Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante

by Lily Tuck

Elsa Morante was born in 1912 to an unconventional family of modest means. She grew up with an independent spirit, a formidable will, and a commitment to writing—she wrote her first poem when she was just two years old. During World War II, Morante and her husband, the celebrated writer Alberto Moravia, were forced to flee occupied Rome—Moravia was half-Jewish (as was she) and wanted by the Fascists—and hide out in a remote mountain hut. After the war, Morante published a series of prize-winning novels, including Arturo's Island and History, a seminal account of the war, which established her as one of the leading Italian writers of her day.

Lily Tuck's elegant and unusual biography also evokes the heady time during the postwar years when Rome was the film capital of the world and Morante's counted among her circle of friends the filmmakers Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, and the young Bernardo Bertolucci. A charismatic and beautiful woman, Morante had a series of love affairs—most unhappy—as well as friendships with such famous literary luminaries as Carlo Levi, Italo Calvino, and Natalia Ginzburg. As a couple, Morante and Moravia—the Beauvoir-Sartre of Italy—captivated the nation with their intense and mutual admiration, their arguments, and their passion.

Wonderfully researched with the cooperation of the Morante Estate, filled with personal interviews, and written in graceful and succinct prose, Woman of Rome introduces the American reader to a woman of fierce intelligence, powerful imagination, and original talent.

Genres: Biography, Italy, Nonfiction, History, Jewish, Italian Literature, Biography Memoir

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Lily Tuck is an American novelist and short story writer whose novel The News from Paraguay won the 2004 National Book Award for Fiction. Her novel Siam was nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has published four other novels, a collection of short stories, and a biography of Italian novelist Elsa Morante (see "Works" below).
An American citizen born in Paris, Tuck now divides her time between New York City and Maine; she has also lived in Thailand and (during her childhood) Uruguay and Peru. Tuck has stated that "living in other countries has given me a different perspective as a writer. It has heightened my sense of dislocation and rootlessness. ... I think this feeling is reflected in my characters, most of them women whose lives are changed by either a physical displacement or a loss of some kind".

Reviews

[julieta · Rating 1 out of 5]

Esta biografía es de esas que da mala fama a las biografías.

Lo más importante de todo, y lo que más coraje me da, es que es evidente que no es una persona a quien le haya gustado la obra de Morante, o que la haya entendido. Sus opiniones sobre las novelas ya lo dicen todo:
En el caso de "Mentira y Sortilegio": "...es una novela confusa que se extiende a lo largo de más de ochocientas páginas, por lo cual es probable que todo intento de resumir la trama conduzca a una mayor confusión" (pag.90).
"La Historia": Es difícil juzgar La Historia, una obra grande, larga, confusa, y rara"(228)
Y qué tal esta, sobre el último libro que escribió Morante: "Cuando leí la novela Araceli por primera vez, la encontré casi inútilmente perturbadora e inquietante. Al releerla volví a encontrarla perturbadora e inquietante, pero he logrado llegar a admirarla, quizás porque es tan lúgubre, y porque resiste todo intento de clasificarla."(pag.245)

Y opiniones como: "A Elsa Morante siempre le atrajeron los hombres guapos, jóvenes y homosexuales (o acaso bisexuales) la razón más obvia para esa atracción es, desde luego, que las mujeres-en particular las de cierta edad- se sienten a salvo con los hombres homosexuales porque no existe con ellos la posibilidad de tener relaciones sexuales. Además, no es inusual que las mujeres con dotes artísticas se sientan atraídas por los homosexuales y tengan con ellos sentimientos de hermandad debido a la similitud de sensibilidades e intereses. Sin embargo, en el caso de Elsa Morante, me atrevo a decir que la atracción que le producían los jóvenes tenía más relación con sus instintos maternales y su deseo de tener un hijo." (pag.188.89)

¿Qué demonios es esto? Hasta me da coraje haber copiado este párrafo, prejuicioso y ridículo, pero lo hago por el bien de la comunidad GR, para que sepan el horror que significa este libro, y lo mal que me parece el que exista una biografía tan vacía, llena de prejuicios y vaguedades, haciendo justo lo opuesto a lo que debe hacer en realidad una buena biografía.

