 |
Dandy of the
lowest depths Curzio
Malaparte and his gallery of horrors Curzio
Malaparte THE SKIN Translated
by David Moore 344pp.
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Paperback, $16.95. Giordano Bruno
Guerri IL MALA
PARTE ILLUSTRATO 50pp. Milan:
Mondadori. The writer
Curzio Malaparte' s real name was Kurt Erich Suckert; his father was a déclassé German technician who had settled
in Prato. His mother, a well-born, and beautiful woman, was
Piedmontese, but Malaparte
remained uneasy about his heredity. He once
confessed that he shared "all the romanticism and the madness of the
Germans", and that his mistakes derived from a continual effort "to be
(not to appear) an Italian like all the others". One should not read
this,
perhaps, as wholly sincere. Owning up to a streak of German romanticism
was a
way of defending himself against the charges of conforming to an
Italian
stereotype of the cynical adventurer, ready to sell his services to the
highest
bidder. Nevertheless, his aggressive exaltation of the characteristics
of the
"arch-Italian" and his populist cult of Tuscan provinciality can be
seen as driven by a desire to live down, or repudiate, his German
ancestry. Malaparte
made no secret about his desire to be on good terms with the powerful.
Handsome, bold and stylish, he was irresistible to women, and many men,
too,
fell under the spell of his charm. He was a sophisticated, amusing
conversationalist
and a born storyteller. He practiced the most subtle kind of flattery,
that
which maintains an appearance of independence. He was not much troubled
by
considerations of consistency or personal loyalty; lavishly subsidized
by Mussolini's
son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, he yet, after the latter's fall, left a
contemptuous verdict on Ciano's qualities as a man and as a politician. One of the
more embarrassing moments in Malaparte's career came in 1948, after he
had published
a lurid anti-Communist political fantasy, when the then head of the
Partito
Communista, Palmiro Togliatti, revealed that in 1944 Malaparte had
tried to
become a party member and had claimed to have been a Communist since
his birth.
Togliatti, however, was always willing to overlook the past when there
was a
prestigious intellectual convert to be gained, and after visiting
Malaparte on
his deathbed, he accepted his request for a party card.
Characteristically, at
the same time, Malaparte sought and obtained Pius XII's blessing,
although he
was disappointed that the Pope did not deliver it in person. His last
major
journalistic enterprise had been his visit to China in 1956, when he
did not
fail to praise Mao for "his lack of factiousness and fanaticism", and
"his profound sense of equilibrium and of humanity". Malaparte's
commitment to Fascism was probably more sincere and more compatible
with his
true inclinations than his later allegiances. His early career was in
many ways
typical of the generation which brought Fascism to power. In 1914, at
the age
of sixteen, while Italy was still neutral, he ran away from home to
join the
Garibaldian Volunteer legion fighting in France. He did not reach the
front,
but the following year, after Italy had joined the war, he volunteered
again,
together with the other members of the young Republican branch of which
he was
secretary. During the German offensive of 1918, he returned to France
with an
Italian contingent, where he took part in the desperate battle of
Bligny, and
was decorated for his bravery in leading a section of flame-throwers.
Although
he only joined the Fascist movement two months before the March on
Rome, in
1924 he became the most eloquent spokesman for the extremists who
wished to
force Mussolini to abandon his residual compromise with the Liberal
state.
Malaparte's journal, La Conquista dello Stato, called for a second
revolution
to establish "integral fascism" through the participation of the
ex-combatant masses in government. His ideology was a strange but
representative
blend of revolutionary syndicalism, populism and traditionalism. He
praised Mussolini
as the leader of the revolt of the Italian spirit against the sceptical
and
critical ethos of the Nordic reformation. But at the same time he
claimed that
the revolutionary syndicalists, converted to nationalism, were the true
heirs
of the heroic minorities of the Risorgirnento. Malaparte's
revolutionary
traditionalism mirrored the confused and contradictory nature of
Fascist extremism,
an unstable compound of different ideological elements. But the very
intelligence and polemical verve which distinguished his writing were
qualities
which, once Fascism had consolidated its power, made him suspect.
