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Curzio Malaparte was a disaffected supporter of Mussolini with a taste for danger and high living. Sent by an Italian paper during World War II to cover the fighting on the Eastern Front, Malaparte secretly wrote this terrifying report from the abyss, which became an international bestseller when it was published after the war. Telling of the siege of Leningrad, of glittering dinner parties with Nazi leaders, and of trains disgorging bodies in war-devastated Romania, Malaparte paints a picture of humanity at its most depraved.
Kaputt is an insider's dispatch from the world of the enemy that is as hypnotically fascinating as it is disturbing.
Kaputt is an insider's dispatch from the world of the enemy that is as hypnotically fascinating as it is disturbing.
494 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1944
312 people are currently reading
10837 people want to read
About the author
Curzio Malaparte
103 books244 followersBorn Kurt Erich Suckert, he was an Italian journalist, dramatist, short-story writer, novelist and diplomat.
Born in Prato, Tuscany, he was a son of a German father and his Lombard wife, the former Evelina Perelli. He studied in Rome and then, in 1918, he started his career as a journalist. He fought in the First World War, and later, in 1922, he took part in the March on Rome.
He later saw he was wrong in supporting fascism. That is proved by reading Technique du coup d`etat (1931), where Malaparte attacked both Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. This book was the origin of his downfall inside the National Fascist Party. He was sent to internal exile from 1933 to 1938 on the island of Lipari.
He was freed on the personal intervention of Mussolini's son-in-law and heir apparent Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini's regime arrested Malaparte again in 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1943 and imprisoned him in Rome's infamous jail Regina Coeli. His remarkable knowledge of Europe and its leaders is based upon his own experiences as a correspondent and in the Italian diplomatic service.
In 1941 he was sent to cover the Eastern Front as a correspondent for Corriere della Sera. He wrote articles about the front in Ukrania, but the fascist dictatorship of Mussollini censored it. But later, in 1943, they were collected and brought out under the title Il Volga nasce in Europa (The Volga Rises in Europe). Also, this experience provided the basis for his two most famous books, Kaputt (1944) and The Skin (1949).
Born in Prato, Tuscany, he was a son of a German father and his Lombard wife, the former Evelina Perelli. He studied in Rome and then, in 1918, he started his career as a journalist. He fought in the First World War, and later, in 1922, he took part in the March on Rome.
He later saw he was wrong in supporting fascism. That is proved by reading Technique du coup d`etat (1931), where Malaparte attacked both Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. This book was the origin of his downfall inside the National Fascist Party. He was sent to internal exile from 1933 to 1938 on the island of Lipari.
He was freed on the personal intervention of Mussolini's son-in-law and heir apparent Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini's regime arrested Malaparte again in 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1943 and imprisoned him in Rome's infamous jail Regina Coeli. His remarkable knowledge of Europe and its leaders is based upon his own experiences as a correspondent and in the Italian diplomatic service.
In 1941 he was sent to cover the Eastern Front as a correspondent for Corriere della Sera. He wrote articles about the front in Ukrania, but the fascist dictatorship of Mussollini censored it. But later, in 1943, they were collected and brought out under the title Il Volga nasce in Europa (The Volga Rises in Europe). Also, this experience provided the basis for his two most famous books, Kaputt (1944) and The Skin (1949).
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July 11, 2021
Kaputt is a book of opposites: high society and cabals of murderers, rude naturalism and celestial ideals, filthy squalor and divine art, brutal cruelty and abstract humanism – all these become interconnected and interchangeable.
The narration is sanguinarily metaphoric and tenebrously imaginative:
So it is with war. War is nurtured with death and pain.
And everything that happens has a morbid aura of irreality… War is delirium of a sick mind.
The narration is sanguinarily metaphoric and tenebrously imaginative:
Twisted tree roots broke through the crystal sheet like frozen serpents, – it seemed as if the trees drew sustenance from the ice, that the young leaves of a more tender green took their sap from that dead, glassy matter.
So it is with war. War is nurtured with death and pain.
