Curzio Malaparte (Italian:[ˈkurtsjomalaˈparte]; bornKurt Erich Suckert; 9 June 1898 – 19 July 1957) was an Italian writer, filmmaker,war correspondent anddiplomat. Malaparte is best known outside Italy due to his worksKaputt (1944) andThe Skin (1949). The former is a semi-fictionalised account of theEastern Front during theSecond World War and the latter is an account focusing on morality in the immediate post-war period ofNaples (it was placed on theIndex Librorum Prohibitorum).
During the 1920s, Malaparte was one of the intellectuals who supported the rise ofItalian fascism andBenito Mussolini, through the magazine900. Despite this, Malaparte had a complex relationship with theNational Fascist Party and was stripped of membership in 1933 for his independent streak. Arrested numerous times, he hadCasa Malaparte created inCapri where he lived under house arrest. After the Second World War, he became a filmmaker and moved closer to both Togliatti'sItalian Communist Party and theCatholic Church (though once a staunchatheist), reputedly becoming a member of both before his death.[1][2][3]
Born Kurt Erich Suckert inPrato, Tuscany, Malaparte was a son of aGerman father, Erwin Suckert, a textile-manufacturing executive, and hisLombard wife,[4] née Evelina Perelli. He was educated atCollegio Cicognini in Prato and atLa Sapienza University of Rome. In 1918 he started his career as a journalist. Malaparte fought in the First World War, earning acaptaincy in the FifthAlpine Regiment and several decorations for valor.
His chosensurname Malaparte, which he used from 1925 onward, means "evil/wrong side" and is a play on Napoleon's family name "Bonaparte" which means, in Italian, "good side".
In 1922, he took part inBenito Mussolini'sMarch on Rome. In 1924, he founded the Roman periodicalLa Conquista dello Stato ("The Conquest of the State", a title that would inspireRamiro Ledesma Ramos'La Conquista del Estado). As a member of thePartito Nazionale Fascista, he founded several periodicals and contributed essays and articles to others, as well as writing numerous books, starting from the early 1920s, and directing two metropolitan newspapers.
In 1926, he founded withMassimo Bontempelli the literary quarterly"900". He later became a co-editor ofFiera Letteraria (1928–31), and an editor ofLa Stampa inTurin. His polemical war novel-essay,Viva Caporetto! (1921), criticized corrupt Rome and the Italian upper classes as the real enemy (the book was forbidden because it offended theRoyal Italian Army).
InCoup d'État: The Technique of Revolution, first published in French in 1931 asTechnique du coup d`Etat, Malaparte set out a study of the tactics ofcoup d'état, particularly focusing on theBolshevik Revolution and that ofItalian fascism. Here he stated that "the problem of the conquest and defense of the State is not a political one ... it is a technical problem", a way of knowing when and how to occupy the vital state resources: the telephone exchanges, the water reserves and the electricity generators, etc. He taught a hard lesson that a revolution can wear itself out in strategy.[5] He emphasizesLeon Trotsky's role in organising the October Revolution technically, while Lenin was more interested in strategy. The book emphasizes thatJoseph Stalin thoroughly comprehended the technical aspects employed by Trotsky and so was able to avertLeft Opposition coup attempts better thanKerensky.
For Malaparte, Mussolini's revolutionary outlook was very much born of his time as a Marxist. On the topic ofAdolf Hitler, the book was far more doubtful and critical. He considered Hitler to be a reactionary. In the same book, first published in French byGrasset, he entitled chapter VIII:A Woman: Hitler. This led to Malaparte being stripped of hisNational Fascist Party membership and sent tointernal exile from 1933 to 1938 on the island ofLipari.
He was freed on the personal intervention of Mussolini's son-in-law and heir apparentGaleazzo Ciano. Mussolini's regime arrested Malaparte again in 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1943, imprisoning him in Rome'sRegina Coeli jail. During that time (1938–41) he built a house with the architectAdalberto Libera, known as theCasa Malaparte, on Capo Massullo, on the Isle ofCapri.[6] It was later used as a location inJean-Luc Godard's filmLe Mépris.
Shortly after his time in jail he published books ofmagical realist autobiographical short stories, which culminated in the stylistic prose ofDonna come me (Woman Like Me, 1940).[7]
His knowledge of Europe and its leaders is based upon his experience as a correspondent and in the Italiandiplomatic service. In 1941 he was sent to cover theEastern Front as a correspondent forCorriere della Sera. The articles he sent back from theUkrainian Fronts, many of which were suppressed, were collected in 1943 and brought out under the titleThe Volga Rises in Europe. The experience provided the basis for his two most famous books,Kaputt (1944) andThe Skin (1949).
The book includes an interview withHans Frank, Governor General. Malaparte stayed inWarsaw, a place of which he had strong memories as a correspondent from 1919-1920.
Kaputt, his novelistic account of the war, was surreptitiously written at a time when Germany's loss of the war increasingly came to be seen as inevitable. Malaparte's account is marked by lyrical wording in observations, as when he encounters a detachment ofWehrmacht soldiers fleeing aUkrainian battlefield:
When Germans become afraid, when that mysterious German fear begins to creep into their bones, they always arouse a special horror and pity. Their appearance is miserable, their cruelty sad, their courage silent and hopeless.