Mientras más avanzó el libro más me irrité con la autora, creo que pocas veces me he sentido tan ofendida con una biografía como con esta. Encima cada vez que puede hablar sobre sí misma y su "relación" con Italia a través de su padre (a mi que me importa cualquier dato sobre la biógrafa, encima cuando me cae fatal y no entiende bien a Elsa??)
El caso es que me parece una falta de respeto este libro, y espero que exista una posibilidad de una mejor biografía sobre Elsa, que no sea esta la única que hay.
Me encanta la editorial Circe, por el trabajo que hacen de publicar biografías de mujeres, pero en este caso para mi es un tropiezo, este libro es para tirarlo a la chimenea.

[KOMET · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several years ago, when I was perusing the shelves in the fiction section of the downtown BORDERS, I came across the novel "History" by Elsa Morante. She was a writer that I had, hitherto, never heard of. But the subject matter of the novel caught my interest, and so I bought it.

This particular book I purchased earlier this year because I wanted to know something more about this woman. And in that respect, Lily Tuck does a thoroughly good job of providing the reader with the particulars of Elsa Morante's life and career. Born in 1912 to a rather unconventional family in Rome, Morante grew to be a strong-willed, passionate, and fiercely independent person. Among her most famous works are "Arturo's Island", "House of Liars", and "History" (a part of which reflects the life she and her husband Alberto Moravia lived when they were forced to go into hiding in the latter part of 1943 following the ouster of Mussolini and the de facto takeover of a large part of Italy by the Germans).

Lily Tuck aptly sums up her subject as follows: "Elsa Morante's life was never easy. She was a serious artist who wanted, through her work, to change the world, even as she knew quite well that it was impossible. She was a passionate, deeply spiritual person who despised authority under any form. She was immensely well read, she had a great sense of fun, she adored animals and children, Mozart, Rimbaud, Stendhal." This book is what a good biography should be: informative, insightful, and entertaining without being boring.

[Sarah Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

"People, Elsa Morante always claimed, were essentially divided into three categories: there was Achilles, the man who lived out his passions; there was Don Quixote, the man who lived out his dreams. and, finally, there was Hamlet, the man who questioned everything. Moravia, in her opinion, was part Hamlet and part Achilles; she herself was all Don Quixote" (p.61).

It's little wonder why Lily Tuck was drawn to write the first biography of Elsa Morante, one of the most celebrated writers in Italy during her lifetime, who remains virtually unknown in America. Morante is a fascinating and complex character, as Tuck's introduction suggests: "Elsa Morante was not amiable, she was not genial, she was not sweet or always nice. She was not a woman with whom one could have a casual conversation of speak about mundane things. She took offense easily, she made quick and final judgments, she constantly tested her friends. A truth teller, she tended to say hurtful things. She was immensely talented, passionate, often impossible, courageous, quarrelsome, witty, ambitious, generous. She loved Mozart, she loved children, animals - especially cats, Siamese cats. She detested any sort of artifice, posturing, falsehood, she detested the misuse of power. She once admitted that she detested biography. The biographer, she claimed always divulged what one is not" (p.1).

Much of Morante's life seems mysterious and unusual. Her "legal father" was Augusto Morante, who turned out to be impotent so his wife, Irma, conceived Elsa and her three siblings with a family friend, who became the children's "uncle." Throughout her life and in her diaries, Elsa imagines herself and her childhood as otherwise, calling her deceased older brother Antonio rather than his true name of Mario and claiming her little brother Aldo had a large black birthmark on his forehead when he did not. Elsa's passion led to rages, the ending of friendships, the ending of love affairs. Since she never had children, she was able to devote more time than most of women of her age to her writing and to a large and varied circle of friends, many of whom were known for their art in writing and film.

It seems that Tuck's biography strives to make a case for why Morante should be remembered and known more widely today. However, since I did not go into this novel with any context of the artistic scene of Italy post-World War II, it proved difficult for me to follow along with what Tuck assumes her readers will know. For example, Morante was married to Alberto Moravia, who was a celebrated writer. However, I know nothing about Moravia's life and have never read his writing. Yet Tuck gives no background on him, which would have helped my understanding of their relationship and differences. In fact, after finishing this book, I still feel some confusion on the exact narrative of much of Elsa's life between the age of 18-45. Tuck spends more time analyzing and critiquing Morante's writing than describing her life.

On the other hand, in Tuck's defense, probably one reason she did not spend much time discussing Elsa's husband is because Elsa hated being associated with him professionally. Elsa did not want to be known by her husband's last name and many stories center around people who made that mistake. Alberto once sent her a telegram address to Elsa Moravia that led to a "scene that lasted three days" (p.86). Elsa was very sensitive to any perceived slights, a sensitivity that was likely heightened by "having always to defer in public to her more famous husband" (p.93).

