by Lily Tuck
5. HOUSE OF LIARS
1 EM, Opere, 1:lii–liii.
2 Giuliana Zagra and Simonetta Buttò, eds., La stanze di Elsa Dentro la scrittura di Elsa Morante (catalogue of exhibition at Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, April 27–June 3, 2006) (Rome: Editore Colombo, 2006), p. 27.
3 Michel David, “Interview with Elsa Morante,” Le Monde, April 13, 1968, p. viii.
4 Ibid.
5 Alberto Moravia and Alain Elkann, Life of Moravia, trans. William Weaver (Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth Italia, 2000), p. 191.
6 EM, House of Liars, p. 90.
7 Ibid., p. 11.
8 Ibid., p. 12.
9 Ibid., p. 11.
10 Ibid., p. 179.
11 Ibid., p. 281.
12 Ibid., p. 9.
13 Ibid., pp. 198–99.
14 Ibid., p. 78.
15 Ibid., p. 8.
16 Ibid., p. 462.
17 Ibid., p. 463.
18 Ibid., p. 509.
19 David, “Interview with EM,” p. viii.
20 EM, House of Liars, p. 563.
21 Ibid., p. 565. The poem is titled “Canto for Alvaro the Cat.”
22 Nadia Fusini, “Menzonga e sortilegio: 50 anni dopo,” La Rivista dei Libri, December 1994, pp. 6–7.
23 Cesare Garboli, “Menzonga e sortilegio: 50 anni dopo,” La Rivista dei Libri, December 1994, p. 6.
24 Laura Furman, “An Interview with Natalia Ginzburg,” Southwest Review 72, no. 1 (1987), p. 37.
25 Quoted in EM, Opere, 1:lv.
26 Moravia and Elkann, Life of Moravia, p. 198.
27 Ibid., p. 185.
28 Ibid., p. 213.
29 Interview with Daniele Morante, Rome, April 2005.
30 Maeve Brennan, “Lives in Limbo,” The New Yorker, February 9, 1952, pp. 106–9.
31 William Weaver, ed., Open City: Seven Writers in Postwar Rome (Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth, 1999), p. 19.
6. ROME
1 Pier Paolo Pasolini, Stories from the City of God: Sketches and Chronicles of Rome, 1950–1966, ed. Walter Siti, trans. Marina Harss (New York: Handsel Books/Other Press, 2003), p. 147.
2 William Weaver, ed., Open City: Seven Writers in Postwar Rome (Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth, 1999), pp. 2–4.
3 Sybille Bedford, Quicksands (Berkeley, Calif.: Counterpoint, 2005), pp. 11–12.
4 Thomas Erling Peterson, Alberto Moravia (New York: Twayne, 1996), p. 56.
5 Norman Lewis, Naples ’44 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), p. 159.
6 Weaver, Open City, p. 26.
7 Alberto Moravia and Alain Elkann, Life of Moravia, trans. William Weaver (Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth Italia, 2000), p. 203.
8 Ibid., p. 204.
9 Weaver, Open City, pp. 17–18.
10 Moravia and Elkann, Life of Moravia, p. 191.
11 Weaver, Open City, p. 16.
12 Ibid., p. 23.
13 Moravia and Elkann, Life of Moravia, p. 188.
14 Ibid., p. 190.
15 Interview with Patrizia Cavalli, Rome, January 2007.
16 EM, Opere, 1:1vii. Morante’s “Rosso e bianco” essays were published posthumously in 1989, in Pro o Contro la bomba atomica.
