Contempt - Alberto Moravia [87]
Feeling perfectly calm now, I said firmly: “No, Rheingold, they were very great indeed. It may be that you’re right to see the Odyssey in that way, but I’m convinced that, even today, the Odyssey could be made as Homer wrote it.”
“That’s an aspiration on your part, Molteni. You aspire after a world like that of Homer...you would like it to be so...but unfortunately it isn’t!”
I said conciliatingly: “Let’s leave it at that, then: I aspire after that sort of world. You, on the other hand, do not!”
“Oh yes, I do, Molteni...who doesn’t? But when it’s a question of making a film, aspirations are not enough.”
There was a further silence. I looked at Rheingold and realized that, even though he understood my reasons, he was still not altogether convinced. Suddenly I asked him: “No doubt you know the Ulysses canto in Dante, Rheingold?”
“Yes,” he answered, a little surprised at my question, “I know it, but I don’t remember it exactly.”
“Do you mind if I recite it to you? I know it by heart.”
“Please do, if you care to.”
I did not know precisely why I wanted to recite this passage from Dante—perhaps, I thought afterwards, because it seemed to me the best way of repeating certain things to Rheingold without running the risk of offending him afresh. While the director was settling himself in his armchair, and his face assuming a submissive expression, I added: “In this canto Dante makes Ulysses relate his own end and that of his companions.”
“Yes, I know, Molteni, I know; recite it then.”
I concentrated my thoughts for a moment, looking down on the floor, and then began: “The greater horn of the ancient flame began to shake itself, murmuring, just like a flame that struggles with the wind”—continuing steadily in a normal voice and, as far as I could, without emphasis. Rheingold, after considering me for a moment, with a frown, from beneath the peak of his cloth cap, turned his eyes in the direction of the sea and sat without moving. I went on with my recitation, speaking slowly and clearly. But at the lines: “‘O brothers!’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West, deny not, to this brief vigil of your sense that remains, experience of the unpeopled world behind the Sun’”—I felt that my voice, in spite of myself, was trembling with sudden emotion. I considered how there was contained, in those few lines, not merely the idea I had formed of the figure of Ulysses, but also of myself and of my life as it ought to have been and, alas, was not; and I realized that my emotion arose from the clarity and beauty of this idea in comparison with my own actual powerlessness. However I more or less succeeded in controlling the tremor in my voice and went on, without stumbling, to the very last lines: “Three times it made her whirl round with all the waters; at the fourth, made the poop rise up and prow go down, as pleased Another, till the sea was closed above us.” The moment I had finished I jumped to my feet. Rheingold also rose from his armchair.
“Allow me, Molteni,” he said at once, hastily, “allow me to ask you...Why did you recite this fragment of Dante to me? ...For what purpose? It’s very beautiful, of course—but why?”
“This, Rheingold,” I said, “this is the Ulysses I should have liked to create...this is how I see Ulysses...Before leaving you I wanted to confirm it unmistakably...I felt I could do this better by reciting the passage from Dante than in my own words.”
“Better, of course...but Dante is Dante: a man of the Middle Ages...You, Molteni, are a modern man.”
I did not answer this time, but put out my hand. He understood, and added: “All the same, Molteni, I shall be very sorry to do without your collaboration...I was already getting accustomed to you.”
“Some other time, perhaps,” I answered. “I should have liked to work with you, too, Rheingold.”
“But why, then? Why, Molteni...?”
“Fate,” I said with a smile, shaking his hand. And I walked away. He remained standing beside the counter, in the bar, his arms outstretched as if to repeat: “Why?”