Durer's famous angel, Melencolia, has a way of alighting in some unexpected places. One of these is the first page of Alberto Moravia's new novel [1934] …, where the symbol of intellectual depression turns up as a passenger on a boat from Naples to Capri…. If [the narrator Lucio] can plausibly contrive the suicide of his novel's hero, he thinks, there will be no need for him to follow suit: "I would save myself through writing."

The sight of the woman on the boat overturns this resolution. Lucio embarks on a prolonged flirtation with her, endures the insults of her husband and pursues the couple (who turn out to be Germans) to a pensione in Anacapri. So attuned is he to the situation he has created that he even guesses their name out of thin air: Müller.

Before long, he is attributing to Beate Müller, with apparent confirmation...