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and which was different from mine and in contrast with mine, with a man who was not myself, far away from me. I was here in the hospital, I repeated to myself from time to time, and she was at Ponza with the actor, and we were two different people and she had nothing to do with me and I had nothing to do with her, and she was apart from me, as I was apart from her. And finally I no longer desired to possess her but to watch her live her life, just as she was, that is, to contemplate her in the same way that I contemplated the tree outside my window. This contemplation would never come to an end for the simple reason that I did not wish it to come to an end, that is, I did not wish the tree, or Cecilia, or any other object outside myself, to become boring to me and consequently to cease to exist. In reality, as I suddenly realized with a feeling almost of surprise, I had relinquished Cecilia once and for all; and, strange to relate, from the very moment of this relinquishment, Cecilia had begun to exist for me.

I wondered if possibly, in relinquishing Cecilia, I had also ceased to love her, in other words to experience toward her that same feeling, always delusive and always disappointed, that I had previously had, and which, for lack of a more appropriate term, I must call love. I was aware that that kind of love was dead, but that I loved her all the same, though with a love that was new and different. This new love might or might not be accompanied by a physical relationship, but it did not depend upon it, and in a way did not need it. When Cecilia came back we might or we might not resume our former relations, but I, in any case, would not cease to love her.

At this point I must admit that my ideas became confused. I recalled that from the very beginning it had seemed to me that my relationship with Cecilia had differed in no way from my contact with reality; in other words, that my fundamental reasons for ceasing to paint had been the same as those for which I had attempted to kill myself. But now? In the end I said to myself that, for the moment, I had to remain in bed for more than a month and that it was too soon to come to any sort of decision. Once I was well, I would go back to the studio and try to start painting again. I say that I would try, because I was not at all sure that the connection I had seen for so long between Cecilia and my painting really existed; or that loving Cecilia in a new way would mean starting to paint again. Here again, only experience would be able to provide an answer.

And so, in the long run, the only truly certain result was that I had learned to love Cecilia, or rather, to love her without complications. Anyhow I hoped I had learned. For in relation also to this aspect of my life, doubt could not be excluded. And in order to be completely sure, I had to wait until Cecilia came back from her visit to the seaside.

This is a New York Review Book

Published by The New York Review of Books

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

www.nyrb.com

Copyright © R.C.S. Libri S.p.A.-Milan Bompiani, 1960

Introduction copyright © 1999 by William Weaver

All rights reserved.

First published in Italy by Valentino Bompiani & Co. as La Noia, 1960

Cover image: Arnulf Rainer, The Empty Painting, 1951; © Arnulf Rainer, courtesy of Galerie Ulysses, Vienna

Cover design: Katy Homans

The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

Moravia, Alberto, 1907–

[Noia. English]

Boredom / Alberto Moravia ; introduction by William Weaver ;

translated by Angus Davidson.

p. cm.

Originally published: Milan : Valentino Bompiani & Co., 1960.

ISBN 0-940322-28-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)

I. Davidson, Angus. II. Title.

PQ4829.062N613 1999

853’.912—dc 21 99-31900

eISBN 978-1-59017-121-9

v1.0

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