17 EM, Opere, 2:1465.
18 Ibid., 2:1476.
19 Interview with Bernardo Bertolucci, Rome, January 2007.
20 Interview with Ginevra Bompiani, Rome, April 2005.
21 Gaia Servadio, Luchino Visconti (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), p. 128.
22 Franco Zeffirelli, Autobiografia (Milan: Mondadori, 2006), p. 110.
23 Ibid., p. 165.
24 Interview with Adriana Asti, Naples, January 2007.
25 Servadio, Luchino Visconti, pp. 129, 220–21.
26 Moravia and Elkann, Life of Moravia, pp. 222–23.
27 Ibid., pp. 186, 183–84, 214.
28 Ibid., pp. 234–35.
29 Asti interview.
7. ARTURO’S ISLAND
1 Jean-Noël Schifano, Désir d’Italie (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), p. 384.
2 EM, “Una lettera inedita del Febbraio 1957 a Giacomo Debenedetti,” Corriere della Sera, November 26, 1985, p. 3.
3 Schifano, Désir d’Italie, pp. 377–78.
4 Lesley Chamberlain, Nietzsche in Turin (New York: Picador USA, 1999), pp. 96–98.
5 EM, Opere, 1:1ix–1xii.
6 Ibid., 1:1xiii.
7 Ibid., 1:1xiii–1xiv.
8 Ibid., 1:1xv.
9 Renata Propper, graphology report, June 2006.
10 EM, Arturo’s Island, p. 4.
11 Schifano, Désir d’Italie, p. 404.
12 EM, Arturo’s Island, p. 3.
13 Giacomo Debenedetti, “L’isola della Morante,” Nuovi Argumenti, 26 (1957), pp. 43–61.
14 EM, Arturo’s Island, p. 12.
15 Ibid., p. 35.
16 Ibid., p. 20.
17 Ibid., pp. 28–29.
18 Ibid., pp. 32, 34.
19 Ibid., pp. 38, 39.
20 Ibid., pp. 61, 137–38, 131, 121.
21 Ibid., pp. 125, 123, 145.
22 Ibid., p. 213.
23 Ibid., p. 291.
24 Debenedetti, “L’isola della Morante.”
25 Cesare Garboli, Il gioco segreto: Nove immagini di Elsa Morante (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1995), p. 19.
26 EM, Arturo’s Island, pp. 348, 349.
27 Blanche Knopf to EM, July 31, 1957, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
28 EM to Blanche Knopf, August 18, 1957, ibid.
29 Memo from Judith B. Jones, September 8, 1958, ibid.
30 Raleigh Trevelyan (of William Collins Sons) to Blanche Knopf, September 2, 1958, ibid.
31 EM to Blanche Knopf, August 17, 1959, ibid.
32 Gilbert Millstein, “Books of the Times,” The New York Times, August 18, 1959, p. 27.
33 Frederic Morton, “His Idyl,” The New York Times Book Review, August 16, 1959, p. 4.
34 EM to Blanche Knopf, October 29, 1959, Harry Ransom Center.
35 Frederic Morton, “A Talk with Elsa Morante,” The New York Times Book Review, October 25, 1959, p. 57.
8. WITHOUT THE COMFORT OF RELIGION
1 Interview with Allen Midgette, Woodstock, N.Y., February 2007.
2 Ibid.
3 Barth David Schwartz, Pasolini Requiem (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 502.
4 Francine Virduzzo’s 1961 interview is reprinted in EM, Opere, 1:1xxiii–1xxiv.
5 Ibid., 2:1497–1520 (questions on pp. 1573–75), reprinted from Nuovi Argomenti, no. 38–39 (May–August 1959).
6 Ibid., 1:1xix.
7 Enzo Siciliano, Campo de’ Fiori (Milan: Rizzoli, 1993), p. 49.
8 Alberto Moravia, invitation to the opening of Bill Morrow’s show Vernissage, Galerie Lambert, Paris, December 1, 1961.
9 Ibid.
10 Alberto Moravia and Alain Elkann, Life of Moravia, trans. William Weaver (Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth, 2000), p. 255.
