditional format of autobiography or memoir, it reveals her by exposing her dreams, which are filled with erotic content and desire. The significance of the diary lies in both Morante’s interpretation of these dreams and her acute observations, as well as in her constant search for meaning. Not surprisingly, Elsa Morante was very interested in and conversant with the science of psychoanalysis, and with Freud’s works in particular. Among the books in her very extensive library, there is a tattered French copy of Introduction to Psychoanalysis in which many passages that specifically deal with the interpretation of dreams have been underscored and heavily annotated. In addition, dreams were to figure often and with importance in Morante’s work, and many critics have claimed that Diario 1938 (as it was called when it was published in 1989*) was the source for and the essence of her future novels, especially House of Liars.

  Although the entries are uneven and discontinuous—Morante wrote fairly regularly at first but less later on—she was by then too much of an accomplished author to let the writing be merely a cathartic outpouring. Instead Elsa Morante’s diary is a highly self-aware exploration of both her consciousness and her physical needs—that is, her sexual desire, which is expressed, despite the heavy use of asterisks to conceal the most private or shocking sexual details, in fairly candid terms. The diary is a testimony to Elsa’s lucidity, her ability to overcome her secret passions and unsatisfied longings thanks to what one critic called her “intelligent libido.”2 Yet the writing in the diary, as has also been pointed out, suggests none of the jouissance or delight in the experiences of the body so celebrated by feminist writers of the period, such as Anaïs Nin. Instead, Morante’s investigation of her complicated and often contradictory feelings and emotions are full of anguish and guilt. Likewise, her depiction of femininity is, for the most part, one that is unhappy, wounded and unreconciled with itself.3

  The diary begins:

  Evidently, my dear Antonio, every day my life becomes more stupid, subject to and tormented by physical needs: material and sexual. I am aware of them in my dreams. Yesterday, a closed room facing my actual apartment, but inside a garden. I know that it is E.C.’s.* But why E.C.? Because one time on the telephone he told me that ******. These days I burn with desire for ****** for hours I think about ************. Their poses are extraordinarily lascivious or rather their ********. Nothing more than, for hours and hours, my spirit is slave to these obscene, little pastimes which give me the feeling of death. [January 19]

  Nor does Morante shy away from describing intimate female experiences: “As I walk, I can feel that I have started to menstruate. A weight, liquid, soft and hot, in between my legs, everything weighs on me. Never mind, I keep walking…as drops of blood fall from in between my heavy legs.” [January 19]

  The year before Elsa began her diary, she had met Alberto Moravia. They fell in love and he appears in her diary as “A.” Moravia’s career as a writer had already been established with the publication of his first novel, Gli indifferenti (The Time of Indifference), in 1929. One of the most influential Italian writers of the twentieth century, Moravia would go on to publish over thirty novels, the most famous of which are The Woman of Rome, Conjugal Love, Two Women and The Conformist. Written in stark prose, the novels’ main themes are alienation, loveless sexuality and hypocrisy, especially in the institution of marriage, and the difficulty of finding happiness therein. Most of Moravia’s books have been translated and many have been made into films. He also wrote for many of Italy’s leading newspapers (La Stampa, Il Mondo and Corriere della Sera) and founded the literary magazine Nuovi Argumenti. He traveled a great deal, published many travel books and essays and also found the time to write film and theater reviews. In 1984, he was elected an Italian representative to the European Parliament. Moravia died in 1990.

  Only a few of the other initials Elsa used in her diary are identifiable. “S.J.C.” probably stands for Sanctus Jesus Christus. “G.C.,” “G. Cap.” or simply “Cap.” stands for the painter Giuseppe Capogrossi, who introduced Elsa to Alberto Moravia. And “Giacomo D.” must be Giacomo Debenedetti. But the rest of the first names or initials—such as “E.C.,” “V.” and “T.”—are not identifiable. Obvious recognizable figures are her mother; her older brother, Aldo; her sister, Maria; as well as Plato (who appears in a dream as a fish), Kafka, Greta Garbo and the Marquis de Sade. Not surprisingly, given that their love affair had recently begun, Moravia figures prominently in a great many of Elsa’s dreams and the dreams themselves shed an interesting light on their complicated relationship. A relationship that was categorized on her part by a feeling of social inferiority and sexual humiliation. After all, one must not forget that at the time that Elsa Morante was writing her diary, she was a young woman very much alone in the world who was constantly beset by financial worries. She lived in a tiny rented room and was filled with self-doubts about her physical appearance, her social position and her artistic vocation. A clue to how she must have felt in the company of the more urbane and well-known Moravia is provided by the dream in the second entry of her diary:

