Woman of Rome: a Life of Elsa Morante

Summary (from the publisher): Elsa Morante was born in 1912 to an unconventional family of modest means. She grew up with an independent spirit, a formidable will, and a commitment to writing - she wrote her first poem when she was just two years old. During World War II, Morante and her husband, the celebrated writer Alberto Moravia, were forced to flee occupied Rome - Moravia was half Jewish (as was she) and wanted by the Fascists - and hide out in a remote mountain hut. After the war, Morante published a series of prize-winning novels, including Arturo's Island and History, a seminal account of the war, which established her as one of the leading Italian writers of her day.

Lily Tuck's elegant and unusual biography also evokes the heady time during the postwar years when Rome was the film capital of the world and Morante counted among her circle of friends the filmmakers Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, and the young Bernardo Bertolucci. A charismatic and beautiful woman, Morante had a series of love affairs - most unhappy - as well as friendships with such famous literary luminaries as Carlo Levi, Italo Calvino, and Natalia Ginzburg. As a couple, Morante and Moravia - the Beauvoir-Sartre of Italy - captivated the nation with their intense and mutual admiration, their arguments, and their passion.

Wonderfully researched with the cooperation of the Morante Estate, filled with personal interviews, and written in graceful and succinct prose, Woman of Rome introduces the American reader to a woman of fierce intelligence, powerful imagination, and original talent.

Review: "People, Elsa Morante always claimed, were essentially divided into three categories: there was Achilles, the man who lived out his passions; there was Don Quixote, the man who lived out his dreams. and, finally, there was Hamlet, the man who questioned everything. Moravia, in her opinion, was part Hamlet and part Achilles; she herself was all Don Quixote" (p.61).

It's little wonder why Lily Tuck was drawn to write the first biography of Elsa Morante, one of the most celebrated writers in Italy during her lifetime, who remains virtually unknown in America. Morante is a fascinating and complex character, as Tuck's introduction suggests: "Elsa Morante was not amiable, she was not genial, she was not sweet or always nice. She was not a woman with whom one could have a casual conversation of speak about mundane things. She took offense easily, she made quick and final judgments, she constantly tested her friends. A truth teller, she tended to say hurtful things. She was immensely talented, passionate, often impossible, courageous, quarrelsome, witty, ambitious, generous. She loved Mozart, she loved children, animals - especially cats, Siamese cats. She detested any sort of artifice, posturing, falsehood, she detested the misuse of power. She once admitted that she detested biography. The biographer, she claimed always divulged what one is not" (p.1).

Much of Morante's life seems mysterious and unusual. Her "legal father" was Augusto Morante, who turned out to be impotent so his wife, Irma, conceived Elsa and her three siblings with a family friend, who became the children's "uncle." Throughout her life and in her diaries, Elsa imagines herself and her childhood as otherwise, calling her deceased older brother Antonio rather than his true name of Mario and claiming her little brother Aldo had a large black birthmark on his forehead when he did not. Elsa's passion led to rages, the ending of friendships, the ending of love affairs. Since she never had children, she was able to devote more time than most of women of her age to her writing and to a large and varied circle of friends, many of whom were known for their art in writing and film.

It seems that Tuck's biography strives to make a case for why Morante should be remembered and known more widely today. However, since I did not go into this novel with any context of the artistic scene of Italy post-World War II, it proved difficult for me to follow along with what Tuck assumes her readers will know. For example, Morante was married to Alberto Moravia, who was a celebrated writer. However, I know nothing about Moravia's life and have never read his writing. Yet Tuck gives no background on him, which would have helped my understanding of their relationship and differences. In fact, after finishing this book, I still feel some confusion on the exact narrative of much of Elsa's life between the age of 18-45. Tuck spends more time analyzing and critiquing Morante's writing than describing her life.

On the other hand, in Tuck's defense, probably one reason she did not spend much time discussing Elsa's husband is because Elsa hated being associated with him professionally. Elsa did not want to be known by her husband's last name and many stories center around people who made that mistake. Alberto once sent her a telegram address to Elsa Moravia that led to a "scene that lasted three days" (p.86). Elsa was very sensitive to any perceived slights, a sensitivity that was likely heightened by "having always to defer in public to her more famous husband" (p.93).

It seems that I would have enjoyed this biography much more if I had a greater context for Morante's work or the world in which she lived. I do think Tuck could have done a better job of providing that context so that her work appealed to a wider range of readers. As a writer, she deserves more recognition for her contributions, as well as her contributions to the many friends she mentored in their own work. Morante's writing had themes centered on "homosexuality, incest and narcissm" and her style was "an unclassifiable mix of the postmodern disjunctive and the traditional" (p.223). To the end, she led a tumultuous life full of grandiose acts and sentiments. I was sad to see how she suffered physically in the last years of her life and how in many ways her work and life are now forgotten. Perhaps Tuck's writing will help augment Morante's forgotten memory.

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