448
PARTISAN REVIEW
don't know who you are, where you can just be one of the people.
SF:
Derek Stanford, in his critical biography of you-
MS:
Oh yes. He gets everything wrong, I must warn you. Dates,
names of books, everything.
SF:
Did you know that he was going to write a book about you?
MS:
No. I haven't seen him since about 1950, I suppose.
SF:
Did you mind?
MS:
Yes. You see, he doesn't know anything very much about me,
he thinks he does, but he doesn't. So I had a little affair with him,
what does he want? I haven't seen him now for about thirty years,
but he still goes on writing-his "memoirs . " It's embarrassing, but
I do hope that nobody takes much notice. Besides, he can't write; his
sentences are all very involved, it's like a snail.
SF:
You once said that you saw yourself as a constitutional exile. Do
you still feel that way?
MS:
Yes, I do. I said it ceases to be a fate; it becomes a calling. And I
don't know if you can really call me an exile, since exile means that
you've been sent away. Machiavelli was an exile. Solzhenitsyn is an
exile; I'm just a traveller, really. So I don't feel uncomfortable with
it-actually I often think about leaving Italy, where I'm more or less
settled, and I do go away quite a lot.
SF:
Do you like living in Italy?
MS:
Yes, very much. I rather like the Italians. There're quite a lot of
British and Americans dotted here and there, and I've got lots of
friends among the British and Americans in Rome. They're dif–
ferent when they've settled in Italy; they become English-speaking
Italians, almost. It's very odd. But I have a lot ofItalian friends, too.
SF:
Do you think that living abroad does anything to cut a writer off
from his public back at home?
MS:
No, I don't. Perhaps it might have in the 18th or 19th century,
when a writer's range of public was largely limited to English–
speaking readers. But these days, exile or living away from home
really doesn't mean a thing, because I also have a public in Russia,
in Eastern Europe, in South America.
SF:
Do you feel as though you have a geniune relationship to that
public?
MS:
Yes. Look here, I
am
in Paris concerning my books, the publica–
tion of my books. So I began to feel really very European. I have a
European background anyway, on the Jewish side of my
family-and being away from home is nothing alien to Jews, who
