Conjugal Love

In this modern classic from the renowned Italian author, an aspiring writer’s career and marriage threaten to come undone against the heady backdrop of 1930s Tuscany.

To begin with I’d like to talk about my wife. To love means, in addition to many other things, to delight in gazing upon and observing the beloved.

When Silvio, a rich Italian dilettante, and his beautiful wife agree to move to the country and forgo sex so that he will have the energy to write a successful novel, something is bound to go wrong: Silvio’s literary ambitions are far too big for his second-rate talent, and his wife Leda is a passionate woman.

This dangerously combustible situation explodes when Leda accuses Antonio, the local barber who comes every morning to shave Silvio, of trying to molest her. Silvio obstinately refuses to dismiss him, and the quarrel and its shattering consequences put the couple’s love to the test.“Reading Alberto Moravia’s Conjugal Love will take only a couple of hours—fortunately. For once you start this intense short novel, you won’t be able to turn your eyes away…Marina Harss’s English carries us smoothly into Silvio’s mind, as he reflects on his art and on his wife until each gradually grows into an aspect of the other.” —Washington Post

“Moravia, who died in 1990 and is considered one of the preeminent Italian writers of the twentieth century, delivers something at once more bitter and more tender: a parable of marriage, that odd mixture of violent devotion and legitimate lust, in which desire eventually gives way to a forced and decorous composure that captures the essential opacity of even one’s most intimate partner.” —The New Yorker

“His best yet…This portrait of the artist as a middle-aged mediocrity is sometimes so subtle in its investigation of the intricacies of love that it recalls Stendhal.” —Time

“Conjugal Love is deceptively complicated, a string of intense moments, revelations, and doubts. Can we ever know the people we love? What lies at the heart of and drives our creativity? How terrifying would it be to really understand yourself?” —Los Angeles Times

“Alberto Moravia crafts a delectably arch tale of a wealthy dilettante and his sensually neglected wife.” —Vogue

“A short novel whose surface clarity shellacs over its shriekingly bizarre underpinnings. When the book was published in 1951, the Italian author was well known for his moody portraits of sexuality, and this excellent new translation shows why.” —Time Out New York

“Moravia…is a master storyteller and his political commentary never overpowers his narrative. The beauty of Conjugal Love is that, politics aside, it can be read simply as a compelling tale of love and betrayal.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Throughout his long and astonishingly productive career, Alberto Moravia never stopped exploring the erotic highways and byways. Of course, he tended to look on the dark side. Readers of his many fictions will search in vain for a life-affirming roll in the hay. Instead Moravia zoomed in on the pitfalls, power struggles, and multiple deceptions of eros. Think of him as the Beethoven of bad sex, blessed with a glittering style and the emotional temperature of an icebox. Conjugal Love is no exception to the rule.” —Words Without Borders

“To read Alberto Moravia’s Conjugal Love is to be transported to the lush landscape of 1930s Tuscany. But the pleasure that comes from this amazing little book rests squarely with Silvio, the beguiling protagonist who leads readers to the story’s central conceit…Read this terrific book. It will make you want to say something kind to someone you love.” —Washington Times

“Moravia…achieves a sly, convincing portrait in the voice of Silvio, whose love for Leda emasculates him, yet fuels his work.” —Publishers Weekly

“Boasting a fluid style that is elegant yet simple, Moravia is a master of writing about men and women and their love lives.” —Library Journal

“Silvio’s very open, almost confessional style—he reveals (and seems to almost revel in) warts and all—is very appealing and makes the story all the more convincing. Conjugal Love is not a happy tale, but it is a satisfying one. And very well told. Recommended.” —Complete ReviewAlberto Moravia, born in Rome in 1907, was one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century. His novels, which include The Woman of Rome, The Conformist, Contempt, and Two Women, were adapted into films by Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard. He died in 1990.

