in EM’s fiction, 76–79, 82, 205
of Moravia, 44–45
in Moravia’s fiction, 60–61
Siciliano, Enzo, 135–36, 155, 224
“Sicilian Soldier, The” (Morante), 67–68, 140, 141
Signora di mio gusto, Una: Elsa Morante e le altre, 224
Sils Maria, Switzerland, 110
“Snake Relatives” (Morante), 32–33
Socialist Party, 91, 187
“Sogna e Vita” (Irma Morante), 29
“Soldato del re, Il” (Morante), 33
“Soldato siciliano, Il” (Morante), 67–68, 140, 141
Solmsen, Rodolphe, 94–96
“Someone Is Knocking at the Door” (Morante), 33–34
“Song of the Happy Few and the Unhappy Many, The” (Morante), 172
Spender, Stephen, 193
Stamp, Terence, 130
Stanze di Elsa, La (exhibition catalogue), 225
Steegmuller, Francis, 125
Steiner, George, 178–79
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), 98, 133, 134
Stoppa, Paolo, 103
Storia, La, see History (Morante)
Streetcar Named Desire, A (Williams), 103
student protests of 1968, 167–69
surrealism, in EM’s fiction, 35
Svevo, Italo, 133
Tacchi-Venturi, Father, 15n, 55, 63
Tempest, The (Giorgione), 197
Tempo Illustrato, 189–90
Teorama (film), 130
Teresa, Mother, 153–54
“Thief of Light, The” (Morante), 140–41
“Thousand Cities in One, A” (Morante), 36
Three Girls from Rome (film), 95, 96
Ti ho sposato per allegria (Ginzburg), 107
Time of Indifference, The (Moravia), 39, 55
“To a Fable” (Morante), 151–52
travel as self-exploration, in EM’s fiction, 36
truth-telling, EM’s obsession with, 101, 147, 163, 164–65
Turn of the Screw, The (James), 141
Two Women (Moravia), 40, 64n, 66–67
Under Arturo’s Star: The Cultural Legacies of Elsa Morante (Lucamante and Wood), 225
“Un uomo senza carattere” (Morante), 56–57
Uomo che guarda, L’ (Moravia), 218
U.S.A. (Dos Passos), 181
Useppe Mandulino (cat), 112
Usignolo della Chiesa Cattolica, L’ (Pasolini), 149
Vallejo, César, 176
Verga, Giovanni, 35, 133, 134
verismo, in Italian literature, 35
“Via dell’Angelo” (Morante), 48
Viareggio Prize, 84, 86, 149
“Vigna, La” (Morante), 33
Villa Borghese (film), 95
Villa Margherita clinic, 213–16, 218
“Vineyard, The” (Morante), 33
Virduzzo, Francine, 132–33, 134
Visconti, Luchino, 94, 102–5, 112
Visconti e Mamiani high school, 27
Vita di mia nonna (Morante; unpublished), 73–74
Vivante, Charis, 160
Volponi, Paolo, 160
Voyeur, The (Moravia), 218
Warren, Robert Penn, 125
Weaver, William, 87, 91, 92–94
on Rome, 89–90
on translating History, 192
Weil, Simone, 135, 147, 177–79, 185n, 217
Weinstock, Herbert, 125
William Collins Sons (publishing house), 125
Williams, Tennessee, 103
Windisch-Graetz, Irma, 103
Without the Comfort of Religion (Morante; unfinished), 133, 134–35, 138, 141
Woman, A (Aleramo), 81–82
Woman after My Own Taste, A:
Elsa Morante and Others, 224
Woman of Rome, The (Moravia), 40, 85, 90
Women without Names (film), 95–96
women writers, in Italy, 81–82
Wood, Sharon, 225
World Saved by Children and Other
Poems, The (Morante), 167, 169–73, 174
World War II, Italian attitudes toward, 61–62
Woyzeck (Büchner), 158–59
Years of Lead, 202
Zambrano, Aracoeli, 202
Zeffirelli, Franco, 103–4
Zola, Émile, 77
About the Author
LILY TUCK is the author of four novels, including The News from Paraguay, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, and Siam, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, as well as a collection of stories. She divides her time among New York, an island in Maine, and Paris.
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Also by LILY TUCK
FICTION
The News from Paraguay
Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived
Siam, or the Woman Who Shot a Man
The Woman Who Walked on Water
Interviewing Matisse, or the Woman Who Died Standing Up
Credits
Cover Photo Courtesy of Estate of Elsa Morante
Orange Roman Grunge background © Romao Slo/Istockphoto.com
Jacket design by Jarrod Taylor
Copyright
Images not available for the electronic edition.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Elsa Morante’s Estate, and to Carlo Cecchi in particular, for permission to quote from the works included in Opere Morante (Mondadori) and from interviews with Elsa Morante.
