WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.879 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are shifting 00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:05.719 gears today. We usually tackle big concepts or 00:00:05.719 --> 00:00:08.519 tech trends, but today we are opening the archives 00:00:08.519 --> 00:00:11.619 on a single human life. A single life, yeah. 00:00:11.800 --> 00:00:14.259 But to be fair, this isn't just a biography. 00:00:14.660 --> 00:00:17.800 We're looking at a figure who basically held 00:00:17.800 --> 00:00:20.800 a mirror up to the entire 20th century in Italy 00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:24.899 and forced it to look at its own reflection. 00:00:25.179 --> 00:00:27.300 A very unflattering reflection most of the time. 00:00:27.320 --> 00:00:29.809 We are talking about Alberto Moravia. titan i 00:00:29.809 --> 00:00:31.469 don't use that word lightly if you walked into 00:00:31.469 --> 00:00:35.409 a bookstore in rome in say 1950 or 1970 or even 00:00:35.409 --> 00:00:39.350 1990 moravia was just he was the atmosphere you 00:00:39.350 --> 00:00:41.090 couldn't escape him but see that's what i want 00:00:41.090 --> 00:00:42.990 to get into because when i was prepping for this 00:00:42.990 --> 00:00:46.789 i saw the accolades the nobel nominations the 00:00:46.789 --> 00:00:49.729 movie deals the you know the political career 00:00:49.729 --> 00:00:51.789 all of it the whole package but then i read this 00:00:51.789 --> 00:00:53.350 quote from him and it just stopped me cold he 00:00:53.350 --> 00:00:55.210 said the two most important facts of his life 00:00:55.210 --> 00:00:58.890 were his illness and fascism It's a jarring thing 00:00:58.890 --> 00:01:00.689 to say, isn't it? It's not what you expect from 00:01:00.689 --> 00:01:03.170 a celebrated artist. Yeah, not at all. He said 00:01:03.170 --> 00:01:05.489 they, and I'm quoting here, caused him to suffer 00:01:05.489 --> 00:01:07.430 and do things he otherwise would not have done. 00:01:07.709 --> 00:01:11.230 And that feels so restrictive. Usually when we 00:01:11.230 --> 00:01:12.689 talk about great writers, we talk about their 00:01:12.689 --> 00:01:14.909 freedom, their wild lives. Right. Their choices. 00:01:15.170 --> 00:01:18.689 Exactly. But Moravia is defining himself by what 00:01:18.689 --> 00:01:21.909 trapped him. By his constraints. That is the 00:01:21.909 --> 00:01:24.230 perfect entry point. Because you can't understand 00:01:24.230 --> 00:01:26.590 a single page of his writing. I mean, not really, 00:01:26.609 --> 00:01:28.819 unless you understand that tension. He was a 00:01:28.819 --> 00:01:32.060 man compressed. Compressed. I like that. On one 00:01:32.060 --> 00:01:34.859 side you have his own body betraying him, the 00:01:34.859 --> 00:01:36.859 illness. It's a physical prison. On the other 00:01:36.859 --> 00:01:39.760 side you have the state betraying him, fascism, 00:01:39.799 --> 00:01:42.920 a political prison. And in that compression chamber, 00:01:43.159 --> 00:01:45.939 something crystallized. He used that pressure 00:01:45.939 --> 00:01:48.189 to break things, didn't he? He used it to break 00:01:48.189 --> 00:01:50.549 open the middle class, to crack the shell of 00:01:50.549 --> 00:01:53.989 what he called their moral aridity. Moral aridity. 00:01:54.469 --> 00:01:57.230 That is such a dry, dusty phrase. It just sounds 00:01:57.230 --> 00:01:59.349 empty. It's meant to be. It's a desert of the 00:01:59.349 --> 00:02:02.010 soul. He wasn't interested in the great mustache 00:02:02.010 --> 00:02:04.689 twirling villains of history. He was interested 00:02:04.689 --> 00:02:07.359 in the people who just didn't care. The indifferent, 00:02:07.560 --> 00:02:10.199 the hypocrites, the people who were hollow out 00:02:10.199 --> 00:02:13.500 inside but kept up appearances. OK, so our mission 00:02:13.500 --> 00:02:16.479 today for this deep dive is to trace that pressure. 00:02:16.719 --> 00:02:19.300 How does a kid who was literally stuck in a bed 00:02:19.300 --> 00:02:21.879 for five years, missing school, missing his entire 00:02:21.879 --> 00:02:25.120 childhood, transform into this calm, insightful, 00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:28.580 almost surgical voice of Italian existentialism? 00:02:28.719 --> 00:02:30.979 And how does he become a perennial Nobel contender 00:02:30.979 --> 00:02:33.740 and someone whose work just translated so perfectly 00:02:33.740 --> 00:02:35.840 to the big screen? Right. And to do that, we're. 00:02:35.979 --> 00:02:38.439 pulling from everything we can find, biographical 00:02:38.439 --> 00:02:40.900 records, publication histories. And critical 00:02:40.900 --> 00:02:42.800 analysis of his themes from that existential 00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:46.580 dread we mentioned all the way to his very frank 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:49.199 explorations of sexuality. So let's rewind. Let's 00:02:49.199 --> 00:02:52.539 go all the way back. 1907, Rome. A baby is born 00:02:52.539 --> 00:02:55.479 into a wealthy family, but his name isn't Alberto 00:02:55.479 --> 00:02:58.199 Moravio. No, not at all. He was born Alberto 00:02:58.199 --> 00:03:00.939 Pintral. Pintral? Pintral. It's a Jewish Venetian 00:03:00.939 --> 00:03:04.120 name. His father's name. So Moravia is a pen 00:03:04.120 --> 00:03:07.560 name, a pseudonym. It is, yeah. And the reason 00:03:07.560 --> 00:03:09.560 for that change is a huge part of the survival 00:03:09.560 --> 00:03:11.780 story we'll get to later. But let's stick with 00:03:11.780 --> 00:03:14.740 the baby for a second. Alberto Pinchrell. His 00:03:14.740 --> 00:03:17.860 family background is this perfect storm of early 00:03:17.860 --> 00:03:20.439 20th century European identity. It sounds like 00:03:20.439 --> 00:03:22.639 a complex mix just from the names. Oh, it's the 00:03:22.639 --> 00:03:25.759 definition of complex. His father, Carlo Pinchrell, 00:03:25.860 --> 00:03:29.300 was an architect and a painter. Jewish from Venice, 00:03:29.439 --> 00:03:32.319 very cultured, very secular. Okay. His mother, 00:03:32.460 --> 00:03:35.300 Teresa Eugenia de Marsanich, was a Catholic from 00:03:35.300 --> 00:03:38.419 Ancona, but with Dalmatian origins. So you've 00:03:38.419 --> 00:03:40.900 got Jewish and Catholic, Venetian and Dalmatian, 00:03:40.939 --> 00:03:44.060 North and East, all under one roof in Rome. Exactly. 00:03:44.670 --> 00:03:47.129 But the tension wasn't just religious or cultural. 