It seems that I would have enjoyed this biography much more if I had a greater context for Morante's work or the world in which she lived. I do think Tuck could have done a better job of providing that context so that her work appealed to a wider range of readers. As a writer, she deserves more recognition for her contributions, as well as her contributions to the many friends she mentored in their own work. Morante's writing had themes centered on "homosexuality, incest and narcissm" and her style was "an unclassifiable mix of the postmodern disjunctive and the traditional" (p.223). To the end, she led a tumultuous life full of grandiose acts and sentiments. I was sad to see how she suffered physically in the last years of her life and how in many ways her work and life are now forgotten. Perhaps Tuck's writing will help augment Morante's forgotten memory.

[TK · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this biography of Elsa Morante, one of Italy's most popular and acclaimed female writers. I love that National Book Award-winner Lily Tuck wrote this bio; she injects very little of herself into the narrative but when she does it answers the critical question, Why this biographer for this subject?

This biography follows a cradle to grave structure, and organizes the chapters around each of Elsa's major works. As an unreformed literature major, I loved Tuck's passages analyzing Morante's writing. But even more, I loved the anecdotes shared by friends and acquaintances about Elsa, and the details about who her friends were (many of them were other Italian authors I have studied). They completely brought her to life. My ultimately impression of Morante is someone that I would be quite intimidated by - but whose approval I would desperately crave. That says more about me than Morante but that's how well-rounded a picture Tuck gives of Morante: I could imagine crossing paths with her.

Full disclosure: I studied Italian literature in college and grad school so I totally geeked out about this book. You might not be as interested in this if Italian lit means nothing to you.

I read this as part of the Reading Women Challenge 2020, prompt #15: A Biography. This was the 14th book I read in 2020.

[Etta Madden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tuck's title attracted me. A lover of all things Italian, I wanted to know more about this twentieth-century woman writer as yet unknown to me. And since I've also been reading a lot of biography lately, I figured reading this one would touch me in two ways. Life-writing as a genre, and Italian woman's life, together.

What I didn't know was that Elsa Morante was an another amazing genius of a woman who lived behind the imposing shadow of a much better known man. Sigh.

Alberto Moravia, easily called a womanizer, loved this talented and inspirational wife of his nonetheless, and, according to Tuck, was never "liberated" from her, even after her death.

But Morante was much more than Moravia's muse, as Tuck's account makes clear. An artist in her own right, and a supporter of other young artists in the making, Morante fed figuratively and literally those who came into her circle in Rome.

Tuck's writing is clear and full of interesting anecdotes, drawn from papers and interviews. She weaves the stories of Morante's life into brief accounts of her key literary works in the tradition of a cradle-to-grave biography. Tuck's experiences of life in Italy add authority and an interesting personal twist or two to the narrative.

Worth a read--to anyone who wants to know more about Morante and women writers.

[Tim Parks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating life, that Tuck delivers reasonably well.

[Doug Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Neapolitan series of books written by Elena Ferrante (her writing pseudonym) is one of my favorites of all time. I read where one of her 2 main influences is Elsa Morante, to the extent that she chose her pen name to be similar to Elsa's. My sole reason for reading the life story of Elsa Morante was to get a better handle of Elena's thought process. Lily Tuck's book gave me exactly what I wanted.
Elena discovered what literature could be after reading Elsa. They both wrote about mother / daughter challenging relationships and the vagaries of young peoples early life experiences. I could see Elsa serving as a pseudo mother to Elena and they both ended up writing engaging sprawling stories that were were their own and neither were bothered by the negative press, preferring to concentrate on their own expectations in their novel writing. I need to reread Ferrante now I have this background.