Marina Harss's translations include For Solo Violin (Per Vionlino Solo), a war memoir by Aldo Zargani, and stories in The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda, by Sonia Rivera-Vald. Her translations have also appeared in Bomb, Brooklyn Rail, and Autadafe. She is a researcher at The New Yorker, and lives in New York City.Chapter 1

To begin with I'd like to talk about my wife. To love means, in addition to many other things, to delight in gazing upon and observing the beloved. And this means delighting not only in the contemplation of the beloved’s charms, but also in her imperfections, few or many as they may be. From the very first days of our married life, I took an immeasurable pleasure in observing Leda (for that is her name), and I loved studying her face and her person down to the smallest gesture and the most fleeting expression. When we were married, my wife (later, after bearing three children, certain traits became, not exactly different, but somewhat modified) was just over thirty years old. She was tall, though not excessively so, with a face and body that were beautiful, though far from perfect. Her long, thin face had an ephemeral, lost, almost washed-out quality, like the classical deities in certain mediocre paintings, executed tentatively and rendered even more tentative by the patina of time. This singular quality, an ungraspable beauty which, like a speck of sunlight on the wall, or the shadow of a moving cloud on the sea, can disappear at any moment, surely had something to do with her hair, which was of a metallic blond color and hung messily in long tresses, suggesting the fluttering of fear or flight; and with her enormous eyes, which were blue and slightly slanted, with moist, dilated pupils, whose humiliated, evasive gaze, like her hair, suggested a guarded, frightened disposition. She had a large, straight, noble nose, and a wide red, sinuously drawn mouth, the bottom lip protruding over a smallish chin, hinting at a heavy, brooding sensuality. Hers was an irregular and yet very beautiful face, with a beauty, as I have said, that was ungraspable and that in certain moments and in certain situations, as I will describe later on, seemed to dissolve and even disappear altogether. The same could be said of her body. From the waist up she was as thin and delicate as a young girl; but her hips, belly, and legs were solid, strong, and well developed, imbued with muscular and carnal vigor. But the disharmony of her body, like that of her face, was neutralized by her beauty which, like a familiar intangible melody or a mysteriously transformative light, wrapped her from head to toe in a halo of perfection. Oddly enough, sometimes, as I gazed at her, I thought of her as a person with classical contours and forms, without defects, the essence of harmony, serenity, and symmetry. Such was the extent to which her beauty, which, for lack of another word I will call spiritual, deceived and seduced me. But there were moments when this golden veil was torn away, and in those moments not only did I see her numerous imperfections, but I observed a painful transformation of her entire person.I discovered this in the first days of our marriage and for a moment I felt almost deceived, like a man who has married for money and discovers after the wedding that his wife is penniless. Often, a broad, mute grimace which seemed to express fear, anxiety, and withdrawal, and at the same time a mixture of repulsion and attraction, would distort her face. When this grimace appeared, the natural imperfections of her features stood out, so to speak, in a violent manner, giving her entire face the repulsive aspect of a grotesque mask in which certain features have been deliberately exaggerated to the point of caricature in order to create a particular, comically obscene or bizarre effect. This was especially true of her mouth, but also of the lines on either side of her mouth, and her nostrils and eyes. My wife applied bright red lipstick abundantly to her lips, and because she had a pale complexion, she also used rouge on her cheeks. When her face was in repose, these artificial colors were hardly noticeable; they merely complemented the color of eyes, her hair, and her complexion. But when the grimace appeared, the colors stood out, vivid and raw, and her whole face, which just a moment before had been serene, luminous, and classically beautiful, evoked the ridiculous, exaggerated features of a carnival mask, rendered almost obscene by the softness, heat, and vividness of live flesh.
Just like her face, her body had a way of belying the enchantment of beauty that enveloped it, by contorting itself repulsively. Her entire body would cringe, like a person who is afraid or revolted by something; like a mime or a dancer, she thrust her arms and legs forward in a gesture of defense and repugnance, but at the same time, her body arched in a gesture of invitation and provocation. She appeared to fend off an imaginary danger with her arms, and at the same time, with a vehement distortion of the hips, to suggest that this danger or assault was not completely repellent to her. The coarseness of the attitude, which was often accompanied by the grimace I mentioned earlier, made one almost doubt that one was seeing the same person who just a moment before had appeared so composed, so serene, so ineffably beautiful.