00:03:47.370 --> 00:03:50.750 It became deeply, dangerously political. I mean, 00:03:50.770 --> 00:03:52.949 if you look at Moravia's extended family, you 00:03:52.949 --> 00:03:55.530 essentially have the entire Italian Civil War 00:03:55.530 --> 00:03:57.389 playing out at the dinner table before it even 00:03:57.389 --> 00:03:59.009 started. You're kidding. How close were they 00:03:59.009 --> 00:04:00.889 to the action? As close as you can possibly get. 00:04:00.990 --> 00:04:03.250 On his father's side, his paternal cousins were 00:04:03.250 --> 00:04:06.189 Carlo and Nella Rosselli. The name Rosselli. 00:04:06.189 --> 00:04:08.050 That definitely rings a bell from history class. 00:04:08.539 --> 00:04:10.680 It absolutely should. They are legends of the 00:04:10.680 --> 00:04:14.020 Italian resistance. They founded Justizia e Libertà, 00:04:14.060 --> 00:04:16.519 Justice and Liberty. Right. They were the intellectual 00:04:16.519 --> 00:04:19.019 heavyweights of the anti -fascist movement. They 00:04:19.019 --> 00:04:21.959 were so effective, so dangerous to the regime 00:04:21.959 --> 00:04:24.639 that Mussolini himself had them hunted down and 00:04:24.639 --> 00:04:28.620 murdered in France in 1937. Wow. OK, so that's 00:04:28.620 --> 00:04:30.939 the father's side. Martyrs of the anti -fascist 00:04:30.939 --> 00:04:32.740 resistance. What about the mother's side? And 00:04:32.740 --> 00:04:35.480 then you pivot to the mother's side. His maternal 00:04:35.480 --> 00:04:38.829 uncle. was a man named Augusto de Marsanich. 00:04:38.990 --> 00:04:42.089 And he was. He wasn't just a member of the fascist 00:04:42.089 --> 00:04:44.709 party. He was an undersecretary in the National 00:04:44.709 --> 00:04:47.189 Fascist Party cabinet, a government official. 00:04:47.410 --> 00:04:49.970 That is just unbelievable. So you have the guys 00:04:49.970 --> 00:04:52.769 running the dictatorship and the guys dying to 00:04:52.769 --> 00:04:55.009 overthrow it, and they share bloodlines with 00:04:55.009 --> 00:04:57.990 this one kid. It perfectly embodies the split 00:04:57.990 --> 00:05:01.339 of Italy itself. Moravia is the synthesis of 00:05:01.339 --> 00:05:03.220 this national fracture. He's living right in 00:05:03.220 --> 00:05:05.019 the middle of the schizophrenia of the 20th century. 00:05:05.279 --> 00:05:07.500 But before he even gets old enough to really 00:05:07.500 --> 00:05:10.379 understand those politics, that first important 00:05:10.379 --> 00:05:13.720 fact of his life hits him. The illness. Yes. 00:05:14.920 --> 00:05:17.519 Tuberculosis of the bone. He's nine years old. 00:05:18.459 --> 00:05:21.120 1916. I have to pause here. Tuberculosis of the 00:05:21.120 --> 00:05:23.480 bone. I know what TB is in the lungs, the coughing, 00:05:23.620 --> 00:05:26.649 the blood, all of that. But in the bone, what 00:05:26.649 --> 00:05:28.829 does that even mean? It's a bacterial infection 00:05:28.829 --> 00:05:31.610 of the skeletal system. In his case, it was coccytis 00:05:31.610 --> 00:05:34.810 in the hip. It's incredibly painful, debilitating. 00:05:34.970 --> 00:05:37.790 And you have to remember, this is 1916. Antibiotics 00:05:37.790 --> 00:05:39.670 aren't a thing yet. There's no quick fix. But 00:05:39.670 --> 00:05:42.009 what's the treatment? The only cure was rest. 00:05:42.970 --> 00:05:45.449 Absolute, total immobilization. So when we say 00:05:45.449 --> 00:05:47.430 bedridden, we don't mean he was just, you know, 00:05:47.430 --> 00:05:49.430 resting on the couch watching cartoons or reading 00:05:49.430 --> 00:05:52.490 comics. You mean confined. Strapped down. In 00:05:52.490 --> 00:05:55.629 some cases, he spent five years in bed, three 00:05:55.629 --> 00:05:57.949 of those years at home, and then two years in 00:05:57.949 --> 00:05:59.910 a sanatorium up in the mountains, the Cotevilla 00:05:59.910 --> 00:06:02.490 Institute near Cortina d 'Ampezzo. Five years 00:06:02.490 --> 00:06:05.910 from age nine to 14. That is that's the whole 00:06:05.910 --> 00:06:07.509 ballgame for a kid. That's when you learn to 00:06:07.509 --> 00:06:08.949 socialize. That's when you learn to play sports. 00:06:09.089 --> 00:06:10.449 That's when you figure out who you are in the 00:06:10.449 --> 00:06:12.709 world. And he missed all of it. He was completely 00:06:12.709 --> 00:06:15.470 cut off while other kids were running around 00:06:15.470 --> 00:06:17.850 the piazzas of Rome, scraping their knees and, 00:06:17.910 --> 00:06:20.329 you know, stealing apples. Alberta was staring 00:06:20.329 --> 00:06:23.500 at a white ceiling. Or looking out a window at 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:26.000 a world he couldn't touch. What does that do 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:29.180 to a developing brain? To your whole way of seeing 00:06:29.180 --> 00:06:31.980 things? It changes the wiring completely. This 00:06:31.980 --> 00:06:33.860 is where the intellectual incubation happens. 00:06:34.060 --> 00:06:36.439 He didn't go to school. He didn't have teachers 00:06:36.439 --> 00:06:38.920 telling him what to read, what to think. He just 00:06:38.920 --> 00:06:40.959 had time. He had a lot of time and he had a lot 00:06:40.959 --> 00:06:42.819 of books. What was on the reading list for this? 00:06:43.420 --> 00:06:47.180 10, 11 year old? Everything. But not kids stuff. 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:50.939 He was devouring Dostoevsky, Joyce, Goldoni, 00:06:51.100 --> 00:06:54.360 Shakespeare, Moliere, Gogol, the heaviest hitters 00:06:54.360 --> 00:06:56.860 of the European canon. He was learning French 00:06:56.860 --> 00:06:59.079 and German on his own just so he could read more. 00:06:59.199 --> 00:07:00.980 He was writing poems in French when he was 12 00:07:00.980 --> 00:07:03.259 years old. It's an incredible story of resilience, 00:07:03.399 --> 00:07:07.620 but it's also just so lonely. The isolation must 00:07:07.620 --> 00:07:11.579 have been profound. It's profoundly lonely. And 00:07:11.579 --> 00:07:14.040 this is the absolute key to understanding his 00:07:14.040 --> 00:07:17.100 writing style later in life. When you spend five 00:07:17.100 --> 00:07:19.480 formative years watching the world from a distance, 00:07:19.540 --> 00:07:22.579 unable to participate, you stop being a participant. 