Guido Bonsaver

Fascist censorship on literature and the case of Elio Vittorini

This article tackles the issue of literary censorship in Fascist Italy. The first part offers an outline of the organization and the practices with which the regime attempted to control publishers and authors. It tracks the development of Mussolinis Press Office into a fully fledged ministry, examines the introduction of a semi-preventive form of censorship, and looks at the effects of the anti-Semitic laws. The second part concentrates on the literary activities of the novelist, editor and translator, Elio Vittorini. His many encounters with Fascist censorship provide ideal subject matter for a close examination of how censorship affected literary production. It also provides an example of the need to re-address aspects of Italys literary history during the Fascist period, particularly in relation to questions of coercive and consensual collaboration with the regime.

Jazz Italian Style: From Its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra

Più volte sembra emergere nello studio di Ambra Zorat, nonostante la difficoltà della materia linguistica dei versi esaminati, una singolare capacità di penetrazione logica e cognitiva, attraverso una puntuale analisi del testo poetico. Nell’ostinato percorso per l’acquisizione di un significato, c’è in chi scrive quasi una resistenza al tortuoso procedere che il testo a prima vista sembra volere imporre, in una ricerca ultima di un senso e di una verità. Come viene infatti rilevato più avanti, nella poesia rosselliana «poesia e ricerca di significato coincidono ed è la codificazione testuale di questo bisogno di senso che contribuisce ad avvincere il lettore» (179). Per motivi di spazio, la presente non può essere la sede di un esame dettagliato dei singoli contributi critici. Nel complesso si rileva comunque che il volume tratta e comprova, con puntuale attenzione, l’argomento propostosi e cioè lo sviluppo del «pensiero della poesia» nelle sue molteplici manifestazioni. Il volume può dunque offrire un contributo genuino e originale allo studio e alla ricerca attuale della dinamica poetica nella realtà odierna, rivalutandone la componente umanistica e rilevandone l’importante valore conoscitivo, ad un livello molto più profondo di quello analitico, razionalistico o anche filosofico. Concludendo non si può fare a meno di raccomandare la presente raccolta per una rivalutazione altamente necessaria del discorso poetico nel mondo d’oggi, quando la poesia sembra, come è stato evidenziato, avere raggiunto un triste grado di inadeguatezza e, a volte, impopolarità. La poesia, come sottolineano vari autori della raccolta—ed in questo sta forse, nell’opinione di chi scrive, il contributo più importante del volume—deve rimanere, in un tempo di violenze, terrorismo, degrado dell’umano come il presente, portatrice degli interrogativi più profondi ed espressione di una ricerca continua di verità da parte delle coscienze.

The Rhetoric of Violence and Sacrifice in Fascist Italy: Mussolini, Gadda, Vittorini

As explicitly argued in the introduction, this book aims to complement recent studies on Fascist culture through an approach based on textual analysis. The rhetorical technique of Mussolini’s speeches is the principal focus of Chiara Ferrari’s interest, in an attempt to reveal the recurrence of particular tropes, and their role in creating a sense of communion and a collective narrative of self-sacrifice for the good of the nation. It is an approach that rightly dispels any patronizing reduction of Mussolini’s language to a bombastic and infantalizing tool in the hands of a cunning demagogue. Starting with possibly Mussolini’s most defining speech ever – his parliamentary address in the wake of the Matteotti murder of 3 January 1925 – Ferrari convincingly brings to light its sophisticated rhetoric. The Duce depicts Matteotti as a valiant political opponent, praises him and then immediately compares his virtues to his own, thus perversely appropriating the qualities of the victim. Thanks to this rhetorical undertaking, Mussolini is then able to justify his position as a political leader who, like Matteotti, is attempting to bring peace and justice in a country devastated by political violence. Paradoxically, the ex-revolutionary socialist leader and the violence of his squads become the necessary tools for bringing back law and order. In that speech, selfsacrifice establishes itself as a key rhetorical trope in both Mussolini’s political discourse and in Fascist ideology. Its links with First World War propaganda can be easily perceived, though Ferrari is more interested in tracing its development throughout the Ventennio. Thanks to a thorough analysis of a number of other speeches, Ferrari shows how Mussolini uses this concept in order to create an apparent dialogue with the crowds he is addressing. In a constant act of false modesty, he presents himself as a man who has put his life at the service of the nation, presenting the audience with rhetorical questions that only allow for an enthusiastic expression of support. The Duce leads because the nation asks him to lead. Attached to this, there is an important corollary. If the leader sacrifices himself for his people, then each of his people should be ready to sacrifice him/herself for the good of the nation. Here Ferrari looks at the anti-bourgeois element in Mussolini’s speeches which emerges from time to time as a call towards purging the national spirit of the individualism and egoism of the educated class of old Liberal Italy. Her analysis is also enriched by an original move: Mussolini’s rhetoric is studied through the work of more or less qualified scholars who enthusiastically analysed the language of the Duce when he was still leading the country. Once again, the aim is not a condescending judgement on the naive enthusiasm of these authors. Instead, Ferrari shows how they perceived Mussolini’s technique as a successful tool to create a sense of solidarity and fusion between the leader and the masses. In order to test the influence of Mussolini’s rhetoric on the Italian intelligentsia, the second part of the book moves on to the field of literature. Two authors are selected – Carlo Emilio Gadda and Elio Vittorini – mainly because of an important feature they both share, and one that sets them apart. What unites them is the fact that they both were supporters of the regime who in later years distanced themselves from Fascism and developed an explanatory rationale for their earlier misjudgments. What separates them is their reaction to Mussolini’s endeavour to elevate the masses and turn them into an active participant in the shaping of the Fascist nation. Book reviews