Suddenly the rain ceased; the moon appeared through a rent in the clouds; it looked like a landscape painted by Chagall: A Jewish Chagall sky, crowded with Jewish angels, with Jewish clouds, with Jewish horses and dogs dangling in their flight over the town. Jewish fiddlers sat on the roofs of the houses or floated in a pale sky above the streets, where old Jews lay dead in the gutter between the lighted ritual candelabra. Jewish lovers were stretched out in mid-air on the edge of a cloud as green as a meadow. And under that Jewish Chagall sky, in that Chagall landscape illuminated by a round transparent moon, from the Nicolina, Socola, and Pacurari districts, rose a confused din, a rattle of machine guns and the dull thud of hand grenades.
And everything that happens has a morbid aura of irreality… War is delirium of a sick mind.
May 29, 2019
”Naked Germans are wonderfully defenseless. They are bereft of secrecy. They are no longer frightening. The secret of their strength is not in their skin or in their bones, or in their blood, it is in their uniforms. Their real skin is their uniform. If the peoples of Europe were aware of the flabby, defenseless, and dead nudity concealed by the Feldgrau of the German uniform, the German Army could not frighten even the weakest and most defenseless people.”
If you have ever worn a costume, you will have experienced some of the freedom of being someone else. Masquerade balls and the famous Carnevale di Venezia are fun because people feel released from their normal lives, their personas, and even in some cases their morals. Adolf Hitler liked the pageantry of those impressive uniforms, many of which he designed personally. He was a starving artist before he decided to become an evil dictator. (The film Max with John Cusack explores the life of Hitler when he was still a normal mensch.) A man in a uniform becomes a different person. They can be emboldened and dehumanized and capable of committing great atrocities. It is almost as if the crimes against humanity are perpetrated by the uniform.
Curzio Malaparte was born Kurt Erich Suckert, but changed his name to Malaparte as a pun on Buonaparte, meaning ”he of the bad place.” As you read this book, he is going to take you to some very bad places. You will see through his eyes the ghettos in Poland, a close encounter with Heinrich Himmler, firing squads, and dinner parties with people out of their frilling minds. His descriptions of scenes of destruction and horror are vivid.
”By the roadside, and here and there in the cornfields, were overturned cars, burned trucks, disemboweled armored cars, abandoned guns, all twisted by explosions. But nowhere a man, nothing living, not even a corpse, not even any carrion. For miles and miles around there was only dead iron. Dead bodies of machines, hundreds upon hundreds of miserable steel carcasses. The stench of putrefying iron rose from the fields and the lagoons. The smell of rotting iron won over the smell of men and horses--that smell of old wars, even the smell of grain and the penetrating, sweet scent of sunflowers vanished amid the sour stench of scorched iron, rotting steel, and dead machinery.”
This book was published in 1944 while the war was still going on. It is a tribute to his charm and ability to make friends in high places that he was not shot long before this book was ever published. The odyssey of this manuscript actually making it to print is harrowing and related in the intro to this edition.
Malaparte was a fascist, and then he wasn’t.
He disagreed with Il Duce on tactics that he found abhorrent. In 1933, he was stripped of his membership and exiled to the island of Lipari. I would say it is a mystery why he wasn’t shot, hanged, and drawn and quartered at this point; the vitriol of his pen was very annoying to Mussolini, but then I discovered that he was friends with Galeazzo Ciano, the son-in-law and heir apparent of Mussolini. Ciano eventually saved him from his island of exile, and he came back to the mainland of Italy in 1938. He was then jailed in 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1943.
He refused to be quiet.
Two boys playing dress up. It would be cute if they weren’t psychopaths!
Mussolini should have had him shipped out to the nearest war zone with a target painted on his face, but instead, I can only believe with the intercession of Ciano, he was assigned to the diplomatic corp as a correspondent and sent to cover the action in the Ukraine. In the course of his new duties, he visited all of the central European countries as he chased down stories and observed with such a discerning eye the very worst of war. His perspectives of the conflict are unlike anything I’ve ever read before. ”Kaputt does something unique in the literature of the war; it crosses the lines of battle. Malaparte’s essentially treacherous mentality enabled him imaginatively and at times even physically to look at conflict simultaneously from the vantage points of opposing camps.”
