Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Let us hear what Alberto Moravia says in The Empty Canvas (La Noia) about boredom—that fundamental ineradicable condition of all his work, which he treats explicitly for the first time in this last novel.

Here, then is a man facing a truth that, though extremely disheartening, is yet better than an illusion. He is alone before an image of himself, “for various reasons unbearable,” in an atonic world

El Desprecio

Odisea

THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS

The Gospel at Colonus reconceives Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus as parable-like sermons on the ways of fate and particularly a happy death. It is set in an African-American Pentecostal church. The congregation performs the invocation (“Live Where You Can”) and as the Ministers narrate, portions of the story come to life.

The Story
After years of wandering with his daughter Antigone, suffering for the sins he committed in innocence, Oedipus comes to Colonus (“Fair Colonus”), the holy resting place he has been promised for his death. At first, the citizens of Colonus turn him away (“Stop! Do Not Go On!”) and interrogate him (“Who is This Man?”). His second daughter, Ismene, finds them there, rejected. She has come, however, to bring Oedipus the prophecy that he shall now be blessed, and that those he blesses shall also be so (“How Shall I See You Through My Tears?”). She tells him to pray to the gods he once offended (“A Voice Foretold [Prayer]”). Theseus, King of Athens, hears his prayer and is touched by his story, and the outcasts are welcomed to Colonus (“Never Drive You Away [Jubilee]”). Creon, King of Thebes, comes to bring Oedipus back to that city. But Oedipus refuses to go, and Creon kidnaps the daughters (“You Take Me Away”). Theseus returns them. At his death, Oedipus passes on to Theseus alone his knowledge of life and his blessing (“Sunlight of No Light/Eternal Sleep”). The final sermon is delivered, reminding the congregation to mourn no more, for Oedipus has found redemption at his death (“Lift Him Up/Lift Me Up”). Indeed, his end was wonderful, if mortal’s ever was (“Now Let the Weeping Cease”).

"Cuanto mas grande es la felicidad, menos se la advierte. Parecera extraño, pero el hecho es que en aquellos dos años a veces hasta crei aburrirme. Y, sin duda, no me percataba de que era feliz".

"Whichever but great it is the happiness, less notices it. Strange Parecera, but the fact is that in those two years sometimes until crei to bore to me. And, without a doubt, it was not aware to me that he was happy ".

One day he finds himself beckoning to a girl,
“As she passed under my window, I saw her look up at me, but this time without smiling, I raised my hand to take the cigarette from my mouth, but instead I found myself making an unmistakable sign to her to come back,”
That is how things happen, the writer seems to be saying; that is how we become involved in reality

From this involuntary gesture, at once gratuitous and inevitable, the gist of the tale , the story not of love or eroticism but of the frustrated desire for possession and consciousness takes its impetus. The relationship between the painter and the girl is naked, mechanical and clean as a bone-or, better still, as a skeleton. No one has depicted a series of carnal acts, frenzied yet cold in their automatism-nudity, desire, and its outlet- whith such comple lack of complacence , such immpassive truthfulness . For Moravia does not describe bodies or their acts; he makes us feel their existence and their unreality at the same time...