PAR TIS
AN
REV lEW
the other.
It
was not a satire but a kind of grimace, a
divertimento,
evasive and cynical.
It
is not surprising that Mussolini, whose erotic
pride was supposedly hurt, saw nothing
in
it that was dangerous and
was satisfied with the fact that the story really took place in Guatemala
and that the revolutionaries were as much made fun of as the followers
of the state. Personally (we now know he spent the major part of his
precious time reading newspapers and book manuscripts), he authorized
the publication of the novel. But others more suspicious smelled sacrilege
in the simple fact that Moravia- a writer who had remained stubbornly
resistant to the Fascist climate- now dared to play with dictators and
policemen as though they were puppets in some private game. Justifiably,
therefore, they persuaded Mussolini not only to ban the book, but also
to prohibit the newspapers and editors from publishing Moravia. How–
ever, not less justifiably, the opposition felt deceived by this evasive and
withdrawn book, especially those who thought of Moravia as a realistic
writer, and expected
him
to deal directly with Fascist reality instead of
fleeing to the bizarre, and ridiculing both the dictators and revolution–
aries. And yet those who understood Moravia could not doubt that he
saw dictatorship as the crowning example of everything hateful and
false in Italy. Moravia could not write a line which did not exude his
admirable hatred of the world as it was. However, the moralizing and
the general thinking of the anti-Fascist movement did not impress him.
He thought the opposition amounted to little more than honest sighs,
and he reached the sorrowful conclusion that from now on the world
belonged to the violent. Why should he have hidden his conviction? Why
should he have made believe he was Cato, when he was drawn to the
world of Petronius and Apuleius?
By his farce in
La Mascherata,
Moravia showed that he was in–
capable of accepting the attitude that both sides pushed on him: the
belief that politics was an ultimate and decisive reality, and that from
political decision would follow the truth, morality, and tranquility of
conscience that as a novelist he could find only in human situations. Not
that he did not take sides; he was against those who wanted to persuade
or force him to take sides. Moravia's political attitude foreshadowed that
of the present generation.
The Carnival,
however, was a
divertimento.
If
it was an act of
protest and liberty, it was not because of its kidding, but because it
dared to lower the subject of political power to the level of farce.
If
the tale had a moral, it was more or less this: reality resembles a dia–
bolic mechanism expressly geared to frustrate the desires, the sense, and
the good intentions of men; but it must not be thought that the sly