[Baris Balcioglu · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Morante's L'ile d'Arturo, I must have found out about this biography. It is an easy read. Each section is about 20 pages long, an the content is highly interesting. I am not sure if Morante, after being almost forgotten, is gaining reputation again. Although a turmoiled person, her life after WWII with Moravia and friends (later on without Moravia but friends) was quite charming in Rome. Always eating out, having a servant for 30 years who stayed by her death bed during the last two years in the hospital, travels, success and so forth. But compared to the Journey by Lady Fraser, it wasn't that much deep. But could it have been? Sometimes the material also determines the book. Maybe I should next read the biography of Zweig (although I would like to read it in German, I could find only the English version so far) to understand if a non-queen's or non-politician's life could be deep (Morante was probably deeper than Marie Antoinette but you know what I mean). Pasolini, a friend of Morante's, I can look for his biography too. I don't know what I should read next? Moravia? Primo Levi? Carlo Levi? Italians were so strong in literature and cinema after the war and now look in what state their contemporary art is. Lily Tuck also was lucky. Thanks to her father, she spent her summers in Italy seeing all the cinema celebrities around. Even those parts were good to read. And when I read the acknowledgement, you see what an industry this is. American Academy in Rome helps her, she has a secretary, she can get help from researchers. Maybe the publisher also gave her an advance but were they able to make profit?

[Lauren Mouat · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to believe that this is the only biography written about Elsa Morante given her importance and popularity in 20th century Italian writing. I found this biography an interesting start to her life but very lacking in many ways. First, it would seem that Tuck doesn't much care for Morante's own writing. She describes all of them in a completely unappealing way to the extent that I would expect the novel to have been a flop but she'd follow up her tepid examination of each piece with: "then it won a major literary award," or "then it was translated in multiple languages" or "then it sold a gajillion copies..." I kept feeling like Tuck appreciated Morante for her place in Italian history but not for her writing. Beyond that, I found that at times Tuck's analysis was insightful and helpful in understanding Morante and at other times seemed to be a compilation of contradictory facts. Morante was a very complicated woman and I think she deserves more than this biography was capable of giving to her. Still, it's a start.

[theglamourgranola · Rating 2 out of 5]

Elsa Morante is lauded as one of the most influential female writers in Italian history. Her life reads as a fantastic decadent fiction in itself.

That said, I had a really hard time getting through this book. I feel like Lily Tuck could have explained the context and political climate of Italy after the war years. There's a lot of author self-insertion. There's a lot of name-dropping and exposition of how the author is connected to interviewers. I feel like I didn't need to know this, it could have been summarized in the epilogue.

The other piece for me was Elsa sounded thoroughly unlikeable. She had favourites, threw tantrums, held vendettas and sounds like she possibly groomed young men much, much younger than she.

In all, Morante's work is important, her impact can be seen in modern fiction. The book is really well researched, annotated and respectfully pays hommage, but I found it very dry.

[Sandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engaging story of the Italian author Elsa Morante, raw, candid and fascinating. Rich with detail of Italy politically and socially during the 1920’s -1980’s.

This was a woman who was an extremely talented writer suffering under the shadow of a painful, precarious childhood and a baffling marriage to a famous Italian male author.

To be honest, while engrossing and well written, I felt unwillingly pulled into Morante’s vortex of unhappiness bordering on mental illness. A sad and difficult read.

[patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Morante was a fascinating woman who was ahead of her time, both in her lifestyle choices and her writings. One day I hope to view the Elsa’s Room permanent exhibition at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, especially to see the infamous Bill Morrow paintings. Her estate owns all of Morrow’s paintings, and no images can be found on the internet.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

While well-written, this novel isn't very interesting if you aren't familiar with Elsa Morante before reading.

[Velichka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skilful and well-written, interesting and doing justice to Elsa Morante. Thank you!

[Olga Vannucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

My grandmother's generation,
Much more modern iteration,
She indulged in provocation,
All the truth her expectation.

[Elio · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Goodbye Elsa of a thousand spells" —a fascinating book about a beautiful life, exceptionally rendered by the author

[paige :3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

i never had heard of her before reading this book, but i know just from reading this that she was such a colorful character of a human being. i’m glad i know of her now!

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lily Tuck's homage to and history of Elsa Morante is exactly how biographical writing should be - detailed, analytical, passionate. Tuck is an important presence here as narrator, critic and fan; it really adds something to the telling when she reveals a little bit of her own background and the connection to Morante through her father. The book shows first and foremost a great interest in Morante, both in her work and in her person, as well as in the city, Rome, which holds a special place for Lily Tuck as well. Tuck is intrigued both by Morante the writer and Morante the woman, a fact that gives the whole work purpose and sense.

