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 noveclass="underline" 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.