And he shares scenes like this:
”The lake looked like a vast sheet of white marble on which rested hundreds upon hundreds of horses’ heads. They appeared to have been chopped off cleanly with an ax. Only the heads stuck out of the crust of ice. And they were all facing the shore. The white flame of terror still burnt in their wide-open eyes. Close to the shore a tangle of wildly rearing horses rose from the prison of ice.”
These Soviet horses were stampeded by a barrage of artillery fire into the water at the very moment the water was beginning to freeze. A tragic scene, but at the same time, how can we not be struck by the beauty of it? Ice sculptures of hundreds of the most exquisite creatures on the planet, preserved until the spring thaw as works of art.
There are dinner scenes where friends of the Axis Alliance were gorging themselves on a rich banquet of food while postulating about the Jews living like rats, starving to death mere miles from their table. Malaparte visited the Jewish girls who have been forced into whore houses for the pleasure of German soldiers. He was sitting and holding one girl’s hand as she told him that she had to submit to forty-three soldiers and six officers that day. Why she distinguished the officers from the regular enlistment was a bit baffling? She was counting down the days when she would be released. They only used them for twenty some days, then fresh girls were brought in. She was looking forward to when she would be allowed to go home, but what Malaparte did not have the heart to tell her was that she would not be going home.
Malaparte in uniform, not looking very menacing in THAT hat!
I’ve always heard good things about Curzio Malaparte’s writing, but I had no idea how compelling his writing was going to be. I would pick this book up intending to read a chapter or two, and the next thing I know, I’ve blown through 100 pages. Even when he is relating tragedy, he does so with alluring and, at times, stunning prose. For those who feel they know all there is to know about World War II, you are still missing some insights if you haven’t seen the war through Curzio Malaparte’s eyes.
I’ve been accused of being an intellectual before, so I particularly enjoyed this exchange.
”’I often ask myself,’ said de Foxa, ‘what the function of the intellectuals will be in a new medieval period. I bet they would take advantage of the opportunity to try again to save European civilization.’”
Yes, yes, we will!
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Menacing isn’t it?
If you have ever worn a costume, you will have experienced some of the freedom of being someone else. Masquerade balls and the famous Carnevale di Venezia are fun because people feel released from their normal lives, their personas, and even in some cases their morals. Adolf Hitler liked the pageantry of those impressive uniforms, many of which he designed personally. He was a starving artist before he decided to become an evil dictator. (The film Max with John Cusack explores the life of Hitler when he was still a normal mensch.) A man in a uniform becomes a different person. They can be emboldened and dehumanized and capable of committing great atrocities. It is almost as if the crimes against humanity are perpetrated by the uniform.
Curzio Malaparte was born Kurt Erich Suckert, but changed his name to Malaparte as a pun on Buonaparte, meaning ”he of the bad place.” As you read this book, he is going to take you to some very bad places. You will see through his eyes the ghettos in Poland, a close encounter with Heinrich Himmler, firing squads, and dinner parties with people out of their frilling minds. His descriptions of scenes of destruction and horror are vivid.
”By the roadside, and here and there in the cornfields, were overturned cars, burned trucks, disemboweled armored cars, abandoned guns, all twisted by explosions. But nowhere a man, nothing living, not even a corpse, not even any carrion. For miles and miles around there was only dead iron. Dead bodies of machines, hundreds upon hundreds of miserable steel carcasses. The stench of putrefying iron rose from the fields and the lagoons. The smell of rotting iron won over the smell of men and horses--that smell of old wars, even the smell of grain and the penetrating, sweet scent of sunflowers vanished amid the sour stench of scorched iron, rotting steel, and dead machinery.”
This book was published in 1944 while the war was still going on. It is a tribute to his charm and ability to make friends in high places that he was not shot long before this book was ever published. The odyssey of this manuscript actually making it to print is harrowing and related in the intro to this edition.
Malaparte was a fascist, and then he wasn’t.
He disagreed with Il Duce on tactics that he found abhorrent. In 1933, he was stripped of his membership and exiled to the island of Lipari. I would say it is a mystery why he wasn’t shot, hanged, and drawn and quartered at this point; the vitriol of his pen was very annoying to Mussolini, but then I discovered that he was friends with Galeazzo Ciano, the son-in-law and heir apparent of Mussolini. Ciano eventually saved him from his island of exile, and he came back to the mainland of Italy in 1938. He was then jailed in 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1943.