If there is any point of criticism leveled at Tuck it is perhaps the length of the book and the number of people who appear in it - friends, acquaintences, family, artists and writers who knew her work, publishers, editors. It serves to give a very complete picture of Morante's personality and her life, as well as the era in which she grew up, but the name dropping does grow a little tiresome and confusing. Otherwise, Tuck writes with such clarity and purpose that Woman in Rome is an immensely readable story about a fascinating writer in a fascinating period of history. The many contributors do also serve to highlight Morante's character; Tuck does a brilliant job of painting a portrait of some complexity as this complicated, often unlikeable woman feels very difficult to pin down.

Through Morante life, Tuck can also draw an interesting sketch of Italian literature and art in the pre-war years, although it is perhaps the war-time chapters that are the most thrilling. Her life in hiding with Alberto Moravia provides an interesting contrast to the fate of the young protagonist in History who remains in Rome - indeed Tuck's great talent is that of connecting the woman to the work, without ever seeming like a celebrity detective trying to pin down everything in her books as autobiographical. Tuck's intention is simply to understand the author and her work better through knowledge of the two. Having only read History I can't judge the accuracy of her interpretations but the fact that Tuck labels one of her novels as even darker and more depressing than History does intrigue me greatly.

Everything is very well intertwined and threaded together - Morante's social life, the things she missed in life (she never became a mother), the recovering Roman populace after the war, the fights and struggles with Moravia, important world events, the Italian literary scene. Tuck finishes with a touching and careful description of her illness and eventual death. It's all told with a measure of emotion and necessary distance but one can tell Tuck was fascinated by the writer she chose to write about, something that should never be missing from a good biography. 7

[Urenna Sander · Rating 2 out of 5]

I skimmed through this book; I didn’t like it. However, it’s not the author’s fault. It was difficult for her to retrieve information out of friends and family of the late author, Elsa Morante (Arturo’s Island). The author, Lily Tuck, thought they appeared to be protective of Ms. Morante’s life, a life which was quite unusual. Elsa Morante and her husband lived an ‘open marriage,’ prior to and after post-war Rome.

Her famous writer husband, Alberto Moravia, was author of the famous book and movie, Two Women. During the war, the two spent a year hiding in a remote farming village from the Germans during the 1930s.

Elsa Morante wasn’t college educated, but wrote several well-known books, such as Arturo’s Island, History and House of Lies.

[Cynthia Clough]

I read this book last week in practically a single sitting. Was one of the most compelling biographies I've read in some time, examining the dark life of this most important of female Italian novelists. I appreciated the biographer's sense of irony and compassion and capacity to make such a complicated life so accessible without the burden of analyzing or explaining to much. I appreciate a biography that approaches a life with a sense of awe and wonder and mystery, with no need to make judgments or analyze behaviors to death. Lily Tuck achieves this. I left the bio anxious to revisit the novels and especially Morante's Diary of 1938.

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much of the biographer in the book -- that always turns me off. I'm a fan of Pavese and Ginzburg. If my library had a decent selection of Morante's work I would give it a try. But it appears almost all has been weeded and discarded -- the sad fate of real literature that does not get checked out often enough to suit the computerized weeding systems in use today.

Morante was what is called a larger than life character -- no shrinking violet -- who spoke her mind. As she shouts in a restaurant: ".. in the south peasant mothers masturbate their children to put them to sleep at night." How's that for a quote.

[Rebecca L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever started reading a biography of someone that not only you did you know nothing about but you had not even heard the subject's name before? I found myself in this reading situation recently and was pleasantly surprised about how captivating it can be to discover a life unfolding. Woman of Rome by Lily Tuck explores the life of Italian Writer Elsa Morante and the history of her time as she was writing during WWII. - Read more at http://www.thekeytothegate.blogspot.c...

[Chiara Coletti · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mother introduced me to the work of Elsa Morante, specifically the extraordinary novel La Storia. Lily Tuck's biography is a dark and yet strangely enchanting tale that illuminates all of the post-war Italian artistic scene: Moravia, Bertolucci, Passolini, Grazia Deledda, Visconti, Natalia Ginsburg and on and on. It unfolds like a story, the way Morante might have told it.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pulled off a shelf at the local library because, well, "Rome" in the title...and I think I know something about world lit but I'd never heard of Elsa Morante. Award winning author Tuck does an excellent job of getting under the skin of Morante and fleshing out her life and her writing.

[Silvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first biography ever of a major Italian writer, Elsa Morante, written by National Book Award Lily Tuck.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

My love of biography's probably makes me biased, but a very interesting book about a little known (in America) Italian writer.

[Louise Mathewson · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting character!!

[Jeannine Donoghue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Abandoned on page 127!