Moravia in Africa

Simone Casini

doi:10.13125/medea-2409

Simone Casini University of Perugia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13125/medea-2409

Keywords: Moravia, Africa, Travel, Post-colonialism, Movement

Abstract

Though his fiction is deeply linked to Rome and Italy, we cannot understand the cultural figure of Alberto Moravia (1907-1990), if we do not consider his experience as a traveller. In particular, there is no other Italian or European writer of his generation, who had such a tight connection with Africa, which Moravia used to visit almost every year from 1963 until 1987. He wrote three books on this continent. «I would have to go to Africa twenty, thirty years before: instead I went very late in my life, when I was fifty. I do not know why I didn’t. I regret it. For me, Africa is the most beautiful thing in the world». This paper reconstructs the reasons and the stages that brought Moravia to Africa in detail, it also focuses on his travels as a European citizen, who starts his journey from the coasts to the “heart of the black continent", sometimes following the footsteps of his favorite Africanist writers, such as Conrad, Rimbaud, Gide, Hemingway and Céline, but always pursuing his own question, looking for his own Africa, which is indeed connected to his deepest self. The movement to Africa has changed the Roman writer, as his last novels clearly show, that whereby include Africa becomes one of their major themes.

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Author Biography

Simone Casini, University of Perugia

Simone Casini (Florence 1963) is a researcher of the University of Perugia (Italy), where he teaches Italian and Comparative Literature. He has published studies on various aspects of both Italian and Comparative literatures and, mainly in the period between the XVIIIth and the XXth century, with a particular focus on the relations among history, society and literature (cultural studies). His studies include the critical edition of the “Confessioni d’un Italiano” by Ippolito Nievo (he is a member of the committee for the National Edition of Nievo’s works) and Alberto Moravia's "Works" (he edited many single works, including the unpublished novel “I due amici”). He is currently publishing a study on Pascoli and Virgil’s Georgics.

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