Contempt - Alberto Moravia [58]
Rheingold needed no persuading. “You see, Molteni,” he went on, “I’ve agreed to go to Capri...and in fact we shall certainly shoot the exteriors of the film in the Bay of Naples. But that will be only the background; for the rest we might as well stay in Rome. The drama of Ulysses, in fact, is not the drama of a sailor, or an explorer, or a war veteran. It is the drama of Everyman. The myth of Ulysses conceals the true story of a certain type of man.”
I remarked, at random: “All the Greek myths depict human dramas—dramas without time or place, eternal.”
“Exactly. All the Greek myths, in other words, are figurative allegories of human life...Now, what ought we moderns to do in order to resuscitate such ancient and obscure myths? First of all, to discover the significance which they can have for us of the modern world, and then to fathom that significance as deeply as we can, to interpret it, to illustrate it...but in a live, independent way, without allowing ourselves to be crushed by the masterpieces that Greek literature has drawn from these myths. Let us take an example. No doubt you know O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, from which the film was also taken?”
“Yes, certainly I know it.”
“Well, O’Neill too understood this very simple truth—that the ancient myths have to be interpreted in a modern manner, including the Oresteia. But I don’t care for Mourning Becomes Electra—do you know why? Because O’Neill allowed himself to be intimidated by Aeschylus. He thought, quite rightly, that the Orestes myth could be interpreted psychoanalytically; but, intimidated by the subject, he made too literal a transcription of the myth. Like a good schoolboy writing out an exercise in a book with ruled paper—you can see the lines, Molteni.” I heard Rheingold laughing to himself, pleased with his own criticism of O’Neill.
We were driving across the Roman campagna now, not far from the sea, between low hills yellow with ripe corn, with an occasional leafy tree here and there. We must be far behind Battista, I thought; the road, as far as the eye could reach, was empty—empty in its long, straight tracts, empty at every bend. At that moment Battista would be driving, far ahead, at sixty miles an hour, perhaps more than thirty miles in front of us. I heard Rheingold’s voice begin again: “If O’Neill understood this truth, that the Greek myths must be interpreted in a modern manner, according to the latest psychological discoveries, he ought not to have respected his subject too much, but should have torn it to pieces, turned it inside out, put new life into it. This he did not do, and his Mourning Becomes Electra is tedious and cold...it’s a school exercise.”
“I think it’s rather fine,” I objected.
Rheingold disregarded the interruption and went on: “We’ve now got to do with the Odyssey what O’Neill did not wish, or did not know how, to do with the Oresteia...that is, open it up, as a body is opened up on the dissecting table, examine its internal mechanism, take it to pieces and then put it together again according to our modern requirements.”
I was wondering what Rheingold was driving at. I said, rather distractedly: “The mechanism of the Odyssey is well known: the contrast between the longing for home and family and fatherland, and the innumerable obstacles which stand in the way of a quick return to fatherland and home and family. Probably every prisoner of war, every war veteran who for some reason is detained far away from his own country after the end of a war, is, in his own way, a little Ulysses.”
Rheingold gave a laugh which sounded like the clucking of a hen. “I was expecting that: the veteran, the prisoner. No, no, none of that, Molteni. You’re going no farther than the externals, the facts. In that way the Odyssey film really does run the risk of being nothing more than a ‘kolossal’ film, an adventure film, as Battista would like it to be. But Battista is the producer and it is right that he should think in that way. Not you, however, Molteni, you who are an intellectual. Molteni, you’re intelligent and you