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with the time at which she had died, I discovered that they did not correspond. Emilia had been still alive at the moment when I thought I had seen her sitting in the stern of the boat; but she was, in all probability, already dead during the time of my unconsciousness on the little beach at the far end of the Red Grotto. So, in death as in life, there was no true conformity. And I should never know whether she had been a ghost or a hallucination, or a dream, or perhaps some other illusion. The ambiguity which had poisoned our relationship in life continued even after her death.

Driven on by longing for her and for places where I had last seen her, I made my way one day to the beach below the villa, where I had come upon her lying naked and had had the illusion that I had kissed her. The beach was deserted; and as I came out through the masses of fallen rock with my eyes raised towards the smiling, blue expanse of the sea, the thought of the Odyssey came back into my mind, and of Ulysses and Penelope, and I said to myself that Emilia was now, like Ulysses and Penelope, in those great sea spaces, and was fixed for eternity in the shape in which she had been clothed in life. It depended upon myself, not upon any dream or hallucination to find her again and to continue our earthly conversation with renewed serenity. Only in that way would she be delivered from me, would she be set free from my feelings, would she bend down over me like an image of consolation and beauty. And I decided to write down these memories, in the hope of succeeding in my intention.

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 1954

Introduction copyright © 1999 by Tim Parks

All rights reserved.

First published in Italy by Valentino Bompiani & Co. as Il disprezzo, 1954

Cover image: Georgii Petrusov, caricature of Aleksandr Rodchenko, 1933–1934

Cover design: Katy Homans

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

Moravia, Alberto, 1907–

[Disprezzo. English]

Contempt / Alberto Moravia ; introduction by Tim Parks ;

translated by Angus Davidson .

p. cm.

ISBN 0-940322-27-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

I. Davidson, Angus. II. Title.

PQ4829.062D513 1999

853’.912—dc 21 99-31899

eISBN 978-1-59017-484-5

v1.0

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