00:07:22.779 --> 00:07:25.779 You become a voyeur. A voyeur. An observer. Yes. 00:07:25.980 --> 00:07:29.040 You learn to observe. You learn to detach. You 00:07:29.040 --> 00:07:30.980 watch the way the nurse walks across the room, 00:07:31.100 --> 00:07:32.759 the way the doctor holds his pen, the way the 00:07:32.759 --> 00:07:35.819 afternoon light hits the wall. You analyze people 00:07:35.819 --> 00:07:38.040 because you can't interact with them. So that 00:07:38.040 --> 00:07:40.439 cold, precise style that critics always talk 00:07:40.439 --> 00:07:43.000 about with Moravia. It wasn't a stylistic choice 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:45.560 he made in a writer's workshop. He was forged 00:07:45.560 --> 00:07:48.819 in that sanatorium bed. It was his survival mechanism. 00:07:48.860 --> 00:07:50.699 He was dissecting the world because he couldn't 00:07:50.699 --> 00:07:53.279 join it. Precisely. He was the boy who looks, 00:07:53.339 --> 00:07:56.300 and eventually he became the man who looks, which 00:07:56.300 --> 00:07:58.620 is not coincidentally the title of one of his 00:07:58.620 --> 00:08:01.540 later books. But it all starts there, in that 00:08:01.540 --> 00:08:04.560 bed. So he finally gets released. He's about 00:08:04.560 --> 00:08:07.430 18 years old. He's physically healed for the 00:08:07.430 --> 00:08:09.490 most part, but he has a limp for the rest of 00:08:09.490 --> 00:08:11.689 his life. He's missed his entire adolescence. 00:08:12.089 --> 00:08:15.170 He moves to a town called Bressanone to do one 00:08:15.170 --> 00:08:18.009 thing. Yeah. Right. And he produces something 00:08:18.009 --> 00:08:20.589 that just explodes onto the scene. He writes 00:08:20.589 --> 00:08:24.290 Glee Indifferenti, which translates to Time of 00:08:24.290 --> 00:08:26.110 Indifference. And he's how old when he writes 00:08:26.110 --> 00:08:28.329 this? He starts it when he's around 18. It gets 00:08:28.329 --> 00:08:31.620 published when he's 21. The year is 1929. 21 00:08:31.620 --> 00:08:33.580 years old, most 21 year olds are trying to figure 00:08:33.580 --> 00:08:35.940 out how to do their own laundry. He writes a 00:08:35.940 --> 00:08:38.539 foundational masterpiece of European literature. 00:08:38.860 --> 00:08:40.600 And he had to pay for it himself. It wasn't like 00:08:40.600 --> 00:08:42.899 publishers were banging down his door. He was 00:08:42.899 --> 00:08:46.080 an unknown kid. He paid 5 ,000 Italian lira of 00:08:46.080 --> 00:08:48.440 his own money, well, his father's money, to get 00:08:48.440 --> 00:08:50.960 it printed. It was a massive gamble. So let's 00:08:50.960 --> 00:08:53.200 dig into this book, Glee Indifferenti, because 00:08:53.200 --> 00:08:56.230 the title sounds... Well, indifferent, a bit 00:08:56.230 --> 00:08:58.990 boring even. But the book is not about people 00:08:58.990 --> 00:09:01.950 who are just chill or laid back. No, not at all. 00:09:02.009 --> 00:09:04.629 It's a horror story in a way, a quiet horror 00:09:04.629 --> 00:09:07.750 story. It's this brutally realistic analysis 00:09:07.750 --> 00:09:11.350 of a middle class Roman family, a mother and 00:09:11.350 --> 00:09:14.149 her two adult children. And they are rotting 00:09:14.149 --> 00:09:16.690 from the inside out. Rotting how? What's the 00:09:16.690 --> 00:09:20.570 decay? Morally. The mother is desperately clinging 00:09:20.570 --> 00:09:23.549 to a lover, a sleazy businessman named Leo. Not 00:09:23.549 --> 00:09:25.690 because she loves him, but because she's terrified 00:09:25.690 --> 00:09:28.629 of losing her social status and her villa. The 00:09:28.629 --> 00:09:32.070 daughter, Carla, knows Leo is awful. He actually 00:09:32.070 --> 00:09:34.509 propositions her, tries to seduce her, but she's 00:09:34.509 --> 00:09:36.379 completely passive. She just goes along with 00:09:36.379 --> 00:09:38.480 it. And the sun. There's a sun, right? Yes, Michelle. 00:09:38.639 --> 00:09:40.600 He's the center of the book. He sees all this 00:09:40.600 --> 00:09:43.259 hypocrisy. He sees the rot. And he wants to be 00:09:43.259 --> 00:09:45.960 angry. He wants to have this grand, tragic, noble 00:09:45.960 --> 00:09:48.580 rage against it all. But he can't feel it. He 00:09:48.580 --> 00:09:50.659 can't feel it. That's the indifference. It's 00:09:50.659 --> 00:09:53.080 not that he doesn't care. It's that he is paralyzed. 00:09:53.639 --> 00:09:55.539 He's numb. He tries to kill the lover at one 00:09:55.539 --> 00:09:57.860 point to make this grand gesture. But he forgets 00:09:57.860 --> 00:10:00.299 to load the gun. Oh, that's brutal. It's not 00:10:00.299 --> 00:10:03.350 just tragic. It's pathetic. It's pathetic. It's 00:10:03.350 --> 00:10:05.330 a complete failure of will. And that is such 00:10:05.330 --> 00:10:08.129 a savage critique. You have to remember the context. 00:10:08.350 --> 00:10:11.750 This is 1929. This is the height of Mussolini's 00:10:11.750 --> 00:10:14.769 power. Right. And fascism is selling a very different 00:10:14.769 --> 00:10:17.289 story. Exactly. Think about what fascism was 00:10:17.289 --> 00:10:21.409 selling. It was selling vitality, action, strength, 00:10:21.669 --> 00:10:26.610 the Roman Empire reborn, youth, energy. And here 00:10:26.610 --> 00:10:29.110 comes this sick kid fresh out of the sanatorium 00:10:29.110 --> 00:10:32.379 with his quiet devastating novel that says actually 00:10:32.379 --> 00:10:34.840 look at us we're dead inside we were powered 00:10:34.840 --> 00:10:37.779 by inertia and greed and boredom that must have 00:10:37.779 --> 00:10:39.519 gone over like a lead balloon with the regime 00:10:39.519 --> 00:10:42.779 it was a shock but the literary critics at least 00:10:42.779 --> 00:10:44.419 initially couldn't ignore it it was too good 00:10:44.419 --> 00:10:47.159 too new it was hailed as the start of a new contemporary 00:10:47.159 --> 00:10:50.870 narrative but the fascists they took note This 00:10:50.870 --> 00:10:52.830 pintual kid was a problem. And this starts the 00:10:52.830 --> 00:10:55.350 cat and mouse game. It does. Moravia's relationship 00:10:55.350 --> 00:10:57.789 with the regime from that point on was a slow 00:10:57.789 --> 00:10:59.889 motion collision. They didn't arrest him immediately. 00:11:00.190 --> 00:11:02.649 They were more subtle. They just started to erase 00:11:02.649 --> 00:11:05.929 him. Erase him how? Well, in 1935, he publishes 00:11:05.929 --> 00:11:08.750 his next major novel, L 'Ambizione Spadiate, 00:11:08.889 --> 00:11:12.470 or Mistaken Ambitions. The Ministry of Popular 00:11:12.470 --> 00:11:15.230 Culture, the MinColPOP as it was known, sends 00:11:15.230 --> 00:11:17.169 out a quiet directive to all the newspapers. 