He refused to be quiet.
Two boys playing dress up. It would be cute if they weren’t psychopaths!
Mussolini should have had him shipped out to the nearest war zone with a target painted on his face, but instead, I can only believe with the intercession of Ciano, he was assigned to the diplomatic corp as a correspondent and sent to cover the action in the Ukraine. In the course of his new duties, he visited all of the central European countries as he chased down stories and observed with such a discerning eye the very worst of war. His perspectives of the conflict are unlike anything I’ve ever read before. ”Kaputt does something unique in the literature of the war; it crosses the lines of battle. Malaparte’s essentially treacherous mentality enabled him imaginatively and at times even physically to look at conflict simultaneously from the vantage points of opposing camps.”
And he shares scenes like this:
”The lake looked like a vast sheet of white marble on which rested hundreds upon hundreds of horses’ heads. They appeared to have been chopped off cleanly with an ax. Only the heads stuck out of the crust of ice. And they were all facing the shore. The white flame of terror still burnt in their wide-open eyes. Close to the shore a tangle of wildly rearing horses rose from the prison of ice.”
These Soviet horses were stampeded by a barrage of artillery fire into the water at the very moment the water was beginning to freeze. A tragic scene, but at the same time, how can we not be struck by the beauty of it? Ice sculptures of hundreds of the most exquisite creatures on the planet, preserved until the spring thaw as works of art.
There are dinner scenes where friends of the Axis Alliance were gorging themselves on a rich banquet of food while postulating about the Jews living like rats, starving to death mere miles from their table. Malaparte visited the Jewish girls who have been forced into whore houses for the pleasure of German soldiers. He was sitting and holding one girl’s hand as she told him that she had to submit to forty-three soldiers and six officers that day. Why she distinguished the officers from the regular enlistment was a bit baffling? She was counting down the days when she would be released. They only used them for twenty some days, then fresh girls were brought in. She was looking forward to when she would be allowed to go home, but what Malaparte did not have the heart to tell her was that she would not be going home.
Malaparte in uniform, not looking very menacing in THAT hat!
I’ve always heard good things about Curzio Malaparte’s writing, but I had no idea how compelling his writing was going to be. I would pick this book up intending to read a chapter or two, and the next thing I know, I’ve blown through 100 pages. Even when he is relating tragedy, he does so with alluring and, at times, stunning prose. For those who feel they know all there is to know about World War II, you are still missing some insights if you haven’t seen the war through Curzio Malaparte’s eyes.
I’ve been accused of being an intellectual before, so I particularly enjoyed this exchange.
”’I often ask myself,’ said de Foxa, ‘what the function of the intellectuals will be in a new medieval period. I bet they would take advantage of the opportunity to try again to save European civilization.’”
Yes, yes, we will!
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
May 13, 2024
The manuscript for Malaparte's 'Kaputt' has a tale all of it's own. And I feel it's worth mentioning. It started life in a Ukrainian village in 1941, whilst he stayed with a Russian peasant. He had some unwanted neighbours, a detachment of S.S. men occupied the adjoining house. Whenever a trooper neared whilst Malaparte wrote, his friend, Suchena, gave a warning cough, and by the time Malaparte was called to the Eastern Front his manuscript was hidden in secret hole, in the wall of a pig-sty. Parts of it were also sewn into the lining of his uniform. He returned from Finland with pages hidden in the double soles of his shoes, whilst the rest was divided into three parts, being left in the hands of those he obviously trusted. The Spanish minister in Helsinki, the secretary of the Romanian Legation, and the press attaché who was returning to Bucharest. After a bit of an odyssey, the manuscript finally made it's way back to Italy, before Malaparte hid it close to his Capri home. So whilst reading Kaputt, I fully appreciated the effort put in just to get it out there. It's an important work, that made me gasp, cringe, laugh and almost cry. It was filled with so many brilliant sentences that were not always pleasant, and featured some ridiculously bizarre and funny moments involving those he acquainted with. I don't like the idea of laughing whilst reading a book based on WW2, but I couldn't help it, in places it's damn right hilarious as he pokes fun and winds up, manly the Germans. When Malaparte does get serious though it's emotionally draining stuff, taking in the horrors which he bore witness to. Like him or loathe him (as a supporter of mussolini) the guy could write impeccable well.
