Agostino

Escrito por Alberto Moravia

Narrado por Javier Espejo

Agostino es la historia de un despertar sexual, de la abrupta pérdida de la inocencia por parte de un atormentado adolescente de la burguesía romana; es el relato de su educación sentimental, que se consuma en el seno de una idílica relación madre-hijo en la que el amor materno es correspondido por un sentimiento ambivalente: una atracción a la vez ingenua e impura, etérea y carnal, que empieza a fermentar en Agostino el día en el que su madre, una viuda joven y cargada de sensual vitalidad, conoce, durante unas vacaciones en la playa toscana, a un hombre con el que coquetea.
Su inesperada aparición desata en Agostino una inquietud hasta entonces desconocida. El brusco descubrimiento de que su madre es, también y antes que nada, una mujer convierte su inocente sentimiento de admiración y amor filial en una edípica pulsión erótica que turba al adolescente. Desorientado y resentido, en un orgulloso acto de rebelión, Agostino intenta liberarse del dulce yugo materno y se integra en una pandilla de gamberros que lo repele y lo atrae, y a la que se aferra con masoquista determinación para superar la crisis existencial que marcará su ingreso en la edad adulta.
Escrita en 1942 y rechazada por la censura fascista, esta novela, que asienta las bases del estilo narrativo de Moravia, fue finalmente publicada en 1945 y le valió al autor el primero de una larga lista de reconocimientos literarios.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: BookaVivo
• Traductor: Raquel Olcoz
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 17 ene 2022
• ISBN: 9781638117094

Comentarios para Agostino

[donato_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Now we're talking. Moravia's got style! This is a short novel. The story is simple, not even necessarily original (a Freudian coming-of-age tale). But... it was fun to read. I was immediately drawn into Agostino's world. I wanted to keep reading it. This is style.

[gbelik_1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Young Agostino's relationship to his mother comes apart as he discovers that she has interests other than him. He takes up with a young gang of toughs seemingly as a rebellion, an assertion of himself as a separate individual. But they treat him with cruelty and mock his mother. I felt that the reader was kept at a distance, unable to truly sympathize with either the mother or the son, just to view the sad predicament.

[hemlokgang · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This novella, translated from the original Italian, is a primal, deeply psychological tale of one young man's loss of innocence. While staying at the beach with his beloved mother, Agostino ' s eyes are opened to the world of sensuality and violence, of deep male drives. As a woman, I felt like I had been gifted a glimpse of the painful male passage from childhood to adulthood, and it seemed so authentic that I almost felt I was trespassing.

[sweetiegherkin · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Young Agostino is enjoying a summer vacation with his mother, a beautiful widow whose elegance attracts admiration he likes basking in. But that all changes when a young man begins a flirtation with Agostino's mother. Ashamed and hurt, Agostino takes up acquaintance with a bunch of boys around his age, but who have lived a very different life from his wealthy, privileged one. Their savagery and obscenity both repulses and compels him to spend more time in their world.I don't recall anymore why I wanted to read this book; I have a dim memory of reading an article about essential books in translation to read. So when I actually got around to reading it, I didn't really have any particular expectations. The book is really more of a novella, clocking in at just a hundred pages. Somehow it still felt long in a way though; perhaps because nothing much really happens in the book. Nominally, it is a "coming of age" type story for Agostino, except that becoming a man for him simply means sexual relations, not anything else about responsibility or awareness of the world. Arguably, there is something contained within the book about class distinctions, but it is slight (and not flattering for anyone depicted). Mostly, the narrative is just full of Agostino's angst about how he's suddenly aware that his mother has a life outside of being a mother, aka that she also has sexual desire. Poor Agostino (in sarcasm). Moravio's prose reads smoothly and evocatively, and a note from the translator puts his writing into context, explaining how Moravio was trying something new for 1940s Italy -- a break away from the classical and lyrical style based on poetry with a more realistic, colloquial bent. Still, I didn't enjoy this book all the much and I'm not sure I would recommend it, even though it was an award winner back in its day. The sexist attitude toward women in general and the mother (literally how she is referred to all the time -- the mother, with no name) in particular were off-putting. Men don't get a much better portrait, with the wild and violent boys depicted: "He found it utterly unjust that on such a sea, beneath such a sky, a boat like theirs should be so full of spite, cruelty, and malicious corruption. A boat overflowing with boys acting like monkeys, gesticulating and obscene, helmed by the blissful and bloated Saro, created between the sea and sky a sad unbelievable vision." It's not a pretty view of humanity, and it's certainly not a feel-good kind of book by any stretch.