00:11:17.610 --> 00:11:21.029 No reviews. No reviews at all. None. You are 00:11:21.029 --> 00:11:23.049 prohibited from talking about this book. It's 00:11:23.049 --> 00:11:25.049 almost worse than an outright ban. It's just 00:11:25.049 --> 00:11:26.909 silencing. They're making him a non -person. 00:11:27.009 --> 00:11:28.750 And it gets worse from there. It gets much more 00:11:28.750 --> 00:11:32.690 aggressive. In 1941, they seize his novel, La 00:11:32.690 --> 00:11:35.710 Mascarata, which means masquerade. Later that 00:11:35.710 --> 00:11:39.389 year, they ban Agostino. He's being systematically 00:11:39.389 --> 00:11:41.590 suffocated as a writer. So how does a writer 00:11:41.590 --> 00:11:43.909 survive that? If you can't write about the reality 00:11:43.909 --> 00:11:45.970 you see, what do you write? You write in code. 00:11:46.559 --> 00:11:49.460 You find another way. Moravia started experimenting 00:11:49.460 --> 00:11:52.379 with surrealism, with allegory. He wrote works 00:11:52.379 --> 00:11:54.740 like Is Sonio del Pigro the Dream of the Lazy? 00:11:54.860 --> 00:11:57.399 He was trying to smuggle his ideas about conformity 00:11:57.399 --> 00:11:59.879 and moral decay past the censors by dressing 00:11:59.879 --> 00:12:02.460 them up in strange, fantastical costumes. And 00:12:02.460 --> 00:12:04.039 he had to dress up his name, too, as you mentioned. 00:12:04.360 --> 00:12:07.659 Yes. This is where the name Pinterlo became a 00:12:07.659 --> 00:12:11.220 serious liability. The anti -Semitic racial laws 00:12:11.220 --> 00:12:14.440 were passed in 1938. Being a prominent writer 00:12:14.440 --> 00:12:17.259 with a Jewish surname was dangerous, so he leaned 00:12:17.259 --> 00:12:19.919 fully into the pseudonym Moravia, which came 00:12:19.919 --> 00:12:22.340 from his paternal grandmother's side. It was 00:12:22.340 --> 00:12:24.759 another survival tactic. It's terrifying to think 00:12:24.759 --> 00:12:26.500 about. He's trying to keep his career alive, 00:12:26.679 --> 00:12:28.539 but he's also just trying to keep his body alive. 00:12:28.860 --> 00:12:32.320 Yeah. And then 1943 hits. The turning point for 00:12:32.320 --> 00:12:35.139 all of Italy, and for Moravia personally, the 00:12:35.139 --> 00:12:38.480 armistice, September 8th. The king flees, the 00:12:38.480 --> 00:12:40.639 government collapses, and the Nazis occupy Rome. 00:12:41.120 --> 00:12:43.700 The Civil War explodes. It is no longer safe 00:12:43.700 --> 00:12:46.419 to be Alberto Moravia, the known anti -fascist 00:12:46.419 --> 00:12:48.820 writer in Rome. He's with his wife at this point, 00:12:48.840 --> 00:12:51.240 right? Elsa Morante. Yes, he married Elsa Morante 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:53.600 in 1941. And we should do a whole other deep 00:12:53.600 --> 00:12:56.120 dive on her because she is a literary giant in 00:12:56.120 --> 00:12:58.200 her own right. Another time. So they're a known 00:12:58.200 --> 00:13:00.080 quantity. They're a known quantity. They were 00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:02.320 living in Capri trying to stay low. But when 00:13:02.320 --> 00:13:04.059 the Nazis march into Rome, they know they're 00:13:04.059 --> 00:13:05.860 on a list. They have to run. Where do you even 00:13:05.860 --> 00:13:08.179 go in that situation? They try to head south 00:13:08.179 --> 00:13:10.970 toward the approaching Allied lines. But they 00:13:10.970 --> 00:13:13.610 get stuck. They end up hiding in a small town 00:13:13.610 --> 00:13:16.549 called Fondi in the mountainous region of Chiociaria. 00:13:16.789 --> 00:13:19.549 And this is not a villa in Tuscany we're talking 00:13:19.549 --> 00:13:22.990 about. No. This is peasant country. It's rough. 00:13:23.429 --> 00:13:26.850 Mountains, mud, extreme poverty. They lived in 00:13:26.850 --> 00:13:29.330 what was essentially a hut with a family of shepherds 00:13:29.330 --> 00:13:31.759 for... Nine months. And this brings us to the 00:13:31.759 --> 00:13:34.539 second massive shift in his life. We talked about 00:13:34.539 --> 00:13:36.919 the illness stripping away his childhood. What 00:13:36.919 --> 00:13:39.580 did this experience in Fondy strip away? It stripped 00:13:39.580 --> 00:13:42.070 away the bourgeois intellectual bubble. Completely. 00:13:42.230 --> 00:13:45.049 Up until this point, Moravia is writing about 00:13:45.049 --> 00:13:47.269 the middle class from the middle class. He's 00:13:47.269 --> 00:13:49.110 critiquing the drawing rooms and the villas. 00:13:49.269 --> 00:13:52.370 In Fundy, he's starving. He's cold. He's seeing 00:13:52.370 --> 00:13:54.830 raw survival. He's seeing the violence of war 00:13:54.830 --> 00:13:57.850 up close, not as a concept, but as a daily reality. 00:13:58.230 --> 00:14:00.509 He's seeing what people do when moral aridity 00:14:00.509 --> 00:14:02.809 isn't the problem. Starvation is the problem. 00:14:02.990 --> 00:14:05.679 Exactly. And this experience birthed his return 00:14:05.679 --> 00:14:08.960 to realism, but a coarser, earthier, more visceral 00:14:08.960 --> 00:14:11.980 realism. This is the seed for what many consider 00:14:11.980 --> 00:14:14.519 his greatest novel, La Ciosciara. Which we know 00:14:14.519 --> 00:14:16.639 in English as Two Women. Right. It was published 00:14:16.639 --> 00:14:20.139 much later, in 1957. But the DNA is all from 00:14:20.139 --> 00:14:22.940 those nine months in 1943 and 44. Let's talk 00:14:22.940 --> 00:14:24.960 about that book. It's the story of a mother, 00:14:25.120 --> 00:14:27.879 Cicera, and her daughter, Rosetta. They're shopkeepers 00:14:27.879 --> 00:14:30.360 from Rome who flee to the countryside, to Cicera, 00:14:30.600 --> 00:14:33.059 thinking they're escaping a war. But of course, 00:14:33.080 --> 00:14:35.899 the war finds them. It always does. It's a devastating 00:14:35.899 --> 00:14:39.080 book. The ending is, it's just brutal. It is. 00:14:39.139 --> 00:14:41.740 The scene in the church where they are both raped 00:14:41.740 --> 00:14:43.980 by Moroccan colonial troops fighting for the 00:14:43.980 --> 00:14:46.659 French army, so -called liberators, it is one 00:14:46.659 --> 00:14:49.460 of the most harrowing sequences in all of Italian 00:14:49.460 --> 00:14:52.679 literature. It symbolizes the total destruction 00:14:52.679 --> 00:14:55.080 of innocence. The daughter, Rosetta, she goes 00:14:55.080 --> 00:14:58.539 from this angelic religious girl to... something 00:14:58.539 --> 00:15:01.320 else entirely. She becomes numb. She shuts down. 00:15:01.440 --> 00:15:03.419 She becomes promiscuous. It's like the trauma 00:15:03.419 --> 00:15:05.299 just burned out her soul. Numb. There's that 00:15:05.299 --> 00:15:08.419 theme again, that paralysis. Yes, but it's a 00:15:08.419 --> 00:15:10.919 different kind of numbness than in Glee and Differente. 