Kaputt, on the whole is a monstrous and gruesome book, not gruesome in describing the death and carnage of war, but gruesome in that of the people Malaparte spends a lot of his time in the company of. On his travels he would take in, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Romania, Croatia, at ease with dignitaries, soldiers and peasants alike, and even Lapland, were he runs into Himmler who appears to be melting whilst in a sauna. Among the characters in this book war could be seen as of second importance, most of the time the war doesn't even get mentioned. This could be looked at in a way that serves only as a pretext, but pretexts inevitably belong to the sphere of destiny. In Kaputt, war is destiny. War is not so much a protagonist as a spectator, in the same sense that the landscape is spectating. Kaputt - which literally means 'broken, finished, gone to ruin, torn to pieces' a pile of rubble', is the gay and grotesque monster.
For a book surrounded by much controversy, Malaparte opens proceedings in a most serene manner, involving Prince Eugene of Sweden. Sweden was neutral during war, and Malaparte, or his alter ego, is an Italian officer with the anomalous task of writing war dispatches for 'Corriere della Sera', for which the gestapo had him expelled from Ukraine. He spends a lot of Time in freezingly cold climates, and it seems most characters he comes across look about twenty years older than they are, weary, tired, fearful, and already half dead. Apart from the Nazis, who dine in lavish and grandeur surroundings. Malaparte recounts he was in the foyer of the Pohjanhovi hotel in Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, the northernmost province of Finland, and there on the threshold of the elevator cage was a man in a Nazi uniform who looked, Malaparte says, like Stravinsky. He would later realise it was Himmler, who invited him for a drink, he hadn't recognized him, he declined. This seemed a neat allegory of Malaparte's cool - the changes in his politics show how much of an opportunist he was. His shifts demonstrate his indifference to political parties, his fundamentally aesthetic disinterest.
There were some moving moments also, one involving some Romania prostitutes at a brothel, some only young girls, who believed they will be set free after a few weeks, but were eventually marched off and shot. Some things remain clear, but a large part of the appeal of Kaputt for me lies with the uncertainty, the ambiguity, of and within many of the scenes. 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 and memoirists. Malaparte writes with much interest, and World War II was such a monumental event—why dress either one up beyond reality? Part of the answer lies in what Malaparte was trying to achieve, both personally and in his book. In 'dressing up' history, Malaparte has shown what happened in a completely different light. For many, It would be easy to criticize him, his fictional memoirs or gothic fantasies go way over the top at times, turning into the surreal and deranged. This does at times become tedious. And the vast amount of dialogue used whilst banqueting as a guest gets too long-winded, but it's all part of his set up. Malaparte seems to be playing fast and loose with facts in order to delve into the truth.
His denunciation of Italy and Germany in Kaputt are firm, how much of that comes from his conviction at the time of his writing the book is uncertain. Underlying his extended tropes of animals for facets or aspects of the war resides a metaphor that civilization in general, and Europe in particular, was committing suicide in the war. After four years spent throughout Europe, a ravaged, tired and empty Malaparte returns to Naples, where only the poor and crippled remain, the city has declared a new war, a war on flies, they are everywhere, devouring the city like a plague, in the stinking rotten heat. All he wants is to get back to his villa on the cliffs of Capri and sleep for a month.
After already having read his other major work 'la pelle' (The Skin), I knew what to expect and it didn't disappoint, both are a class apart, and although I preferred 'The Skin', Kaputt was still an exceptional read, with moments I will simply never forget.
December 14, 2025
Here’s a thing. If you want to learn about the events that led to the murder of 14 million civilians at the hands of both Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler in the 1930/40’s, then read Timothy Snyder’s magnificent Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.
14 million civilians, just take a moment to think about that.
If you want to understand the madness, then read Kaputt. Curzio Malaparte’s wartime dispatches are partially based on true events. A book of contrasts, it consists of several conversations the author has with the elite of Europe. It’s their savage indifference to the atrocities that makes Kaputt so bewitching.
