BOO K S
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For this tale of multiple betrayals, every lover his own traducer,
Moravia's deft and glossy style would seem to be admirably suited.
(That style, even in this early, inferior book, is a wonder. It seems to
suffer not at all in the process of translation, though whether this is a
tribute to Mr. Angus Davidson's proficiency or to some malleable
quality in the Italian prose I am not equipped to say.) The language in
The Fancy Dress Party
is eel-like and suave, colored without being
warm. The ironic attitude is very resourcefully carried through: nothing
and no one is ever seen straight on, but rather (over and over through–
out the book) reflected in mirrors, or distorted by shadows, peered at
through knotholes, surprised in the nude from behind, unrecognized
until too late behind a mask or disguise. Similarly, nothing is ever
expressed directly: always instead the raised eyebrow, the discrediting
smile behind the hand, the out-and-out disclaimer.
Finally, however, the very smoothness of this surface defeats its
own purpose: the cutting edge necessary for satire is lost, and in the
corrosively funny scene between the ugly old Duchess and Fausta's
young lover disguised as a valet, the writing merely glides over the
violence of the old woman's solicitation and Sebastiano's sad, mechanical
response-we are shown another mirror image, and that is the end of it.
In the final pages, too, when there is a serious word to be said, when
the mock-plot against him has failed but Fausta is dead without his
having possessed her, and the General allows himself a rather
wry
meditation on the brevity of love and influence-then the tongue is at
last removed from the cheek, the half-smile from the author's lips, but
it comes too late. The irony so athletically present throughout has suc–
ceeded in devaluing even this perfectly proper coda, and the sudden
seriousness is more irritating than convincing.
Moravia has always depended upon a wealth of sensual detail for
his most important effects. At his best, the sexual tension between
characters is made to stand for all the other significant aspects of their
relationship, and the gestures in which this tension is released are gen–
erally quite tellingly particularized, without the least vulgarity-as in
the very fine scene in
Conjugal Love
of the wife and the barber on
the moonlit threshing floor, with the husband as trapped observer. In
The Fancy Dress Party
Fausta is projected as the ideally lascivious
woman; she is described in some detail with taste and enthusiasm.
But then she is led through a series of the most appallingly common
and wearisome adventures, unimaginative without being stylized either,
lacking even a glimmer of that descriptive genius which has led Moravia
elsewhere to write richly and well about the sexual lives of his characters
