SOURCE: "The Moravian Muse," in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, Spring, 1953, pp. 215-25.

In the following excerpt, Bergin lauds Moravia's underlying romantic attitude, as presented in Two Adolescents, as a revolt against middle-class society.

The stories of young Girolamo in "Winter of an Invalid" and the boy, Agostino, in the novella of that name, bring out the same frustrations and the same obsessions [presented in The Indifferent Ones]. Girolamo, merely to conform to the standards of a vulgar traveling salesman who shares his hospital room, attempts the seduction of his little playmate, and Agostino, out of dimly realized jealousy of his mother's lover, attaches himself to a crowd of young toughs. In both instances, these desperate attempts to "conform" to some kind of standard as a means of seeking refuge from an intolerable inner uneasiness have ironic outcomes; the traveling salesman is not impressed but shocked...