One of Malaparte’s theories is that the Germans acted out of fear -
“That which drives the Germans to cruelty, to deeds most coldly, methodically and scientifically cruel, is fear. Fear of the oppressed, the defenseless, the weak, the sick; fear of women and of children, fear of the Jews”
Part fiction, part fact, it’s an eye-witness account of WW2. The chapters about the pogrom in Jassy, the frozen horses in Lake Ladoga, and the forced prostitution of Jewish girls in Soroca are savage, barbaric and unforgettable. What makes Kaputt so utterly brilliant is the writing. I gave up underlining quotes about a third of the way in. The writing is beautiful. For instance, talking to Prince Eugene of Sweden:
“We went into the park. It was getting cold. The eastern sky looked like filmed silver. The slow death of the light, the return of darkness after the endless summer day, gave me a feeling of peace and calm”
Kaputt is both mesmorising and hypnotic. In the hands of a less skilled writer it could be considered pretentious. It’s not the sort of book I’d normally read, so a big thanks to my friend Helen for alerting me to it.
Curzio Malaparte was a fascinating character, but not necessarily a likeable one. He was egotistical, vainglorious, capricious and elitist. But he could write. Reading Kaputt is like being taken through the darkest days of Europe by a ballerina with the voice of a deathless angel.
14 million civilians, just take a moment to think about that.
If you want to understand the madness, then read Kaputt. Curzio Malaparte’s wartime dispatches are partially based on true events. A book of contrasts, it consists of several conversations the author has with the elite of Europe. It’s their savage indifference to the atrocities that makes Kaputt so bewitching.
One of Malaparte’s theories is that the Germans acted out of fear -
“That which drives the Germans to cruelty, to deeds most coldly, methodically and scientifically cruel, is fear. Fear of the oppressed, the defenseless, the weak, the sick; fear of women and of children, fear of the Jews”
Part fiction, part fact, it’s an eye-witness account of WW2. The chapters about the pogrom in Jassy, the frozen horses in Lake Ladoga, and the forced prostitution of Jewish girls in Soroca are savage, barbaric and unforgettable. What makes Kaputt so utterly brilliant is the writing. I gave up underlining quotes about a third of the way in. The writing is beautiful. For instance, talking to Prince Eugene of Sweden:
“We went into the park. It was getting cold. The eastern sky looked like filmed silver. The slow death of the light, the return of darkness after the endless summer day, gave me a feeling of peace and calm”
Kaputt is both mesmorising and hypnotic. In the hands of a less skilled writer it could be considered pretentious. It’s not the sort of book I’d normally read, so a big thanks to my friend Helen for alerting me to it.
Curzio Malaparte was a fascinating character, but not necessarily a likeable one. He was egotistical, vainglorious, capricious and elitist. But he could write. Reading Kaputt is like being taken through the darkest days of Europe by a ballerina with the voice of a deathless angel.
April 17, 2021
Grotesque. Is that not the only realistic way to describe the ravages of war? Curzio Malaparte is clearly just the man to provide us with an abundance of the grotesque as observed by him during his travels as a war correspondent in the war zones of Poland and Eastern Europe. His tone of voice is sharp and cynical, yet I feel his observations on the folly of war and the countries and men participating in it are very appropriate and often sensitive, even if it offended people greatly at the time. He was loved as well as loathed for his harsh, yet often humorous observations. Still today, his rather sick sense of humor is darkly comic. I feel that Malaparte gives us the real emotion of how it feels to experience war as an observer on the sideline as he was, the noise, the dead, the bombing, people on the run, the louting, people strung up on trees, the senseless hate. Malaparte himself describes his experiences as ‘cruel gaiety’. Well, yes, the man was a total cynic and I think that is exactly why his reports are feeling so truly realistic and precisely correct because of their absurdity and brutality. As far as I am concerned, the same applies to his other war novel, ‘The Skin’, about the liberation of Naples.