  Yesterday must have been a day filled with unacknowledged humiliations for me. It is how I explain this night’s dreams. A. is a snob in fact and I myself want to satisfy his snobbism by, for example, having a high position in society or by being famous. None of this is so, and yesterday—the visit to the Exhibition, knowing that I was not an important person there, while he was talking to the Countess, and I was drunk and, on my hands, I wore these ugly little gloves, and I was not introduced to the Academics, and his stories about how he spent the last few days in this fancy villa and about this aristocratic woman who he was in love with…. Enough, a long list of humiliations. I thought I had overcome them with the thought that I was valuable, that I know that I am.…Mistake. [January 20]

  Her subsequent feelings of loneliness ar
e also made quite clear:

  Later that same night, I have a second dream. I was going to the cinema, and I went inside. The sumptuous and very large theater was empty. Only employees and food vendors were there, sitting like abandoned marionettes in some of the seats. I sit down and a very short film is shown, expressly for me, the only spectator….

  My solitude accounts for this dream. I was no doubt, impressed by T.’s story about the woman writer who had invitations made for her reception and nearly no one came. This impressed me because I am almost always alone. [February 20]

  Often in her dreams Moravia appears unloving or, at best, merely affectionate:

  Before going to sleep, he told me that I had bad breath (the result of drinking wine and liqueurs). But he said it rather crudely, turning away his face, holding his nostrils: the reason he could not love me. Just for an instant, a little repentant and tender and smiling, he caressed my cheek. In my sleep, this brief caress becomes a sign of great tenderness, love. This small comfort becomes a real and great comfort. [February 1]

  Or he rejects her attempts to please him:

  This night, I dreamt that I brought A. a coffee. “Must you bring me this stuff?” he remarked dissatisfied, eyeing the filter. [January 25]

  They also play the games of insecure lovers:

  A. loves me only when I run away, but I cannot do it, I have no money. He is famous and rich, and in a few days he is going to Paris. Also he is always unavailable, shut off. He is off to Paris, triumphant, while I? I am hurtling toward a dreadful solitude. Enough. I slept for two hours. I found myself in a sort of cottage with a lot of people…. Then I see A. arrive, his hat on the back of his head, very pale and as always cut off from everyone. I have to pretend not to pay attention to him so that then he will look for me, he will follow me. Desperate escape, desperate game of hide-and-seek. Why must it be like this? [February 17]

  More problematic still is the fact that Moravia does not seem capable of sexually satisfying Morante. Early on, Morante mentions this with the hope that someday she will find a man who can:

  But before I die I will meet a man who ********. I am afraid that then I will become his slave but what a pleasure! And what if it was A. himself? He would not have the courage *******. My life is miserable. I should satisfy these cravings only so as not to have to think about them anymore. But with whom? ***. What misery to torture oneself with such thoughts. [January 19]

  Moreover there seems to be a sadistic element to Moravia’s treatment of Morante. In a dream recorded on January 22 in which one of her students suddenly grabbed her naked toe, Morante remembers how a few nights earlier Moravia had violently caressed her foot. And:

  Last night, before going to sleep, I wept with rage because I wanted to make love and, instead, A. came to pay me a visit with V. Continuous excitement without satisfaction, in fact, in my presence, he *********—and he does not make me come—My desire and my need, and most of all my wish for ********** is only satisfied for now in a dream.

  Despite the asterisks, Morante makes the situation pretty plain here. Nonetheless, more often than not, Morante alternates between candor and squeamishness (the use of asterisks) in her diary entries. Childishly, sex is conveyed as either scary or perverse. Often, too, she confuses dream and reality.

  I wanted to sleep with the taste of A. in my mouth to see what kind of dreams I would have. [February 5]

  This last entry is another indication that the sex between Moravia and Morante might have been one-sided and not particularly fulfilling for Morante. It is also an example of how accommodating women can be and how they tend to sustain the hope that the men they sleep with can provide them with understanding and intimacy.