11 EM, Opere, 1:1xxvi–1xxviii.
12 Blanche Knopf to EM, March 19, 1963, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
13 Blanche Knopf to EM, February 9, 1965, ibid.
14 Blanche Knopf to EM, May 18, 1965, ibid.
15 Erich Linder to Blanche Knopf, July 26, 1965, ibid.
16 Giulio Einaudi to Blanche Knopf, September 2, 1965, ibid.
17 Cesare Garboli, Il gioco segreto: Nove immagini di Elsa Morante (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1945), p. 128.
18 Concetta d’Angeli, “A Difficult Legacy: Morante’s Presence in Contemporary Italian Literature,” in Under Arturo’s Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante, ed. Stefania Lucamante and Sharon Wood (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2006), p. 218.
19 Garboli, Il gioco segreto, pp. 206–7.
9. POETRY AND PASOLINI
1 Patrizia Cavalli, Poesie (1974–1992) (Turin: Einaudi, 1992), p. 32.
2 Interview with Patrizia Cavalli, Rome, April 2004.
3 Sandro Penna, “Watching a Boy Fall Asleep,” Confused Dream, trans. George
Scrivani (Madras and New York: Hanuman Books, 1988), p. 47.
4 Lietta Tornabuoni, “La difficile scelta di essere ‘contor,’” Corriere della Sera, November 3, 1975, p. 3.
5 Enzo Siciliano, Pasolini, trans. John Shepley (New York: Random House, 1982), p. 237.
6 Filippo La Porta, “The ‘Dragon of Unreality’ against the ‘Dream of a Thing’: On Morante and Pasolini,” in Under Arturo’s Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante, ed. Stefania Lucamante and Sharon Wood (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2006), p. 291.
7 Barth David Schwartz, Pasolini Requiem (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 297.
8 Pier Paolo Pasolini, Selected Poems, trans. Norman MacAfee and Luciano Martinengo (London: John Calder, 1984), p. 3.
9 Cesare Garboli, Il gioco segreto: Nove immagini di Elsa Morante (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1995), p. 91.
10 EM, Alibi, preface.
11 Hans Werner Henze, Bohemian Fifths, trans. Stewart Spencer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 200.
12 Fondo Alberto Moravia, Lungotevere della Vittoria 1, Rome.
13 EM, House of Liars, epigraph. (The existing English-language translation uses “illusion” in the opening line, but “fiction” is more accurate.)
14 Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Scent of India, trans. David Price (London: The Olive Press, 1984), p. 38.
15 Ibid., p. 43.
16 Walter Siti, “Elsa Morante and Pier Paolo Pasolini,” in Under Arturo’s Star, p. 271.
17 Luca Fontana, “Elsa Morante: A Personal Remembrance,” Poetry Nation Review 14, no. 6, p. 19.
10. THE WORLD SAVED BY CHILDREN
1 In a lighthearted essay called “My Navona” published in Illustrazione Italiana in February 1962, EM wrote that of all the squares in the world Piazza Navona is the most beautiful.
2 Interview with Judith Malina, New York, March 2007.
3 Interview with Carlo Cecchi, Iesi, January 2006.
4 Ibid.
5 Interview with Alfonso Berardinelli, Rome, April 2005.
6 Interview with Adriana Asti, Naples, January 2007.
7 Interview with Charis Vivante, Florence, via telephone, 2006.
8 EM, Opere, 1:1xxvi–1xxvii.
9 Interview with Patrizia Cavalli, Rome, January 2007.
10 Interview with Daniele Morante, Rome, April 2005.
11 Sandra Petrignani, Le signore della scrittura: Interviste (1984; repr., Milan: La Tartaruga Edizioni, 1996), pp. 113–14.
12 Daniele Morante interview.
13 Interview with Patrizia Cavalli, Rome, April 2005.
14 Daniele Morante interview.
15 Interview with Allen Midgette, Woodstock, N.Y., February 2007.
16 Daniele Morante interview.
17 Interview with Ginevra Bompiani, April 2005.
18 Cavalli interview, April 2005.
19 Bompiani interview.
20 Cecchi interview.
21 Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 298.