00:15:11.419 --> 00:15:14.340 In the first book, the numbness came from boredom 00:15:14.340 --> 00:15:16.899 and hypocrisy, from a life without meaning. In 00:15:16.899 --> 00:15:19.879 Two Women, the numbness comes from trauma. It's 00:15:19.879 --> 00:15:21.960 a survival mechanism. It's what happens when 00:15:21.960 --> 00:15:25.049 reality is too horrible to feel. So Moravia returns 00:15:25.049 --> 00:15:29.429 to Rome in May 1944 after the liberation. He 00:15:29.429 --> 00:15:31.789 survives. He survives. And he hits the ground 00:15:31.789 --> 00:15:34.129 running. He walks into the offices of Il Corriere 00:15:34.129 --> 00:15:36.710 della Sera, the biggest paper in Italy, and basically 00:15:36.710 --> 00:15:39.210 says, I'm back, and starts writing. He becomes 00:15:39.210 --> 00:15:41.710 a fixture of post -war Italian culture. And the 00:15:41.710 --> 00:15:43.669 novels just start pouring out of him. This is 00:15:43.669 --> 00:15:46.549 his golden run, really. It is. You get La Romana, 00:15:46.610 --> 00:15:50.590 The Woman of Rome in 1947, La Disobedienza, Disobedience 00:15:50.590 --> 00:15:54.769 in 1948, and then in 1951. you get maybe his 00:15:54.769 --> 00:15:56.990 most politically important novel, Il Conformista. 00:15:57.129 --> 00:15:59.309 The Conformist. Okay, I want to spend some time 00:15:59.309 --> 00:16:01.750 here because to me, this book explains the psychology 00:16:01.750 --> 00:16:04.350 of the 20th century better than most history 00:16:04.350 --> 00:16:06.549 books. I completely agree. It's an anti -fascist 00:16:06.549 --> 00:16:08.610 novel, but it's not about politics in the way 00:16:08.610 --> 00:16:10.850 you'd expect. It's not about marches and speeches. 00:16:11.009 --> 00:16:13.470 It's about psychology. It's a character study. 00:16:13.899 --> 00:16:16.639 It's about a guy, Marcello Clarici, and his entire 00:16:16.639 --> 00:16:19.679 life is driven by one single desperate obsession 00:16:19.679 --> 00:16:23.299 to be normal. That's the entire hook. Yeah. Marcello 00:16:23.299 --> 00:16:25.899 feels broken inside. He has a trauma from his 00:16:25.899 --> 00:16:27.840 childhood. He thinks he killed a man who tried 00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:30.080 to molest him. And because of this, he feels 00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:33.799 different, abnormal, guilty, and his entire adult 00:16:33.799 --> 00:16:36.220 life because a desperate attempt to blend in, 00:16:36.279 --> 00:16:39.490 to be just like everyone else. And in Mussolini's 00:16:39.490 --> 00:16:42.490 Italy, being just like everyone else means being 00:16:42.490 --> 00:16:45.509 a fascist. Bingo. He doesn't join the fascist 00:16:45.509 --> 00:16:47.669 party because he believes in the ideology. He 00:16:47.669 --> 00:16:49.870 couldn't care less. He joins because it's the 00:16:49.870 --> 00:16:52.090 ultimate camouflage. It's the definition of normal. 00:16:52.250 --> 00:16:54.730 He marries a boring, conventional, middle -class 00:16:54.730 --> 00:16:56.570 woman, not because he loves her, but because 00:16:56.570 --> 00:16:59.259 she's normal. And he agrees to work for the secret 00:16:59.259 --> 00:17:02.139 police. He agrees to go on a mission to assassinate 00:17:02.139 --> 00:17:04.579 his old professor in Paris. Not because he hates 00:17:04.579 --> 00:17:06.880 the professor, but because that's what the state, 00:17:07.039 --> 00:17:09.220 the normal, asked him to do. It's the price of 00:17:09.220 --> 00:17:11.799 admission to the club of normality. It's terrifying 00:17:11.799 --> 00:17:14.779 because it suggests that the greatest evils aren't 00:17:14.779 --> 00:17:17.220 always committed out of passionate hatred. Sometimes 00:17:17.220 --> 00:17:20.099 evil is just about wanting to fit in. It's Hannah 00:17:20.099 --> 00:17:23.000 Arndt's banality of evil, localized in one man's 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:26.660 psyche. It's the desire not to stand out. And 00:17:26.660 --> 00:17:29.740 this book, The Conformist, brings us to a huge 00:17:29.740 --> 00:17:33.279 part of Moravia's legacy. You simply cannot talk 00:17:33.279 --> 00:17:35.339 about Moravia without talking about the movies. 00:17:35.599 --> 00:17:38.279 It feels like every great Italian director in 00:17:38.279 --> 00:17:40.700 that era had a Moravia paperback in their back 00:17:40.700 --> 00:17:43.180 pocket. They absolutely did. And non -Italian 00:17:43.180 --> 00:17:45.579 ones, too. His work was foundational. Bernardo 00:17:45.579 --> 00:17:49.339 Bertolucci adapted The Conformist in 1970. And 00:17:49.339 --> 00:17:52.339 if you haven't seen that film, you have to. Pause 00:17:52.339 --> 00:17:54.799 this and go watch it. It is visually one of the 00:17:54.799 --> 00:17:56.839 most stunning films ever made. It really is. 00:17:56.920 --> 00:17:59.720 But why? What is it about Moravia's writing that 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:02.779 makes it so cinematic? I think it goes all the 00:18:02.779 --> 00:18:05.200 way back to the illness, to the voyeurism. Moravia 00:18:05.200 --> 00:18:07.900 didn't write deeply internal stream of consciousness 00:18:07.900 --> 00:18:10.960 mush. He wrote scenes. He described physical 00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:13.500 space. He described where people stood in a room. 00:18:13.579 --> 00:18:15.700 He described the light coming through the blinds. 00:18:15.700 --> 00:18:18.420 He described the objects on a table. He wrote 00:18:18.420 --> 00:18:20.839 as if he was describing a stage set. He was a 00:18:20.839 --> 00:18:22.369 camera before. Or the camera was even there. 00:18:22.410 --> 00:18:24.630 He was writing the screenplay. Exactly. He gave 00:18:24.630 --> 00:18:26.730 directors a visual and psychological roadmap. 00:18:27.230 --> 00:18:29.970 Look at two women. Victoria De Sica filmed that 00:18:29.970 --> 00:18:33.730 in 1960. Sophia Loren won the Oscar for Best 00:18:33.730 --> 00:18:37.430 Actress for her role as Sazira. A non -English 00:18:37.430 --> 00:18:40.349 language role, which was a huge deal. A huge 00:18:40.349 --> 00:18:44.089 deal. She brought that earthy, fierce, traumatized 00:18:44.089 --> 00:18:46.529 mother figure to life in a way that was just... 00:18:47.910 --> 00:18:50.230 Unforgettable. And then there's Contempt. The 00:18:50.230 --> 00:18:52.930 French title is Le Mépris. The Italian is Il 00:18:52.930 --> 00:18:55.289 Disprezzo. Filmed by the great Jean -Luc Godard 00:18:55.289 --> 00:18:58.890 in 1963 with Brigitte Bardot and Jack Palance. 