In the foreword toKaputt, Malaparte describes in detail the convoluted process of writing. He had started writing it in the autumn of 1941, while staying in the home of Roman Souchena in the Ukrainian village of Pestchianka, located near the local "House of the Soviets" which was requisitioned by the SS; the village was then just two miles behind the front. Souchena was an educated peasant, whose small home library included the complete works ofPushkin andGogol. Souchena's young wife, absorbed inEugene Onegin after a hard day's work, reminded Malaparte of Elena and Alda, the two daughters ofBenedetto Croce. The Souchena couple helped Malaparte's writing project, he keeping the manuscript well hidden in his house against German searches and she sewing it into the lining of Malaparte's clothing when he was expelled from the Ukrainian front because of the scandal of his articles inCorriere della Sera. He continued the writing in January and February 1942, which he spent inNazi-occupied Poland and at theSmolensk Front. From there he went toFinland, where he spent two years - during which he completed all but the final chapter of the book. Having contracted a serious illness at thePetsamo Front in Lapland, he was granted a convalescence leave in Italy. En route, theGestapo boarded his plane at theTempelhof Airport in Berlin and the belongings of all passengers were thoroughly searched. Fortunately, no page ofKaputt was in his luggage. Before leaving Helsinki, he had taken the precaution of entrusting the manuscript to several Helsinki-based diplomats: CountAgustín de Foxá [es],Minister at theSpanish Legation; Prince DinaCantemir, Secretary of the Romanian Legation; and Titu Michai, the Romanian press attaché. With the help of these diplomats, the manuscript finally reached Malaparte in Italy, where he was able to publish it.
One of the most well-known and often quoted episodes ofKaputt concerns the interview which Malaparte - as an Italian reporter, supposedly on the Axis side - had withAnte Pavelić, who headed theCroat puppet state set up by the Nazis.
While he spoke, I gazed at a wicker basket on the Poglavnik's desk. The lid was raised and the basket seemed to be filled with mussels, or shelled oysters, as they are occasionally displayed in the windows of Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly in London. Casertano looked at me and winked, "Wouldn't you like a good oyster stew?"
"Are they Dalmatian oysters?" I asked the Poglavnik.
Ante Pavelic removed the lid from the basket and revealed the mussels, that slimy and jelly-like mass, and he said smiling, with that tired good-natured smile of his, "It is a present from my loyal Ustashis. Forty pounds of human eyes."
Milan Kundera's view of theKaputt is summarized in his essayThe Tragedy of Central Europe:[8]
It is strange, yes, but understandable: for this reportage is something other than reportage; it is a literary work whose aesthetic intention is so strong, so apparent, that the sensitive reader automatically excludes it from the context of accounts brought to bear by historians, journalists, political analysts, memoirists.[9]
According to D. Moore's editorial note, inThe Skin,
Malaparte extends the great fresco of European society he began inKaputt. There the scene was Eastern Europe, here it is Italy during the years from 1943 to 1945; instead of Germans, the invaders are the Americanarmed forces. In all the literature that derives from the Second World War, there is no other book that so brilliantly or so woundingly presents triumphant American innocence against the background of the European experience of destruction and moral collapse.[10]
The book was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, and placed on theIndex Librorum Prohibitorum.[11]The Skin was adapted for the cinema in 1981.
From November 1943 to March 1946 he was attached to the American High Command in Italy as an Italian Liaison Officer. Articles by Curzio Malaparte have appeared in many literary periodicals of note in France, the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States.
After the war, Malaparte's political sympathies veered to the left and he became a member of theItalian Communist Party.[12] In 1947, Malaparte settled in Paris and wrote dramas without much success. His playDu Côté de chez Proust was based on the life ofMarcel Proust andDas Kapital was a portrait ofKarl Marx.Cristo Proibito ("Forbidden Christ") was Malaparte's moderately successful film—which he wrote, directed and scored in 1950. It won the "City of Berlin" special prize at the1st Berlin International Film Festival in 1951.[13] In the story, a war veteran returns to his village to avenge the death of his brother, shot by the Germans. It was released in the United States in 1953 asStrange Deception and voted among the five best foreign films by theNational Board of Review. He also produced the variety showSexophone and planned to cross the United States on bicycle.[14] Just before his death, Malaparte completed the treatment of another film,Il Compagno P.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Malaparte became interested in theMaoist version of Communism. Malaparte visited China in 1956 to commemorate the death of the Chinese essay and fiction writer,Lu Xun. He was moved and excited by what he saw, but his journey was cut short by illness, and he was flown back to Rome.Io in Russia e in Cina, his journal of the events, was published posthumously in 1958. He willed his house in Capri to theChinese Writers Association as a study and residence center for Chinese writers. But at the time of his death in 1957 there were no diplomatic relations with the People's Republic, so the transfer could not take place, and the family succeeded in changing the will.[15]
Malaparte's final book,Maledetti toscani, an attack on middle- and upper-class culture, appeared in 1956. In the collection of writingsMamma marcia, published posthumously in 1959, Malaparte writes about the youth of the post–Second World War era with homophobic tones, describing it as effeminate and tending to homosexuality and communism;[16] the same content is expressed in the chapters "The pink meat" and "Children of Adam" ofThe Skin.[17] He died in Rome from lung cancer[18] on 19 July 1957.
Malaparte's colorful life has made him an object of fascination for writers. An American journalist, Percy Winner, wrote about their relationship during the fascistventennio (twenty year period) and the Allied Occupation of Italy, in the lightly fictionalized novel,Dario(1947) (where the main character's last name is Duvolti, or a play on "two faces"). In 2016, the Italian authorsRita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti publishedMalaparte. Morte come me (lit. 'Death Like Me'). Set on Capri in 1939, it gives a fictionalized account of a mysterious death in which Malaparte was implicated.[19]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