22 Ibid., p. 301. Scuola di Barbiana, Lettera a una professoressa (Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1967), pp. 112, 116.
23 Ginsborg, History of Contemporary Italy, p. 302.
24 Ibid., p. 307; L’Espresso, June 16, 1968.
25 Ginsborg, History of Contemporary Italy, p. 308.
26 EM, Opere, 1:1xxx–1xxxi.
27 Description on the back cover of the 1995 Einaudi edition.
28 Rocco Capozzi, Contemporary Women Writers in Italy, ed. Santo L. Aricò (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), p. 15.
29 Interview with Bernardo Bertolucci, Rome, January 2007.
30 EM, The World Saved by Children, pp. 9–10.
31 Cesare Garboli, Il gioco segreto: Nove immagini di Elsa Morante (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1995), pp. 148–52.
11. HISTORY
1 Luca Fontana, “Elsa Morante: A Personal Remembrance,” Poetry Nation Review 14, no. 6, p. 20.
2 Ibid.
3 Erich Linder to William Koshland, November 1, 1974, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
4 Paul Hofmann, “Rome: ‘La Storia,’ Literary Sensation,” The New York Times, September 5, 1974.
5 EM, Opere, 1:lxxxii.
6 Simone Weil, “The Iliad or, The Poem of Force,” trans. Mary McCarthy, Politics Pamphlet, no. 1 (November 1945), p. 3.
7 Ibid., pp. 13, 16.
8 George Steiner, “Sainte Simone: The Jewish Bases of Simone Weil’s Via Negativa to the Philosophic Peaks,” TLS, June 4, 1993, p. 9.
9 Weil, “The Iliad or, The Poem of Force,” pp. 9, 16.
10 Cesare Garboli, program on RAI produced with students of the Liceo Classico Orazio, Rome, April 23, 2002.
11 Steiner, “Sainte Simone,” p. 3.
12 Interview with Alfonso Berardinelli, Rome, April 2005.
13 Cesare Garboli, Il gioco segreto: Nove immagini di Elsa Morante (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1995), p. 196.
14 Interviews with Patrizia Cavalli and Ginevra Bompiani, Rome, April 2005.
15 Garboli, Il gioco secreto, pp. 188–90.
16 Amos Oz, The Story Begins: Essays on Literature, trans. Maggie Bar-Tura (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), pp. 73, 87.
17 Ferdinando Camon, “Il grande male,” in Cahiers Elsa Morante, ed. Jean-Noël Schifano and Tjuna Notarbartolo (Naples: Edizioni Schientifiche Italiane, 1993), pp. 91–95.
18 EM, History, pp. 132–33.
19 Ibid., pp. 193, 197–98.
20 Ibid., pp. 655, 637.
21 Ibid., pp. 573, 710, 713.
22 Ibid., p. 734.
23 Cavalli interview.
24 Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 356.
25 Stefania Lucamante and Sharon Wood, “Introduction: Life and Work,” in Under Arturo’s Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2006), p. 5.
26 Berardinelli interview.
27 Barth David Schwartz, Pasolini Requiem (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 598.
28 Pier Paolo Pasolini, Tempo Illustrato, July 26, 1974, and August 2, 1974.
29 Schwartz, Pasolini Requiem, p. 87.
30 Bompiani interview.
31 Willard Spiegelman, “William Weaver: The Art of Translation III” (interview), The Paris Review, issue 161 (Spring 2002).
32 Robert Alter, “The Setting, Rome 1941 to 1947,” The New York Times, April 24, 1977.
33 Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books 24, no. 7 (April 28, 1977).
34 Erich Linder to William Koshland, September 12, 1977, Harry Ransom Center.
35 Garboli, Il gioco secreto, pp. 170–71.
36 Gregory L. Lucente, Beautiful Fables: Self–consciousness in Italian Narrative from Manzoni to Calvino (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 264.
37 EM, “La censura in Spagna,” L’unità, May 15, 1976; “‘La Storia’ secondo Elsa Morante,” Corriere della Sera, May 15, 1976.