00:18:59.109 --> 00:19:01.589 This movie is iconic. The primary colors, the 00:19:01.589 --> 00:19:04.609 music, that amazing apartment scene. But the 00:19:04.609 --> 00:19:07.900 story itself. It's painful. It's the complete 00:19:07.900 --> 00:19:10.160 disintegration of a marriage between a screenwriter 00:19:10.160 --> 00:19:11.900 and his wife. And again, it's about that glass 00:19:11.900 --> 00:19:13.920 wall. Yeah. The husband and wife are in the same 00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:16.059 room, but they're psychologically miles apart. 00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:17.960 They can't communicate. There's that famous scene 00:19:17.960 --> 00:19:19.720 from the book in the film where the wife is lying 00:19:19.720 --> 00:19:21.799 naked on the bed and asks the husband if he likes 00:19:21.799 --> 00:19:23.579 her feet, her ankles, her knees, her thighs. 00:19:23.819 --> 00:19:25.680 It's like she's checking an inventory, a list 00:19:25.680 --> 00:19:29.140 of parts. Yes. It fragments the body. It's not, 00:19:29.220 --> 00:19:31.900 do you love me? It's, do you like these component 00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:35.220 parts of me? It emphasizes the alienation. The 00:19:35.220 --> 00:19:37.680 husband loves the parts, maybe, but he has lost 00:19:37.680 --> 00:19:40.660 the person. That is pure Moravia. It's brutal. 00:19:40.819 --> 00:19:44.180 The title says it all. Contempt. We keep hitting 00:19:44.180 --> 00:19:46.799 this word, alienation. And we touched on the 00:19:46.799 --> 00:19:49.000 word indifference, but there's another critical 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:51.619 word in his vocabulary we need to unpack. The 00:19:51.619 --> 00:19:55.869 Italian word is noia. La noia. It usually translates 00:19:55.869 --> 00:19:58.809 to boredom. But when I say I'm bored, I mean 00:19:58.809 --> 00:20:00.990 there's nothing good on Netflix. Moravia means 00:20:00.990 --> 00:20:02.890 something much deeper, doesn't he? He means something 00:20:02.890 --> 00:20:05.950 totally different. In 1960, he publishes the 00:20:05.950 --> 00:20:09.589 novel La Noya. And for Moravia, boredom isn't 00:20:09.589 --> 00:20:11.910 a lack of stimulus. It's a philosophical condition. 00:20:12.329 --> 00:20:14.769 It's a disease of perception. Okay, break that 00:20:14.769 --> 00:20:16.549 down for us. What does that mean? Okay, so imagine 00:20:16.549 --> 00:20:18.569 you are looking at a coffee cup on your desk. 00:20:18.710 --> 00:20:20.750 You know it's a coffee cup. You can pick it up. 00:20:20.750 --> 00:20:24.819 You can use it. But suddenly it feels... It feels 00:20:24.819 --> 00:20:27.019 like there's a thin sheet of glass between you 00:20:27.019 --> 00:20:29.119 and the cup. You can't truly connect with it. 00:20:29.140 --> 00:20:31.279 You can't find meaning in it. It's just an object. 00:20:31.519 --> 00:20:34.700 Its reality has evaporated. So noia is the loss 00:20:34.700 --> 00:20:37.359 of connection to reality. It's the interruption 00:20:37.359 --> 00:20:40.339 of the relationship between the subject, which 00:20:40.339 --> 00:20:43.519 is you, and the object, which is the world. It's 00:20:43.519 --> 00:20:45.759 not that you have nothing to do. It's that nothing 00:20:45.759 --> 00:20:48.440 you do feels real or meaningful. That actually 00:20:48.440 --> 00:20:50.779 sounds incredibly modern. That feels very 21st 00:20:50.779 --> 00:20:53.339 century. It is. Think about doom scrolling on 00:20:53.339 --> 00:20:55.059 your phone. Yeah. You're looking at hundreds 00:20:55.059 --> 00:20:58.700 of videos, images, people, but you feel nothing. 00:20:58.839 --> 00:21:01.400 You are completely disconnected. That is Noya. 00:21:01.720 --> 00:21:04.440 You are watching life, but you aren't participating 00:21:04.440 --> 00:21:06.940 in it. So in the book La Noya, the protagonist 00:21:06.940 --> 00:21:09.960 is a rich painter who stops painting. He stops 00:21:09.960 --> 00:21:11.660 painting because he can't connect to reality 00:21:11.660 --> 00:21:14.720 anymore. The objects he tries to paint feel fake, 00:21:14.880 --> 00:21:18.480 meaningless. The Noya has taken over. And so 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:20.900 he tries to solve it through sex. Right. He starts 00:21:20.900 --> 00:21:23.339 this intense, troubled relationship with a young 00:21:23.339 --> 00:21:26.299 model named Cecilia. He thinks if he can possess 00:21:26.299 --> 00:21:29.599 her sexually, he can control her. He can break 00:21:29.599 --> 00:21:31.619 through that glass wall. He can grab onto something 00:21:31.619 --> 00:21:34.019 real again. And does it work? Of course not. 00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:37.299 Because she is completely elusive. The more he 00:21:37.299 --> 00:21:39.039 tries to possess her and understand her, the 00:21:39.039 --> 00:21:41.920 more she slips away. The sex becomes mechanical, 00:21:42.480 --> 00:21:45.420 desperate, obsessive. It just becomes another 00:21:45.420 --> 00:21:48.440 form of boredom. Fabio was pretty explicit about 00:21:48.440 --> 00:21:50.460 sex in his novels, wasn't he? Especially for 00:21:50.460 --> 00:21:52.799 the time. He was, yeah. And this shocked a lot 00:21:52.799 --> 00:21:55.680 of people. The Vatican put his books on the Index 00:21:55.680 --> 00:21:58.220 of Forbidden Books. But he wasn't writing erotica. 00:21:58.299 --> 00:22:00.960 He was writing about sex as a diagnostic tool. 00:22:01.160 --> 00:22:03.839 A diagnostic tool. He used it to reveal character. 00:22:04.380 --> 00:22:07.039 He saw sex as a desperate attempt to communicate 00:22:07.039 --> 00:22:09.740 when all other forms of communication had failed. 00:22:10.079 --> 00:22:11.640 He stripped the romance out of it completely. 