Elsa Morante she was one of the most popular and respected writers, essayists and poets in all of Italian literature. Known for his incredible novels and a stormy love story with Alberto MoraviaElsa Morante occupies a special place in the Italian literary panorama: first woman to win the Strega Award with romance Arturo islandand his most famous novel Story it is considered one of the literary masterpieces of the 1900s.
Elsa Morante, biography
Elsa Morante was born in RomeAugust 18, 1912, the eldest of four children, daughter of Francesco Lo Monaco and Irma Poggibonsi. Elsa grew up believing that her mother’s second husband, Augusto Morante, was her father.
In 1922 the family moved to Monteverde Nuovo, where Elsa Morante started writing stories and poetry from a very young age.. After completing his studies, he left his family, earning a living by teaching Greek and Latin. His first stories were published in magazines such as Il Corriere dei Piccoli, The rights of the school and Oggi, some of them published under the pseudonym Antonio Carrera.
Thanks to the artist Capogrossi, in 1936 he knows Alberto Moraviagreat Roman writer, author among other de Indifferent As well as Boredom. Morante’s marriage to Alberto Moravia, an opponent of Mussolini’s fascist government, brought her into contact with the greatest Italian writers and intellectuals of the day, including Umberto Saba and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Elsa Morante’s first book, secret game (1941), consisted of short extracts, many of which had already appeared in periodicals. To follow Beautiful adventures of Kateri from the spit (1942), children’s book, later expanded as The Extraordinary Adventures of Catherine (1959).
In Rome they live in a historic building on Via Sgambati, where in 1943 the author begins work on a project. Lies and spell. However, she must almost immediately suspend her work when her husband is suspected of anti-fascism and forced to take refuge with her in the mountains of Fondi, in Ciociaria. The countryside of those places will play an important role in his further narrative.
Lies and spell was published in 1948 receiving the Viareggio awardand to much critical acclaim: it would then be translated into a clumsy English version and published in the United States under the title House of Liars (1951).
Elsa Morante was not a prolific writer. His next novel Arturo Island., appeared almost ten years later, combining fantasy with Freud’s themes. FROM Arturo Island Elsa Morante became first woman to win Witch’s Reward. During this period, he destroyed most of his texts, but nevertheless devoted himself to writing a novel, Andalusian shawl for the anthology “Modern Italian Stories” and a long poem, Adventurewhich appeared in the American magazine Wake.
Morante and Moravia lived together for twenty-five years. At that time Elsa Morante had a relationship with director Luchino Visconti: They fell in love in 1955 during Moravia’s trip to America. However, as a practicing Catholic Elsa Morante he refused to divorce Moraviaalthough he had relationships with other women, especially with a writer Dacia Maraini. It will be released in 1958. poetry collection, Alibi.
From the late 60s, Elsa Morante became increasingly lonely. In her later years, Morante was wheelchair-bound after an accident in which she broke her hip. In April 1983, he tried to commit suicide. swallowed three different types of sleeping pills and lit the gas, but the maid saved him. He lived for another two and a half years, reading and rereading Dante’s Inferno in the hospital. Elsa Morante died of cardiac arrest in Rome on November 25, 1985..
Elsa Morante, major works
Plot is not a central element of Morante’s work, nor is neorealist preoccupation with leftist politics. Often his plots deal with persecution and injustice but without direct connection to traditional historical and social settings, combining fantasy and realism to emphasize a narrative of great breadth and emotional depth.
Story
L’major work of Elsa Morante, considered it a masterpiece Story The action takes place in Rome during and after World War II. The story focuses on the lives of Iduzza, Ida Ramundo Mancuso, a half-Jewish teacher, her son Giuseppe, who died of an epileptic seizure, and Nino, her eldest son, a fascist turned partisan. Iduzza lives and experiences the horrors of war, is raped by a German soldier on her way to North Africa, and fights for survival with her two children. Each of the novel’s eight sections begins and ends with a brief tale of ongoing war told by the omniscient “I”.
Story, considered one of the masterpieces of the 900sreflects a deep understanding of the human psyche and historical processes experienced by ordinary people who are trapped by forces beyond their control.
Arturo Island.
The novel recounts the events Arturo Geracea child who, as a teenager, grows up alone on an island Procida. In reality, his mother died giving birth to him, and Arturo only has a portrait of her, which he jealously guards. Every evening, Arturo plans trips around the world with the goal of becoming like his father, whom, despite the fact that he has never seen, he considers a myth. Everything changes when his father marries another woman, helping to reveal all the secrets that will bring down the “absolute certainty” on which Arturo’s life is based, who, between one illusion and another, is trying to protect himself from the world made for him. on your favorite island.
Aracoeli
Aracoelil’Elsa Morante’s last novel, is a mixture of personal dreams, fantasies, imaginary encounters and memories, narrated by the neurotic Emanuele. Aracoeli is his mother, who suddenly undergoes a terrible change: due to her wild behavior, she becomes a nymphomaniac and dies of a malignant brain tumor.
Lies and spell
Lies and spellset in modern and legendary Sicily, represents the central themes in Morante’s work: memories, dreams and obsessions that cross generationsI am a young and sensitive person who rebels against bourgeois traditions, a personal world that is threatened by external reality. The Hungarian philosopher and literary theorist György Lukács put Morante on the same level as Thomas Mann, the author Enchanted mountain.
Source: Elle