On Alberto Moravia’s novel Boredom
Would you read a book called “Boredom”? Or watch a movie of the same title? Publishers and movie-industry folk have faced those questions. In 1960, Alberto Moravia came out with his novel La noia, i.e., “Boredom.” In English, it was published as “The Empty Canvas.” (The main character is a painter — or someone who sort of tries to be a painter.)
Shortly after the novel’s publication, a movie appeared, based on the novel. Shown to English-speaking audiences, it was “The Empty Canvas.” Shown to the Italian audience, it was “La noia.” (Among the cast members is Bette Davis, by the way. She was seldom boring. She was other things, maybe — not boring.)
In 1998, another movie based on the novel appeared — a French movie, L’ennui, which is to say, “La noia,” or “Boredom.”
Maybe I have said enough about titles. I’m loath to bore you.
Alberto Moravia was a brilliant writer and a very, very cool customer. He examined life as a biologist would an object under his microscope. This is not for everyone. But it is for many. And anyone can acknowledge the author’s brilliance.
You can find lengthy accounts of his life, but I will be brief. Alberto Moravia was born “Alberto Pincherle” in Rome. The year was 1907. As a boy, Alberto was afflicted with tuberculosis and was in bed for five years. He read and read. And read and read.
His family included leading anti-Fascists and at least one leading Fascist. Moravia himself would be anti-, very. Late in his life, he was elected to the European Parliament as a Communist (of the Berlinguerian, or “Eurocommunist,” sort). In subsequent years, Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Benito, would be elected to the same body.
Italian politics is very interesting — all too — but back to writing . . .
When he was a young man, Moravia wrote for La Stampa, the newspaper, edited by Curzio Malaparte. Have you read Kaputt? Years ago, my friend and colleague David Pryce-Jones recommended I read it. It is Malaparte’s autobiographical novel of World War II. (He had been a correspondent at the Eastern Front.)
(I said I was through with politics, but this is kind of interesting: Malaparte was a Fascist, then a Communist. His name — a name he adopted for himself — means “bad side.” The reverse, of course, is Napoleon’s name: “Bonaparte,” or “good side.” We could go on . . .)
Alberto Moravia was a versatile writer, producing a variety of novels, essays, and articles. He traveled widely, thought deeply, examined closely. Several of his novels were turned into movies by the outstanding directors of the age. Three of them are Bertolucci, De Sica, and Godard.
Moravia died in 1990, in the city where he was born, Rome.
Back to La noia — Boredom — that 1960 novel. What’s it about? Rich young man is bored out of his mind and seeks relief in sex, which does not relieve his boredom or mitigate his angst.
Now, a literary critic or scholar would not give you such a description, but that single sentence will do, in this little column of mine.
You can find La noia in an edition from The New York Review of Books, here. They call the novel, straightforwardly, “Boredom” — no hiding behind “The Empty Canvas.” The translator is Angus Davidson, who lived from 1898 to 1980. Dante Della Terza once described him as an “English expert on all things Italian.”
Della Terza was a great scholar of literature — comparative literature — whom I had the privilege to interview in 2018, when he was in his mid-90s. For the resulting piece — complete with a delightful photo (in my opinion) — go here.
Moravia’s main character, and narrator, is Dino. Over and over, Dino talks about his boredom. He tries to describe to you what he’s suffering from. See if you get him (I’m not sure I do):
The feeling of boredom originates for me in a sense of the absurdity of a reality which is insufficient, or anyhow unable, to convince me of its own effective existence.
That makes me a little dizzy. Try this:
Boredom, which is the lack of a relationship with external things, was in the very air one breathed during the period of Fascism, and to this social boredom must be added the boredom of dull sexual urgency which, as is liable to happen at that age, prevented me from making contact with the very women who I believed could afford me relief.
Huh.
Does painting help? At some point in his life, Dino decided to become a painter. Maybe he could make empty canvases un-empty. In filling up those canvases, maybe he could fill up his life.
. . . I hoped to be able to re-establish contact with reality, once and for all, by means of artistic expression. In the first sense of relief brought about by my enthusiasm for painting, I did indeed almost convince myself that my boredom had been nothing more than the boredom of an artist ignorant of his vocation. I was wrong, but for some time I deluded myself with the idea that I had found a remedy.
Bummer.
Has the following ever happened to you? Have you ever gone through a period like this?
I would take down a book — for I had a small library and have always been fond of reading — but very soon I would let it drop: novels, essays, poetry, drama, the whole literature of the world — there was not one single page that succeeded in holding my attention. In any case, why should it? Words are symbols of objects, and with objects I had no relationship at all in moments of boredom. So I would drop my book, or perhaps in an impulse of rage fling it into a corner, and turn to music.
Ah. Music is a good idea.
I had an extremely good record player, a present from my mother, as well as about a hundred records. Who was it who said that music always acts in some kind of way, that is, makes itself listened to forcibly, so to speak, by even the most distracted person? The man who said that was incorrect. My ears refused not merely to listen but even to hear.
An interesting sentence: “. . . not merely to listen but even to hear.” I guess you can hear music without listening to it. I know you can. (Think of being in a restaurant.)
The below, I found fascinating — screwy, but fascinating:
What struck me above all was that I did not want to do simply anything, although I desired eagerly to do something. Anything I might wish to do presented itself to me like a Siamese twin joined inseparably to some opposite thing which I equally did not wish to do.