00:22:11.880 --> 00:22:14.700 He showed sex as a transaction or a battleground 00:22:14.700 --> 00:22:17.519 for power or just a frantic, physical way to 00:22:17.519 --> 00:22:19.640 prove you still exist. It's that surgical style 00:22:19.640 --> 00:22:22.779 again. The cold, precise scalpel. A surgical 00:22:22.779 --> 00:22:25.220 report on the human soul. That's a good way to 00:22:25.220 --> 00:22:27.259 put it. He uses simple words. He doesn't use 00:22:27.259 --> 00:22:29.839 flowery adjectives or complicated syntax. He 00:22:29.839 --> 00:22:31.779 cuts straight to the bone. Now, despite all this 00:22:31.779 --> 00:22:34.700 talk of boredom and alienation and being trapped, 00:22:35.200 --> 00:22:37.920 Moravia himself wasn't a hermit. He was a constant 00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:40.619 traveler. He was always on the move. I think 00:22:40.619 --> 00:22:43.200 in a way he was running from the Noya. He needed 00:22:43.200 --> 00:22:45.960 new realities to look at, new societies to dissect. 00:22:46.200 --> 00:22:48.640 Where did he go? Everywhere. He went to China, 00:22:48.700 --> 00:22:52.000 Japan and Korea in 1967. He traveled extensively 00:22:52.000 --> 00:22:54.519 through Africa. An Italian existentialist in 00:22:54.519 --> 00:22:56.579 Mao's China during the Cultural Revolution. That's 00:22:56.579 --> 00:22:59.019 a very weird image. He wrote a fascinating book 00:22:59.019 --> 00:23:01.799 about it, The Red Book and The Great Wall. He 00:23:01.799 --> 00:23:03.880 wasn't necessarily endorsing it, but he was fascinated 00:23:03.880 --> 00:23:07.180 by the social mechanism, by this attempt to engineer 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:09.680 a new human being. He was always the analyst. 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:12.619 And he went to Japan, to Hiroshima. Yes, that 00:23:12.619 --> 00:23:15.960 trip in 1982 really shook him. He wrote a collection 00:23:15.960 --> 00:23:18.839 of essays called Inverno Nucleo, the nuclear 00:23:18.839 --> 00:23:21.940 winter. He realized that the ultimate alienation, 00:23:21.980 --> 00:23:24.640 the ultimate expression of Noya, was the atomic 00:23:24.640 --> 00:23:28.079 bomb. The bomb makes all human endeavor, all 00:23:28.079 --> 00:23:30.789 history. All meaning, instantly meaningless. 00:23:31.069 --> 00:23:33.269 It was the ultimate absurdity. He also got involved 00:23:33.269 --> 00:23:36.009 in politics back home, like actual elected office. 00:23:36.150 --> 00:23:38.309 Yes, which is surprising for a man so concerned 00:23:38.309 --> 00:23:42.130 with detachment. In 1984, he ran for and was 00:23:42.130 --> 00:23:44.049 elected to the European Parliament. Which party 00:23:44.049 --> 00:23:46.630 did he represent? He ran as an independent on 00:23:46.630 --> 00:23:48.569 the list of the Italian Communist Party. Wait, 00:23:48.630 --> 00:23:51.069 was he a communist? After everything with fascism? 00:23:51.289 --> 00:23:54.769 It's complicated. He was always a leftist, but 00:23:54.769 --> 00:23:57.460 he was never a dogmatist. He was wealthy. He 00:23:57.460 --> 00:24:00.480 was bourgeois to his core. But he aligned with 00:24:00.480 --> 00:24:03.400 the communists because in post -war Italy, he 00:24:03.400 --> 00:24:06.059 saw them as the only serious opposition to the 00:24:06.059 --> 00:24:08.680 moral aridity of capitalism and the lingering 00:24:08.680 --> 00:24:11.319 shadows of fascism. But he was always a critic. 00:24:11.400 --> 00:24:12.920 He had a famous quote about that, didn't he? 00:24:13.039 --> 00:24:15.859 He did. He said, a writer survives in spite of 00:24:15.859 --> 00:24:18.440 his beliefs. Meaning what? Meaning his art had 00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:21.140 to come first. His loyalty was to the truth of 00:24:21.140 --> 00:24:24.109 his characters, not to a party line. He couldn't 00:24:24.109 --> 00:24:26.450 write propaganda. If a story demanded that a 00:24:26.450 --> 00:24:28.869 communist character be a hypocrite, he wrote 00:24:28.869 --> 00:24:31.569 him as a hypocrite. His honesty as a writer trumped 00:24:31.569 --> 00:24:33.650 any political affiliation. We should touch on 00:24:33.650 --> 00:24:35.430 his personal life again in this later period 00:24:35.430 --> 00:24:38.210 because it was, let's say, unconventional. It 00:24:38.210 --> 00:24:41.990 was. He and Elsa Morante separated in 1962. They 00:24:41.990 --> 00:24:44.349 were two massive artistic personalities, probably 00:24:44.349 --> 00:24:47.089 too big for one house. But interestingly, they 00:24:47.089 --> 00:24:49.589 never divorced. They remained legally married 00:24:49.589 --> 00:24:52.349 until her death. And then he began a long relationship 00:24:52.349 --> 00:24:55.529 with Dacia Moreni. Another incredible writer 00:24:55.529 --> 00:24:58.329 and feminist intellectual. They were the literary 00:24:58.329 --> 00:25:02.009 power couple of the 60s and 70s in Rome. They 00:25:02.009 --> 00:25:04.769 founded a theater company together called Il 00:25:04.769 --> 00:25:07.930 Porco Spino, The Porcupine. And then, late in 00:25:07.930 --> 00:25:11.009 life, there's another plot twist. In 1986, when 00:25:11.009 --> 00:25:13.829 he's almost 80, he gets married again. to a Spanish 00:25:13.829 --> 00:25:16.569 woman named Carmen Guerra. She was 45 years his 00:25:16.569 --> 00:25:19.410 junior. 45 years. The tabloids in Italy went 00:25:19.410 --> 00:25:22.029 absolutely crazy. Yeah. But Moravia, true to 00:25:22.029 --> 00:25:24.769 form, didn't care. He never cared about social 00:25:24.769 --> 00:25:26.390 convention. I mean, this is the guy who wrote 00:25:26.390 --> 00:25:28.789 the book on indifference to social norms. He 00:25:28.789 --> 00:25:30.930 lived it. Speaking of not caring about norms, 00:25:31.130 --> 00:25:34.410 we have to talk about his 1971 novel, Io Illus. 00:25:34.490 --> 00:25:38.009 Yes. I and he, or in English, the two of us. 00:25:38.359 --> 00:25:40.500 book okay how do we even describe this it's written 00:25:40.500 --> 00:25:42.839 as a dialogue it is a dialogue it's a running 00:25:42.839 --> 00:25:45.059 conversation between a struggling screenwriter 00:25:45.059 --> 00:25:48.819 named rico and well his penis his independent 00:25:48.819 --> 00:25:52.900 talking penis yes the penis has its own voice 00:25:52.900 --> 00:25:55.859 it has its own name in a way. It has opinions. 00:25:56.180 --> 00:25:59.559 It wants things, usually sex, that Rico, the 00:25:59.559 --> 00:26:02.319 intellectual, doesn't want. It constantly undermines 00:26:02.319 --> 00:26:04.579 him. It sounds like a premise for a cheap comedy, 00:26:04.700 --> 00:26:06.579 but it's actually serious philosophy, right? 