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.