“To the Story” from House of Liars, copyright © 1948 by Elsa Morante, English translation copyright © 1951 by Adrienne Foulke, reproduced by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
“Watching a Boy Fall Asleep” by Sandro Penna from The Complete Sandro Penna Poems, © Sandro Penna, reproduced by permission of Garzanti Libri Spa.
“Untitled Poem” by Patrizia Cavalli from Poesia, © Patrizia Cavalli, reprinted by permission of Einaudi.
WOMAN OF ROME. Copyright © 2008 by Lily Tuck. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition JUNE 2008 ISBN: 9780061983092
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* Sometimes her surname is spelled Poggibonzi.
* Morante was probably referring to Duke Emmanuel Philibert Aosta (1869–1931), who was one of Italy’s most dashing and competent generals during World War I. He was the son of King Amadeo of Spain and the cousin of the Italian king Victor Emmanuel III.
* This memoir, published shortly aft
er Elsa’s death, proved to be very divisive among the Morante family—the extended Morante family as well. It was how the children of the “true” Uncle Ciccio, the Morante children’s cousins, learned that they were in fact not related to Elsa and her siblings. Maria Morante apparently did not speak to her brother Marcello for a year. She took the position that the book was “evil” and that it also completely misrepresented her mother.
† The antagonistic relationship between mother and son is contradicted by Paolo Morante’s testimony. Likewise, Maria Morante remembers a mother who was both caring and compassionate.
* It is not clear how Donna Gonzaga became Elsa Morante’s godmother. Marcello Morante suggests in his memoir that perhaps his mother had met her through a Jesuit priest, Father Tacchi-Venturi.
* Curzio Malaparte was a well-known and controversial writer who, until the fall of Mussolini, was an active member of the Fascist Party. He is also remembered for the extraordinary modern house, Casa Malaparte, he built on a windswept cliff on the island of Capri.
* The decision in 1989 by Einaudi to publish Elsa Morante’s diary generated a certain amount of controversy over whether the publication was appropriate, considering that it was both a disorganized text and a private record. It was also presumed that the publication would not have been sanctioned by Morante herself.
* The initials E.C. have not been identified.
* Moravia’s father, Carlo Pincherle, was Jewish only, according to Moravia, his Judaism was invisible.
* Instead of shoes, the peasants of this mountainous area traditionally wear cioce, a kind of slipper with long laces that crisscross the leg and are tied at the calf. The region is called Ciociaria. In the original Italian, Moravia’s Two Women is La ciociara.
* Elsa Morante attributed the fever to bacteria from the rubble. Turin was still in ruins after the war.
* In another version of this story, Morante accused Bertolucci of being like Mao.
* German mercenary soldiers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
* Carlo Cecchi and the critic Cesare Garboli were appointed Morante’s co-executors. Garboli passed away in 2004.
* Ragazzi di vita was also the title of Pasolini’s first novel, the first two parts of a projected trilogy, which was published in 1955.
* A partisan in a Republican guerrilla band during World War II, nineteen-year-old Guido Pasolini was shot by the Communists in February 1945.
* Milani was a dissident Catholic priest who in 1954 founded the Barbiana School, outside of Florence, dedicated to the education of disadvantaged working-class boys.
* Also the title of her collection of essays, published posthumously in 1987 by Adelphi.
* Cesare Garboli is quoting the nineteenth-century Italian poet Giocomo Leopardi.
* In popular Italian cristiani means “man” in general.
* Segre is a well-known Italian Jewish family name.
* Garboli writes that Elsa Morante gave all of herself to Davide Segre—her love, her ideas, her masochism. But it would seem more likely that Davide Segre’s feverish dreams of an anarchistic utopia combined with his evangelical Christianity were modeled on Simone Weil’s tortured philosophy.
* The church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome, which dates from the sixth century, stands on the Capitoline Hill.
* Since then Aracoeli has sold 122,000 copies; in 1989, when it was reissued in paperback it sold 38,000 copies. Apparently, in Italy, unlike in the United States, hardcover books sell better than paperbacks, the result of having a more elite readership who prefer to buy a better-looking book.
* The television version of the novel, directed by Luigi Comencini, starring Claudia Cardinale as Ida (a strange choice) aired in 1986, after Morante’s death.