WULOLIFE
"Contempt" Author: [Italy] Alberto Moravia Publisher: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House Original title: Il disprezzo
"Contempt" Author: [Italy] Alberto Moravia Publisher: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House Original title: Il disprezzo
Couldn't load pickup availability
Description
Introduction · · · · · ·
After two years of marriage, the husband was losing ground in work, money and ideals, and his wife's contempt became the biggest punishment for him. He kept trying to figure out why his wife despised him, but he pushed her further away, and the originally happy marriage was about to collapse.
"I despise you, and that's why I don't love you anymore."
✲
★The “Lu Xun” of Italy
★20th century Italian national writer ◈ sharp examination of the mental symptoms of the times
★Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 15 times
★Selected as one of the top 100 books of the 20th century by French magazine Le Monde.
★ Remade by the famous New Wave director Godard into "Contempt", which became a benchmark in film history
★Calvino, Camus, Eco and Susan Sontag are all his loyal readers.
★"Contempt" writes about the marriage crisis and talks about the modern people's inability to love.
★What I actually desire is not to break up, but to fall in love again.
★Reading Moravia is reading the spiritual symptoms of our time.
✲
I prefer Moravia, the only Italian writer whom I would call a "mannerist" in a certain sense: he regularly produces works that reflect the different definitions of morality in our time and are closely related to customs, social changes, and indicators of popular thought. - Italo Calvino
·
Our Italian friends show in all their works today a generosity, a genuine enthusiasm, a distinct simplicity, which is slightly lacking in our French works. - Camus
·
Let us not forget that the Italian spoken by the middle classes, in its noblest form, derives from the plain and thoroughly acceptable prose of writers like Moravia. —Umberto Eco
·
Moravia's works are seen as the starting point of an interventionist literature that critically explores Italian society. The main character in his works is usually a middle-class intellectual who is both clear-headed and powerless. He expressed an existential uneasiness long before Sartre's "Nausea" and Camus's "The Outsider". Losing the ability to act, but feeling guilty about his inaction, he constantly and in vain tried to adapt to a world that was moving away from him. Boredom and indifference to life are the central themes of Moravia's world. - Michel Marie (author of "Introduction to Godard")
·
In his novels, love is almost always suffered rather than enjoyed. Whether at its most unfaithful, most passionate, or in discussions of marital relations, it rarely relieves a gnashing sense of alienation, so that the characters in his works often stare at each other in various stages of surprise and confusion. In any case, his work is inspiring. He combines obsessive thinking with a dreamlike plot development to create a convincing and completely personal worldview that forces us to turn the book to the end, leaving us with a psychological structure that is both consistent and elusive, so that the reader will think about it and reconsider it for weeks to come - in my case, years. I can't ask for more from a book like this. - Tim Parks (author of the English version of "Contempt")
·
Ricardo in Moravia's works is like the protagonists of several other novels. "They are all fighting against reality and trying their best to conquer reality because they feel excluded by the real society and cannot integrate into real life." The novel "Contempt" reflects the social reality at that time and the profound spiritual crisis of modern people from the perspective of the breakdown of the emotional life of an ordinary couple. ——Shen Emei (Italian literature translator, professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University)
·
Moravia is undoubtedly one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century, and "Contempt" is his masterpiece. This novel was written in the 1950s, but it is particularly close to life in China today. The story tells the story of Riccardo, a playwright who seeks development in Rome. He married a beautiful wife, took some well-paid jobs, bought a house and a car, but was despised by his wife and their relationship broke down. He worked hard to pay the monthly installments, and his wife became the mistress of the producer. Moravia used sharp strokes to reveal the relationship between husband and wife in the period of economic development, and also described in detail Riccardo's inner world, as well as the process of people losing their dignity and becoming tools. Originally a happy family, husband and wife love each other, and are sincere to each other. This is the most common thing. Why does it become more and more difficult? This is also a question that the author repeatedly explores throughout the story. ——Chen Ying (Italian literature translator, professor at Sichuan International Studies University)
·
Moravia is considered a "natural narrator". Starting from a moral perspective, he simplified complex social phenomena into various abstract attitudes towards life: "The Indifferent Man", "Contempt", "Involuntary", "The Conformist" and "Melancholy". Then, in the form of narrative literature, he created endless characters and scenes, actions and behaviors, as well as complex psychological activities. With the harsh and hostile eyes of an outsider, he sharply criticized the living conditions of people in bourgeois society from a political and social perspective, and these conditions were mainly closely related to the image of intellectuals he created. In the novel "Contempt", the film critic Riccardo catered to the producer's requirements in order to get rid of his financial difficulties. His wife even suspected that he intended to give her to the producer, and was despised by his wife. This image is one of the many distinctive bourgeois intellectual images created by Moravia, and the title of the novel once again played a finishing touch. ——Wei Yi (Italian literature translator, associate professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University)
·
Moravia is a recognized great novelist in the history of Italian literature who did not have time to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. ——La Repubblica
·
Moravia is Italy's "most respected and admired writer in the world this century after Pirandello." - La Stampa
·
Although it was Jean-Luc Godard who adapted Moravia's "Contempt" for film and Bertolucci who directed "The Conformist," Moravia's true spiritual relatives are Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. --The New York Times
·
Moravia is now neglected, which is a great pity, because this rare combination of moral purpose and artistic integrity once placed him among the best writers in Europe. I think it is time for a reappraisal and for new editions of his work. - The Guardian
·
All of Moravia's literary works are full of the original and sharp realism of his time, which has been the case since the publication of his provocative debut novel, The Indifferent Man (1929). - MIchele Cecchi, Italian Consul General in Shanghai
About the Author · · · · · ·
Alberto Moravia (1907-1990)
Moravia is to Italy what Lu Xun is to China.
He, Calvino and Xia Xia are collectively known as the "Three Masters of Modern Italian Literature" by critics.
Moravia became famous when he published The Indifferent Man, the first existentialist novel in Europe, at the age of 22. In the mid-20th century, he was at the peak of his career in the global literary world, and successively published masterpieces such as Roman Women, The Conformist, and Contempt, which calmly examined the love world of modern people and the inner world of the frustrated, recorded the spiritual crisis of an era, and explored people's motivation, responsibility, and how people can exist better. Because his works were banned, "Moravia" is his most famous pen name (real name: Alberto Pinchele).
In the Italian literary world, he is recognized as a great writer who did not have time to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. According to the Nobel Prize archive, he was nominated 15 times. He has won the Strega Prize, the Mazzuto Prize, the Mondello Prize, etc. He is also a favorite of famous directors, and many of his works have been remade into film and television works: Godard remade "Contempt", Bertolucci remade "The Conformist", Damiani remade "Melancholy", etc. His works have had a profound impact on the Italian language and film industry. In 1983, he was elected president of the European PEN with great prestige.
★Reading Moravia is reading the spiritual symptoms of our time.
As he himself said: "The writer's task is to reveal how modern man has become a tool used by others, rather than his own purpose."
!["Contempt" Author: [Italy] Alberto Moravia Publisher: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House Original title: Il disprezzo](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)