Brasile 1960: Gli anni della svolta per Alberto Moravia

Abstract

Alberto Moravia arrived in Brazil in the summer of 1960 to preside the Congress of the PEN Club. He had recently finished La noia, his eleventh novel, the one that most directly is connected to his first novel, Gli indifferenti (1929), and it marks a decisive turning point in his artistic, intellectual, and human course. The essay reconstructs the life and work of the 50-year-old writer, in which a 10-year research is summarized and concluded, opening a new phase. Rereading the articles written for Il Corriere della Sera and the review of the Quarto de despejo by Carolina de Jesus, we focused on the origin and acute reflection of Moravia about Brazil in those years (Brasilia, Bahia, Rio), between past and future. The experience of Brazil, for the writer, who in those following years will attempt new paths in the intellectual and literary field, and new goals for his travels, always more oriented, in the company of Dacia Maraini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, toward the Third World.