00:26:06.700 --> 00:26:08.920 It is. I mean, it's funny, yes. It's surreal 00:26:08.920 --> 00:26:11.700 and absurd, but it's Moravia grappling with the 00:26:11.700 --> 00:26:14.619 ultimate split. The split between the intellect, 00:26:14.700 --> 00:26:17.019 the head, and the instinct, the body. The head 00:26:17.019 --> 00:26:18.680 wants to be a serious artist and intellectual. 00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:21.920 The body just wants to chase women. So who is 00:26:21.920 --> 00:26:24.940 really in charge? Who is the I in I and he? He's 00:26:24.940 --> 00:26:27.039 basically saying we are not the masters of our 00:26:27.039 --> 00:26:29.480 own house. Not even close. There's a civil war 00:26:29.480 --> 00:26:31.900 happening inside all of us. Even in his 60s and 00:26:31.900 --> 00:26:34.259 70s, he was still experimenting. He never got 00:26:34.259 --> 00:26:36.319 safe. He never retired into being a grand old 00:26:36.319 --> 00:26:38.880 man of letters. Never. Lo amo que guarda. The 00:26:38.880 --> 00:26:42.480 man who looks in 1985 returns to that core voyeur 00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:45.220 theme. He just kept picking at the same stab 00:26:45.220 --> 00:26:48.640 sex, alienation, the act of looking until the 00:26:48.640 --> 00:26:50.619 very end. He was relentless in his obsessions. 00:26:50.759 --> 00:26:53.220 But there is one thing he never got. The big 00:26:53.220 --> 00:26:56.000 prize, the Nobel Prize in literature. The Nobel 00:26:56.000 --> 00:26:58.319 that never was. It's one of the great mysteries. 00:26:58.480 --> 00:27:01.359 He was nominated for the Nobel Prize 13 times 00:27:01.359 --> 00:27:05.200 between 1949 and 1965 alone. We know this from 00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:06.819 the official archives that have been open. 19 00:27:06.819 --> 00:27:09.720 times. So why didn't he win? Who really knows 00:27:09.720 --> 00:27:12.769 how the Swedish Academy thinks? Maybe he was 00:27:12.769 --> 00:27:15.089 too controversial. Maybe his focus on sexuality 00:27:15.089 --> 00:27:17.609 was too much for them. Maybe he was seen as too 00:27:17.609 --> 00:27:20.529 popular or too cinematic. Maybe they didn't like 00:27:20.529 --> 00:27:23.150 the Talking Penis book. It's possible. But honestly, 00:27:23.269 --> 00:27:24.890 at the end of the day, he didn't need it. He 00:27:24.890 --> 00:27:28.130 was president of PN International. In 1985, he 00:27:28.130 --> 00:27:31.029 was officially named European Personality. He 00:27:31.029 --> 00:27:32.589 was bigger than the prize. And he kept working 00:27:32.589 --> 00:27:34.829 right up to the very end. Right to the end. September 00:27:34.829 --> 00:27:37.789 1990. He was found in the bathroom of his apartment 00:27:37.789 --> 00:27:40.670 in Rome on the Lunga Tever, overlooking the river. 00:27:41.069 --> 00:27:44.009 He was 82 years old. His autobiography, Vita 00:27:44.009 --> 00:27:46.529 di Moravia, was published in that same year. 00:27:46.789 --> 00:27:49.890 He finished the job. So let's zoom out. We've 00:27:49.890 --> 00:27:52.349 gone from the sickbed in Rome to the European 00:27:52.349 --> 00:27:55.369 Parliament, from the fascist censors to the international 00:27:55.369 --> 00:27:57.789 bestseller list and Oscar winning films. It's 00:27:57.789 --> 00:28:01.069 a massive, massive arc. But if we have to distill 00:28:01.069 --> 00:28:04.130 it, if we have to answer the question. What did 00:28:04.130 --> 00:28:06.549 Alberto Moravia teach us? What is his core message? 00:28:06.869 --> 00:28:09.230 I think he taught us to look at the glass. Glass. 00:28:09.589 --> 00:28:13.170 The glass wall that he felt separates us from 00:28:13.170 --> 00:28:16.349 reality. He showed us that our boredom, our inability 00:28:16.349 --> 00:28:19.609 to connect, our feeling of being fake or performing 00:28:19.609 --> 00:28:22.190 a role, these are just personal failings. They 00:28:22.190 --> 00:28:24.289 are symptoms of the modern world we built. And 00:28:24.289 --> 00:28:25.769 he taught us about constraints. That's where 00:28:25.769 --> 00:28:28.430 we started. Yes. Go back to that very first quote. 00:28:28.630 --> 00:28:31.730 The two most important facts of his life. Illness 00:28:31.730 --> 00:28:34.640 and fascism. The things that trapped him. He 00:28:34.640 --> 00:28:36.759 believed we are formed by what we are forced 00:28:36.759 --> 00:28:39.859 to do, not by what we choose to do. And that 00:28:39.859 --> 00:28:42.640 is such a provocative thought for us today. We 00:28:42.640 --> 00:28:44.640 live in an age that celebrates limitless choice. 00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:47.799 We curate our lives, our jobs, our online identities. 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:50.500 We think we are completely free. But Moravia 00:28:50.500 --> 00:28:54.200 would ask, are you? Or are you really being shaped 00:28:54.200 --> 00:28:56.660 by the things you can't control? Your health. 00:28:56.819 --> 00:28:59.839 The economy. The political climate, the technology 00:28:59.839 --> 00:29:01.880 you use. And if you stop distracting yourself 00:29:01.880 --> 00:29:04.720 for one second, if you put down the phone, do 00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:07.259 you feel that noia creeping in? That silence, 00:29:07.599 --> 00:29:09.799 that terrifying silence where you realize you 00:29:09.799 --> 00:29:12.140 might not be as connected as you think. That's 00:29:12.140 --> 00:29:15.119 the scary part. But Moravia would say, feel it. 00:29:15.599 --> 00:29:17.980 Don't run from the boredom. Don't swipe it away. 00:29:18.220 --> 00:29:21.039 Look at it. Analyze it. Because that's where 00:29:21.039 --> 00:29:23.890 the truth is. Underneath the performance. So 00:29:23.890 --> 00:29:26.750 if you, the listener, want to shatter that glass 00:29:26.750 --> 00:29:29.009 or at least peek through it, pick up The Conformist 00:29:29.009 --> 00:29:31.910 or Time of Indifference or watch Bertolucci's 00:29:31.910 --> 00:29:34.869 film or Two Women, it's not always a comfortable 00:29:34.869 --> 00:29:37.670 experience. but it is a real one. And in a world 00:29:37.670 --> 00:29:40.089 of fake news and filtered photos and curated 00:29:40.089 --> 00:29:43.450 realities, a little bit of cold, hard, unblinking 00:29:43.450 --> 00:29:46.029 reality is exactly what we need. Thank you for 00:29:46.029 --> 00:29:48.549 this incredible journey through his life and 00:29:48.549 --> 00:29:50.849 work. My pleasure. It was fascinating. And thank 00:29:50.849 --> 00:29:53.009 you all for listening. Keep looking. We'll see 00:29:53.009 --> 00:29:54.430 you next time on The Deep Dive.