  Alberto Moravia’s avowed pessimism, his aloofness (perceived often as amorality), his obsession with alienation and transgression, would hardly seem to qualify him as a sensitive and loving partner. In fact, rumor has it that he may have been impotent or deviant, which, considering the circumstances of Morante’s own family and her legal father’s sexual issues, might appear to constitute a huge irony or at the very least a strange and bitter coincidence. On the other hand, this kind of behavioral repetition occurs with surprising frequency in families. When I asked Ginevra Bompiani, the daughter of Valentino Bompiani, who was Moravia’s editor, and the director of her own small publishing house, Nottetempo, about this rumor, she shrugged and made a face to show her distaste before replying. She had known Moravia ever since she was a child, she said, and she respected him. Although he could be quite charming they never said tu to each other. There was that rumor but she did not think he really was impotent—he was, she said, “something, something not really straight.”4 Or one might conjecture—given the authority of the writing—that the cause of Moravia’s failure as a lover is not so dissimilar from that of his first-person narrator in Conjugal Love, who describes his attempts to love thus: “But underneath these displays of fervor, there is often an acrid and even mean shrewdness or duplicity which is not a sign of strength, but rather the expression of my egotism.”5 By the time he met Elsa Morante, however, Moravia’s reputation as a womanizer was well established, along with his obsession with sexuality. He went on to have many long-term relationships—notably with of course Elsa, Dacia Maraini and his second wife, Carmen Llera—but he never had children (an early love affair with a Swiss woman ended, he claimed, with her having to have an abortion).6

  In the spring of 1938, the relationship seems to have come to an end. In her diary, Morante asks:

  Is everything really over with A.? He has left and I don’t know precisely where, perhaps it is a joke, a nightmare….

  In real life,…he came and said: We have been lovers for a year and during that time we have had misery. Better to end it. [April 5]

  But a little more than two weeks later, everything has inexplicably changed:

  It was a whole story. A. did not want to end it at all. But now I am the one who wants it to end. [April 22]

  And only a month later, without explanation, Morante writes:

  A. comes every day, he looks for me more and more. Me too I look for him, I don’t really know why since I am no longer in love with him. [May 29]

  In Morante’s last recorded dream about Alberto Moravia, they seem to have switched roles. Moravia is the one who is vulnerable and helpless:

  Afterward, I dreamt that A. had eaten a fish in order to die. I go to him and find him in front of the radio and I put my finger down his throat and he vomits a white substance and right away he is cured (despite his nerves he is grateful to me for having saved him). But he is tired, he wants to sleep, he is like a little child, with a white school apron. He goes to sleep on my knees, his legs are all bare and spread so far apart that I feel a bit ashamed for him. But I am happy that he is sleeping like this on my lap. [June 15]

  Elsa Morante’s mother, Irma, also appears in many of Elsa’s dreams. In these dreams she often seems to be in danger—in a sinking boat, walking on water—and her physical appearance too keeps changing. At times she is very tall or she is “little, fat, sad and dressed in black” (February 2), her hair is in disarray, her face covered in purple bruises, her body bloated, all of which reminds Morante of death—of her own death. Elsa Morante yearns to establish a bond while her mother seems to be the withholding one, as this dream illustrates:

  I was in a garden, my mother’s, to be precise, in front of the house. Like a small florist’s plot, the garden was cluttered with pots, with those splendid full and delicate pink flowers, the kind one puts in salons. I don’t know their name. Feeling an overwhelming desire for one, I begged my mother to give me a plant. She had so many! In exchange, if she wanted it, I offered her O.’s cactus plant which did not flower. Making a little movement of regret with her mouth, my mother said that no, she could not be parted from a single plant…. “There”—I thought—“no one exists in the whole world who would make the smallest sacrifice for me.” [January 21]

  The dreams in which the
rest of Morante’s family—her brothers, her sister and her father—figure are fraught with anxiety and rejection. In one dream, a distraught Elsa shouts at her father to leave her apartment, which he does (he jumps out the window to his death); Maria, her sister, too, is a moody, truculent and unwelcome presence. Aldo appears bossy and unsympathetic. In several of those dreams in which her siblings appear, Elsa is naked.

  There are numerous images of old women, ugly, wizened crones. In one particularly erotic dream whose psychological significance is not difficult to guess at—guilt and self-mortification—she engages in a sexual act with a nun. This dream takes place in a cathedral, which for Morante, a Catholic, must have represented an enormous sacrilege.

  Among the people, there is a skinny, little, old nun, one of those who wears a little cap. Her face is lined with wrinkles, her gestures are nervous and quick. She is a hypocrite, a vicious woman, she intends to use sacred words and deeds to satisfy her degenerate and perverted senses…. Don’t believe in this sacrilege, I cry…but at that very moment…I feel myself become a child, afraid and humiliated (attempting as I am to evade being captured by the nun who reaches out her arms) like a school boy who tries to escape from his stern and perverse teacher. At which point, the nun grabs me and leads me toward a********. [January 23]