Malaparte, Curzio

(pseud. Kurt Erich Suckert, 1898–1957).

   An intriguing figure, Malaparte (who Italianized his name during his service as a volunteer in the Italian army in 1915) was an active Fascist in his native Tuscany. In 1924, he founded a review, La Conquista dello stato (The Conquest of the State), which became the theoretical journal of the revolutionary wing of the Partito Nazionale Fascista/National Fascist Party (PNF) headed by Roberto Farinacci. High in the esteem of the Duce, he was sent to the Soviet Union as a correspondent, which led him to write L’Intelligenza di Lenin (The Intelligence of Lenin, 1930), a book full of scarcely disguised admiration for Soviet totalitarianism. He became editor of the Turin newspaper La Stampa in 1929 but was hounded from his job by Benito Mussolini for publishing too many articles critical of Fascist industrial policy. This, at any rate, was Malaparte’s explanation. Exiled in Paris, Malaparte wrote the Europe-wide best-seller Technique du Coup d’etat (Technique of the Coup d’Etat, 1931), which described recent seizures of power in various European countries and argued that the essential element of political power was the willingness to use violence in pursuit of one’s ends. Malaparte argued, for instance, that Mussolini had been successful less for his own merits than because of the spinelessness of Italy’s liberals, who had been unwilling to defend their own values and state. Such a position did nothing to enhance his standing with the Fascist dictator. Malaparte also disparaged Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement, and extracts from his book were used as propaganda material by the antifascist parties in the German elections of 1932. Technique du Coup d’Etat was banned in Italy and burned in Germany. Malaparte was arrested upon his return to Italy in October 1933 and served several years of confinement in the mid-1930s. He was a correspondent in Russia and Finland during the war. After the war, he embraced the Chinese brand of communism and had just returned from a visit to Red China—one of the first foreigners permitted to see the Maoist state—when he died from cancer in 1957.

   Malaparte’s literary output was vast, but three books in particular have withstood the test of time: Kaputt (1944), La Pelle (The Skin, 1949), and Maledetti toscani (Damned Tuscans, 1956). In addition to his prodigious literary output, Malaparte also designed his own house on the Isle of Capri. It is still regarded as a classic example of modernist architecture.

   See also Literature.