Could he elaborate? Yes.
Thus I felt that I did not want to see people nor yet to be alone; that I did not want to stay at home nor yet to go out; that I did not want to travel nor yet to go on living in Rome; that I did not want to paint nor yet not to paint; that I did not want to stay awake nor yet to go to sleep; that I did not want to make love nor yet not to do so; and so on. When I say “I felt” I ought rather to say that I was filled with repugnance, with disgust, with horror.
What a miserable condition. One might say, “Spoiled, rich, bored brat does not deserve my pity. Talk about ‘First World problems’!” True. Still: a miserable condition.
Maybe we could look at one more passage about boredom, before leaving the subject:
Boredom, for me, was like a kind of fog in which my thought was constantly losing its way, catching glimpses only at intervals of some detail of reality: like a person in a thick mist who catches a glimpse now of the corner of a house, now of the figure of a passer-by, now of some other object, but only for an instant, before they vanish.
In this novel, I encountered a word I hadn’t known, denoting a condition I had never thought of. Our narrator tells us the following:
According to my mother, who loved scientific or seemingly scientific definitions, my father suffered from “dromomania,” in other words the passion for movement. It was perhaps this mania, she used to remark thoughtfully, that explained his passion for stamps — those small, brightly colored evidences of the vastness and variety of the world of which he had gathered together a fine collection, still preserved by her, as well as his talent for geography, the only subject he had seriously studied at school.
Merriam-Webster defines dromomania as: “an exaggerated desire to wander.” Is it the same as wanderlust? Merriam-Webster gives us this: “strong longing for or impulse toward wandering.” Wanderlust seems saner, more measured, than dromomania.
Mauro Balestrieri is something else. Have you ever known anyone like him?
. . . like all men who think of nothing but women, Balestrieri behaved with extreme, almost insulting coldness toward persons of his own sex, whatever might be their condition or age, evidently seeing them as just so many potential rivals.
Alberto Moravia is very good at description — good at everything, but amazing at description. I am talking about physical description, principally. This is not a strength of mine (or even an interest of mine, really). A friend once said, justly, “The novelist in me misses physical description from you.”
Listen to Moravia:
Dressed always like a little ballet-dancer according to the fashion of the moment, in a light puffy blouse and a very short, wide skirt that appeared to be supported by a crinoline, she looked rather like an inverted flower with a crooked, oscillating corolla, walking about on its pistils. She had a round face like a child; but it was a child that had grown too hastily and been initiated too soon into the experiences of womanhood.
Have some more:
She was pale, with a slight shadow underneath her cheekbones which made her cheeks look hollow, and a mass of thick, brown, curly hair all around her face. Her small mouth, childish both in shape and expression, reminded one of a bud that had withered prematurely on the bough without opening, and its corners were marked by two thin furrows, which struck me particularly because of the feeling of intense aridity which they suggested. Finally her eyes, her best feature, were large and dark, and they too were childish in shape beneath a rather prominent forehead. Their glance, indefinably remote, indirect, unsteady, was lacking in innocence.
Holy-moly. Here is a man who pays attention — and can describe what he has paid attention to.
Moravia has talked of clothing. You know who talks of clothing, in fine detail? Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy). He worked for Butterick, the company that published sewing patterns. He could describe clothes till the cows came home. He knew all the words, all the terms.
Bill Buckley wanted to be a better describer of clothing, and other aspects of people’s looks. (He wrote a lot of novels, as you recall.) He wanted someone to do some research on the subject and prepare him a little book — like a primer. I suggested a friend of mine, who in due course presented the book. I wonder whether I can get a hold of it.
Back to Moravia — and his gift for physical description:
The courtyard lay deserted in the bleak, subdued twilight of a sultry day. I could see the other big windows opposite; a couple of them were already lit up; also the acanthus bushes, blackish green, all around the flower beds and the dull, chalky whiteness of the pavement. As usual, there were many cats on the pavement, dispersed here and there in a mysterious order that did not seem merely casual: some squatting with their legs folded beneath their bodies, others sitting with their tails wrapped around their feet, others slowly and cautiously prowling, noses to the ground and tails erect; piebald black and white cats, gray cats, cats completely white or completely black, striped cats and tawny cats. I started looking attentively at the cats, as I often did, for it was as good a way as any of beguiling the time.
Sometimes a writer will make me think, “I never notice anything. I should notice more. More of the physical world.”
Well, we all notice sex, or most of us do. Moravia’s novel gets very, very — is “sexy” the word? “Carnal”? “Erotic”? “Porny”? It is all rather intellectual, but . . . I don’t know.
Let me give you a passage about sex that is not sexy. You may find it realistic, however (I’m not prying):
Everything, I felt, could be done easily, with grace and harmony — everything except copulation. The very conformation of the two organs, the female difficult of access, the male incapable of directing itself of its own accord toward its goal, like an arm or a leg, but requiring to be aided by the whole body, appeared to me indicative of the absurdity of the sexual act.
Maybe one more passage, before knocking off:
Procreative love, as we may call it, is always chaste; hardly ever chaste, on the other hand, are the amatory techniques by means of which lovers endeavor to excite one another.
I did not stay with Boredom all the way through. It is not my cup of tea. But there is lots of tea in the world, of various types. Tea for everyone. And to read Moravia is to be in the company of a formidable mind, with a formidable power of expression.
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