576
PARTISAN REVIEW
much eloquence against the supremacy of mother over father. The
young soldier, Private Lipido, declares that there would be "less heroes
if the boys had known the old man would get a deal like that!"; and he
adds that "I don't know this kid of yours, but if I had a nice old man
like you this
Dear Mrs. Ormsby
would damn near make me sick." Subse–
quently Private Lipido succeeds in striking Mrs. Ormsby from behind
with a suitcase as she goes up an escalator, an action which suggests
the extent to which existence and literature have begun to imitate
the comic strip and slapstick comedy. But this vain action as well as
the directness of the young soldier's verbal attack serve chiefly to reveal
how the Mother survives all kinds of attacks, unscathed and secure.
She is a fact of society as irreducible and unconquerable as a fact of
nature. She is superb, superior, indifferent, and in the end untouchable
and opaque. Although she is literate, she would not understand a word
of Mr. Morris' wit and observation.
Vittorini's
The Twilight of the Elephant
is lyrical and allegorical.
The lyrical quality of the prose helps to redeem the thinness of the
allegory, but it is impossible
to
miss the author's growing lack of convic–
tion as the bOOK goes forward. It is as if the narrator himself doubted
more and more the ultimate meaningfulness of the story he is telling.
It is the story of a poor family where there is never enough to eat. An
aged grandfather increases the burden of desperate poverty, yet he is
honored and cared for because he was once a giant in the earth, a
builder of tunnels, aqueducts, power plants, dykes, and highways. A
stranger arrives, bringing food and wine, playing a fife and telling stories
and enchanting the grandfather by speaking of the proper way to die,
which is the way of elephants who go off to die alone while they are
still strong. After the stranger's departure, the grandfather attempts
in vain to emulate the departure and death of elephants. Throughout,
the narrative seems to be pointing portentously toward some fabulous
and marvelous discovery. But apart from the suggestion that death
itself is a freedom and a dignity denied or withheld from the very
poor, the promise implicit in the tone of the narrative is never fulfilled.
Alberto Moravia possesses a sophistication and at the same time
a lucidity so powerful that the reader is bound to be perplexed by
the feeling that something important is lacking. And only on a second
or third reading of
his
new novel,
Conjugal Love,
does it become clear
that his great virtues as a novelis't may very well be the cause of what
is absent: his very sophistication and lucidity keep him at a distance