I said earlier that to love someone means to embrace everything about her, not only her beauty but, if it is present, her ugliness. The grimace and distortion of the body, while repulsive, soon became as dear to me as her usual beauty, harmony, and serenity. But love, at times, can create a lack of understanding; because even if it is true that there is a kind of love that involves comprehension, it is also true that there is another, more passionate kind that renders us blind when it comes to our beloved. I was not blind, but I lacked the clear-mindedness that can be attained in a long-term, timeworn, love. I realized that at times my wife could become ugly and coarse; I found this to be curious, and like everything about her, charming, and I did not see or care to delve beyond this observation.
I must say at this point that the grimace and convulsion occurred only rarely and never during our intimate relations. I do not remember a single occasion when a word or gesture of mine provoked the strange transformation of her face into a mask and of her body into that of a marionette. In fact, during our lovemaking she seemed to reach the apex of her astonishing, ineffable beauty. In these moments, the dilated and moist pupils of her large eyes conveyed a wounded, docile, sweet entreaty which was more expressive than any words; her mouth seemed to communicate, in the sensuality and sinuousness of her lips, an intelligent and capricious goodness; and her entire face responded to my gaze like a reassuring and mysterious mirror, graciously framed by her long blond tresses. Her body seemed to compose itself in its most graceful attitude, innocent and languid, defenseless and without shame, like a promised land offering itself, golden and unprotected, to the gaze of the passerby, its fields, rivers, hills, and valleys stretching out before him to the horizon. In contrast, the grimace and convulsion occurred in the most unexpected and insignificant moments. I remember a few instances: My wife has always been a great reader of detective novels. Well, when the plot was at its most engrossing and terrifying point, I would notice her face gradually contorting itself into a grimace, which disappeared only when she had reached the end of the passage. My wife also enjoyed gambling. We went together to Campione, Montecarlo, and San Remo; each time, after the bets had been made, as the roulette wheel turned and the little ball skipped over the numbers, my wife’s face would rearrange itself in this indecent grimace. And even when she was simply threading a needle, or when she saw a child running alongside a ditch, in danger of falling in, or when a drop of cold water ran down her back—all of these events were enough to provoke the grimace.But I would like to recount in detail two occasions in which it seemed to me that this singular transformation had more complex origins. One day we were in the garden of our villa in the countryside, and I was trying to yank out a tall, blooming weed, practically a shrub, which had somehow popped up in the middle of the gravel drive. It was not an easy task; the moist green plant seemed to have deep roots, and kept slipping through my fingers. I was intent on this task, but for some reason I raised my eyes toward my wife and was shocked to see her face and body transformed by the familiar coarse expression and contortion. At that moment, finally ceding to the weight of my body, the weed lurched out of the ground, revealing one solitary, long and robust root, and I fell backwards onto the gravel.
On another occasion we had invited some friends over for dinner to our home in Rome. Before the guests arrived, my wife, dressed in an evening gown, hair combed up, and wearing her jewels, decided to pay a visit to the kitchen to make sure everything was in order. I followed her. We found the cook cowering before the lobster, a huge beast armed with formidable claws and still half alive; she did not have the courage to take hold of it and plunge it into the awaiting pot. My wife approached the table without fanfare, grabbed the lobster by the back, and tossed it into the boiling water. In order to do this, she had to hold herself far from both the burner and the animal. But this need for prudence did not fully explain the appearance of the ugly, grotesque grimace on her face, nor the visible movement of her body which for a moment seemed to suggest a provocative swaying of the hips beneath the shimmering silk of her evening gown.I must assume that my wife has contorted her face and body in this manner an infinite number of times in her life, and in the most disparate situations. Even so, a few facts remain indisputable. She never contorted her face or body when we made love. And these contractions were always accompanied by the most profound silence, a suspenseful silence more reminiscent of a repressed scream than of the stillness of tranquility. Finally, the grimace and contraction seemed to always result from the fear of an unexpected, sudden, rapid event. A fear which, as I have noted, was mixed with attraction.