38 EM, Opere, 1:lxxxiii–lxxxv.
12. ARACOELI
1 Interview with Carlo Cecchi, Iesi, January 2006.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Tonino Ricchezza, “La favola continua,” in Cahiers Elsa Morante, ed. Jean-Noël Schifano and Tjuna Notarbartolo (Naples: Edizioni Schientifiche Italiane, 1993), p. 77.
5 Alfonso Berardinelli, speech at conference “Elsa Morante in Rome, 1912–1985,” in “Today’s Program at 9:30 at Protomoteca, Campidoglio,” Il Foglio, March 15, 2005.
6 Interview with Carlo Cecchi, Urbino, January 2007.
7 Interview with Alfonso Berardinelli, Rome, April 2005.
8 Cecchi interview, January 2006.
9 “A Letter to the Red Brigades” was finally published ten years later, in Paragone, no. 456 (February 1988).
10 EM, Aracoeli, pp. 3, 10.
11 Ibid., p. 12.
12 I
bid., p. 42.
13 Ibid., p. 165.
14 Ibid., p. 166.
15 Ibid., p. 174.
16 Ibid., p. 282.
17 Interview with Ginevra Bompiani, Rome, April 2005.
18 EM, Aracoeli, pp. 291–92.
19 Ibid., p. 17.
20 Ibid., p. 91.
21 Walter Siti, “Elsa Morante and Pier Paolo Pasolini,” in Under Arturo’s Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante, ed. Stefania Lucamante and Sharon Wood (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2006), p. 286.
22 Gabriele Annan, “Give Him a Break!,” The New York Review of Books 32, no. 4 (March 14, 1985).
23 EM, Aracoeli, p. 276.
24 Ibid., pp. 99–100.
25 Ibid., p. 80.
26 Cesare Garboli, Il gioco segreto: Nove immagini di Elsa Morante (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1995), p. 196.
27 EM, Aracoeli, p. 131.
28 Jean-Noël Schifano, Désir d’Italie (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), p. 378.
29 Bompiani interview.
30 Cecchi interview, January 2007.
13. ELSA’S DEATH
1 Jean-Noël Schifano, Désir d’Italie (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), p. 378.
2 Interview with Ginevra Bompiani, Rome, April 2005.
3 Schifano, Désir d’Italie, p. 388.
4 Bompiani interview.
5 Interview with Alfonso Berardinelli, Rome, April 2005.
6 Dacia Maraini, e-mail message to author, March 4, 2006.
7 EM, Opere, 1:xc.
8 Carlo Cecchi, e-mail message to author, October 21, 2006.
9 Alberto Moravia and Alain Elkann, Life of Moravia, trans. William Weaver (Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth Italia, 2000), pp. 174, 191.
10 Cesare Garboli, Il gioco segreto: Nove immagini di Elsa Morante (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1995), pp. 206–7, 213.
11 Laura Laurenzi, “‘Sono stanca di vivere’ è finita l’agonia: Così si è spenta Elsa Morante,” La Repubblica, November 26, 1985, p. 19.
12 Marcello Morante, Maledetta benedetta (Milan: Garzanti, 1986), p. 7.
13 Moravia and Elkann, Life of Moravia, p. 344.
14 Alberto Moravia, “Amore e morte,” in Cahiers Elsa Morante, ed. Jean-Noël Schifano and Tjuna Notarbartolo (Naples: Edizione Schientifiche Italiane, 1993), p. 65.
15 Il Messaggero and Corriere della Sera, November 26, 1985.
16 Il Messaggero, November 26, 1985, p. 5.
17 Luca Coppola, “Letter,” in Cahiers Elsa Morante, p. 99.
18 Moravia and Elkann, Life of Moravia, p. 344.
EPILOGUE
1 Cesare Garboli, Il gioco segreto: Nove immagini di Elsa Morante (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1995), p. 23.