Malaparte travelled extensively over the battle fields during the years 1941 through 1943. He observed the war from both the German as well as the Russian front. As a born and raised bon vivant and obviously a member of high class, he was apparently very welcome to stay at Italian embassies where he dined and wined out of harm’s way, notably in Finland and Sweden. He was apparently very welcome at other embassies as well. He was, after all, a dandy with great wit and I have no doubt that he was very pleasant company. The fact that Mussolini had jailed him for his criticism of the Italian fascist movement in the 1930’s was apparently no reason not to welcome him and perhaps even a recommendation. Apparently, the German fascist regime in Warsaw loved to have him as a guest and Malaparte has quite some hilarious observations on all those pompous German men and their ladies when dining at the Embassy. He even met Himmler a few times at an Embassy dinner in Warsaw and he always referred to him afterwards as ‘the human Himmler’, thus as a specimen of another species. Very good classification in my view.
The last chapter of the book provides a horrendous description of the apocalyptic destruction of Naples. Malaparte arrived there in 1943 after another stay in prison. Although he does not go into details, I assume Mussolini’s son-in-law arranged for his release. Malaparte hurried off between all the rubble and thongs of roaming people to the harbor to try to catch a boat to take him to Capri where his house was. This house is quite a landmark till this day.
The book ends in a very Malapartian anecdote with a conversation at the harbour with an old man. I’ll translate it because it is such an appropriate ending:
‘Damn flies!’ I said.
‘That’s right’ says the man, waving his newspaper, ‘damn flies’.
‘Why don’t you people of Naples start a fight against the flies? With us in Northern Italy, in Milan, Torino, Florence and even Rome, the municipalities organised the fight against flies. There’s no fly to be found there anymore.’
‘There’s even no fly anymore in Milan?’
‘No, not a single one. We have put them all to death. It is a question of hygiene, you prevent infections and illness.’
‘Oh well, but we have taken up the fight against flies in Naples too, better even, we have started a downright war against the flies. Already for three years we have combated the flies.’
‘So how it is possible then that there are still so many flies in Naples?’
‘Oh well, Sir, what do you want: the flies have won.”
Malaparte travelled extensively over the battle fields during the years 1941 through 1943. He observed the war from both the German as well as the Russian front. As a born and raised bon vivant and obviously a member of high class, he was apparently very welcome to stay at Italian embassies where he dined and wined out of harm’s way, notably in Finland and Sweden. He was apparently very welcome at other embassies as well. He was, after all, a dandy with great wit and I have no doubt that he was very pleasant company. The fact that Mussolini had jailed him for his criticism of the Italian fascist movement in the 1930’s was apparently no reason not to welcome him and perhaps even a recommendation. Apparently, the German fascist regime in Warsaw loved to have him as a guest and Malaparte has quite some hilarious observations on all those pompous German men and their ladies when dining at the Embassy. He even met Himmler a few times at an Embassy dinner in Warsaw and he always referred to him afterwards as ‘the human Himmler’, thus as a specimen of another species. Very good classification in my view.
The last chapter of the book provides a horrendous description of the apocalyptic destruction of Naples. Malaparte arrived there in 1943 after another stay in prison. Although he does not go into details, I assume Mussolini’s son-in-law arranged for his release. Malaparte hurried off between all the rubble and thongs of roaming people to the harbor to try to catch a boat to take him to Capri where his house was. This house is quite a landmark till this day.
The book ends in a very Malapartian anecdote with a conversation at the harbour with an old man. I’ll translate it because it is such an appropriate ending:
‘Damn flies!’ I said.
‘That’s right’ says the man, waving his newspaper, ‘damn flies’.
‘Why don’t you people of Naples start a fight against the flies? With us in Northern Italy, in Milan, Torino, Florence and even Rome, the municipalities organised the fight against flies. There’s no fly to be found there anymore.’
‘There’s even no fly anymore in Milan?’
‘No, not a single one. We have put them all to death. It is a question of hygiene, you prevent infections and illness.’
‘Oh well, but we have taken up the fight against flies in Naples too, better even, we have started a downright war against the flies. Already for three years we have combated the flies.’
‘So how it is possible then that there are still so many flies in Naples?’
‘Oh well, Sir, what do you want: the flies have won.”