Malaparte was
an opportunist, but he was not a conformist. In his nature, the
courtier
existed alongside the rebel. Resentment of his dependence on the
powerful,
'which he had voluntarily assumed, led him to betray himself through
repeated
indiscretions. If he is to be believed, in his first interview with
Mussolini,
the Duce gave him a paternal warning that his irrepressible love of
malicious
gossip would damage his career. He had criticized, in public, the
Duce's taste
in ties. But this was the sort of
liberty which Malaparte would not forgo, and time and again his tongue
got him
into trouble. He made a very favourable impression on the founder of
Fiat,
Giovanni Agnelli, who had him appointed in 1929 as Editor of La Stampa,
the
important Turin newspaper which he controlled. Malaparte was an
excellent
editor, who sought out distinguished contributors and preserved a
certain
independence from the party line. But, less than a year later, Agnelli
sacked him
because he had denounced the managing director of the paper as an
anti-Fascist.
Some years afterwards, Malaparte took his revenge by having a very
public
affair with Agnelli's daughter. In 1931, a biography of the flamboyant
Air Minister,
Italo Balbo, formerly the most prestigious leader of Fascism's
paramilitary
action squads, appeared under Malaparte's name. Although the real
author of the
book was Elio Vittorini, Malaparte presumably approved its message;
Balbo
appeared as the incarnation of the romantic and populist version of
Fascism which
he had tried to propagate through his writings. Yet a year later
Malaparte was
arrested and confined to the isle of Lipari for having written a letter
in
which he denounced Balbo as a man "who has in him the stuff of a
provincial tyrant", and whose ambitions might prove disastrous for
Fascism. There is
much about this incident that is still obscure, and it is possible that
it originated
in a misplaced attempt by Malaparte to curry favour with Mussolini by
playing
on his suspicions of Balbo. Even if it were so, the miscalculation
seems so
gross as to demand a psychological explanation. Before the war,
Malaparte's one
really successful book was his manual on the technique of the coup
d'etat,
published in Paris in 1932. His brilliant but superficial analysis is
authentically
Fascist in its isolation and idealization of the techniques of
violence.
However, the book certainly contributed to his reputation for
unorthodoxy and
unreliability. He displayed admiration for Trotsky and contempt for
Hitler. If
he showed a remarkable and prescient intuition in his judgment of
Hitler's
character, as a "feminine" type, sexually morbid, who used brutality to
hide his inner weaknesses, he was far from understanding the
determination and
subtlety of Hitler's political strategy. He treated Hitler as the
Duce's
incompetent pupil, and the portrait of the "feminine" Hitler implied
a flattering contrast with Mussolini's well-known virility. But if it
was
Malaparte's intent to please Mussolini, it once again backfired. At a
time when
Italy was drawing closer to Germany, it was hardly prudent to disparage
Hitler
so radically. Malaparte's repulsion for Hitler and for National
Socialism
helped to inspire his most famous and successful book, Kaputt, based on
his
experiences as a war correspondent on the Eastern Front. Certainly,
there is
even here a big question mark over Malaparte' s good faith. The
original draft
of the book was probably more anti-English than anti-German, and it was
only as
the war turned in the Allies' favour that Malaparte gave free rein to
what, I
think, was a genuine antipathy. The critical reader may find much of
Malaparte's writing in Kaputt exasperating and repugnant. He inherits
from baroque
imagery appears contrived rather than appropriate, and the constant
striving
after extreme effects ends by becoming tedious. It leaves a nasty taste
in the
mouth, and not only because of its subject matter. By way of contrast,
one
might read Norman Lewis's Naples '44, which allows the facts, or the
stories,
to speak for themselves. Il Malaparte illustrato by Giordano Bruno
Guerri,
issued to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Malaparte's birth,
could
have as its subtitle, "Portrait of a Fascist dandy". Malaparte had
style, and he knew it. For a more detailed account of his career,
Guerri's
longer biography, L'Arcitaliano, should be consulted. Guerri does not
hide his
subject's defects, but a note of apologia creeps in here and there. He
tries to
make out a case for Malaparte as a "precursor" of the present
objective assessment of Fascism and anti-Fascism. I don't myself think
that Curzio
Malaparte was a precursor of anything of value; but he deserves to be
remembered as a skilled guide to the lowest depths of Europe's inferno.
Adrian
Lyttelton is Professor of History at the fohns Hopkins University
Center,
Bologna. He is working on a social history of Italy, 1860-1915. TLS OCTOBER
9 1998 |
