Volume 14, Number 6 · March 26, 1970
Dreaming Up Petronius
By Alberto Moravia, Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal
Fellini Satyricon
directed by Federico Fellini, produced by Alberto Grimaldi
The Satyricon of Petronius, as everyone knows, is an 'open' novel, like the novels of Henry Miller and Louis Ferdinand Céline, and unlike the closed, tightly closed novels of Flaubert and Manzoni. An open novel—a series of events and adventures without a beginning, middle, or end; without a story, an internal structure. One could add whole chapters to the Satyricon, as to the novels of Miller and Céline, and not damage it at all. Unfortunately, in the Satyricon's case, whole chapters have disappeared, to its serious impairment, so that today we have only the conclusion of a long, saga-like novel of antiquity. Yet the fact is that even with these amputations the meaning of the work is not lost. But just try to amputate part of a novel by Flaubert and see what you have left.
Review, 3078 words
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