Recent Work on Neorealism

Beyond the many defi nitions, re-defi nitions and polemical discussions, there is full agreement on the magnitude of Italian neorealist cinema. Within a world history of modern culture, it possibly marks the latest time an Italian phenomenon had signifi cant global impact and infl uence. For other examples we would have to look at fashion and car design. As a result, it is only natural that Italian neorealist cinema should continue to be the object of critical attention. This review will concentrate on two recent additions for the English-speaking readership. In many ways, Mark Shiel’s Italian Neorealism and Christopher Wagstaff’s Italian Neorealist Cinema could not be at more distant ends of the publishing spectrum. The fi rst is a short introduction to the topic, aimed at a generic public of cinema students, teachers and fi lm buffs; the second is a demanding almost 500page-long study which looks at a small number of fi lms and calls for a new approach to the way we think and talk about cinema. A useful way forward might be to dwell fi rst on Wagstaff’s analysis (whose initial two chapters contain his own introduction to neorealism) and later look at Shiel’s study keeping in mind Wagstaff’s challenge to fi lm critics. The very incipit of Wagstaff’s book wryly sets the scene: ‘I am going to push an argument about as far as it will go’ (p.3). The ironic touch of the authorial voice does indeed accompany the reader through this extraordinary feat of ‘argument pushing’ and it often provides moments of needed solace after pages and pages of detailed analysis. But the core of Wagstaff’s study is, in itself, remarkably simple. Too often Italian neorealist cinema has been discussed, valued and labelled with respect to the content of the stories it screened. Too often the ‘realism’ of its masterpieces has been debated and praised as a historically accurate and critically selected representation of key aspects of Italy’s social history. Why don’t we just treat those fi lms as aesthetic objects and study their cinematic qualities per se? This, in nuce, is the argument which Wagstaff pushes and kneads for hundreds of pages. In more general terms, it is a call for a critical appreciation capable of paying due attention to the rhetorical strategies adopted by various directors. It asks the critic to verify whether the many assumptions related to the making and the style of neorealist fi lms can survive the close scrutiny of a formal analysis. The fi rst chapter provides a broad contextualization of Italian neorealism sup ported by no less than fi fteen appendices. The slightly idiosyncratic organization of the material asks a lot of the inexperienced reader but delivers many useful myth-puncturing

Il Menabò, Calvino and the ‘Avanguardie’: Some Observations on the Literary Debate of the Sixties

AbstractThe literary venture of the periodical Il Menabo, created by Elio Vittorini and Italo Calvino, had a relatively short life span. Ten issues were published between 1959 and 1967, with the last one entirely devoted to Vittorini, whose death brought the project to a halt. A few months later, Calvino would move to Paris, almost as if to make his detachment from the Italian literary milieu geographically explicit.