February 9, 2017
A tour de force in description that is both grotesque and horrifying, Kaputt brings us a candid view of the war behind the Axis lines from Finland to Naples and from Russia to Poland to Romania to Croatia. No bullets are spared, no scene is too extreme not to portray. Like if Proust was writing The Walking Dead and Catch-22 while drinking with Dostoyevsky and Himmler. That may sound like an absurd comparison, but everything in this book is terrifyingly absurd. Buckets of eyes, lakes of frozen horses, clouds of flies, dogs used as bombs and the careless doomed vaunting of Kultur from the Germans and the looks of doom in the vanquished people they subjugated and murdered. It is a work that reveals the animal nature humans as each chapter is named after an animal that becomes a leitmotif for the ensuing narrative: horses (representing the past?), mice (representing the Jews and other victims of the Holocaust), dogs (representing the resistance), the reindeer (representing the corruption and meltdown of the European order and aristocracy) and the flies (representing death who took its victims indiscriminately from both sides, from civilians as well as soldiers.)
Having read this on the heels of Catch-22, I found the writing of Malaparte more exquisite than Heller's albeit with far less humor. Where Heller tries to show Yossarian as being horrified at the war and running from it, Malaparte's character sometimes seeks out the slaughter and has a schizophrenic relationship to the violence which belies the character of the author in real life. A difficult and trying read but an essential view of the horrors we must never repeat, and yet inevitably like the clouds of flies on the golf course near the end, we are doomed by our nature to do so.
My apologies for a downer note at the end of the year, but with Trump coming and Marine on the rise, I think that keeping the past in mind, perhaps we will not in fact be doomed to repeat. I guess I would rather side with Yossarian's paranoiac insanity that the coldly observant but unfeeling eyes of Malaparte.
Having read this on the heels of Catch-22, I found the writing of Malaparte more exquisite than Heller's albeit with far less humor. Where Heller tries to show Yossarian as being horrified at the war and running from it, Malaparte's character sometimes seeks out the slaughter and has a schizophrenic relationship to the violence which belies the character of the author in real life. A difficult and trying read but an essential view of the horrors we must never repeat, and yet inevitably like the clouds of flies on the golf course near the end, we are doomed by our nature to do so.
My apologies for a downer note at the end of the year, but with Trump coming and Marine on the rise, I think that keeping the past in mind, perhaps we will not in fact be doomed to repeat. I guess I would rather side with Yossarian's paranoiac insanity that the coldly observant but unfeeling eyes of Malaparte.
February 2, 2021
قربانی یا کاپوت حاصل مشاهدات آقای کورتزیو مالاپارته روزنامه نگار شهیر ایتالیایی در زمان جنگ جهانی دوم از جبهه های جنگ به خصوص روسیه و اوکراین می باشد . او در این نوشته ها با افراد برجسته زیادی هم ضیافت شامی داشته و حرفهای آنها را هم به نگارش در آورده ( از جمله هانتس فرانک - جلاد لهستان و هاینریش هیملر معروف فرمانده اس اس ) و به این ترتیب به خواننده امکان شناختن افکار و عقاید ذهن های بیمار آنها را می دهد .
مالاپارته خاطرات وحشتناکی از مشاهدات خود را بازگو می کند ، او نگاه خاصی دارد و دنبال مناظر به خصوصی می گردد و آنها را می یابد :
در شمال فنلاند ، هنگامی که اسبهای وحشی براثر بمباران رم می کنند و به داخل یک دریاچه می روند ، زمانی که هر چه قدر تلاش می کنند نمی توانند از دریاچه لعنتی خارج شوند ، شب فرا می رسد و باد وحشتناک زمستان . تا چند ماه روستاییان فنلاندی منظره وحشتناکی می بینند : مجسمه های یخی اسبهای در حال فرار و دریاچه یخ زده
مالاپارته جنگ را در زندگی می یابد ، در میان مجروحین جنگی ، کسانی که پلک چشم خود را بر اثر سرمای روسیه از دست داده اند ، مالاپارته با خود فکر می کند که آنها چگونه می خوابند ، او می فهمد که مشاهده خواب دها نفر که پلک ندارند و شب با چشم های باز زل می زنند به آسمان چه تجربه دهشتناکی ایست .
مالاپارته به روستاها و شهرهای رومانی می رود ، جایی که یهودیان را از گتو خارج می کنند ( مانند سکانس فوق العاده دختربچه قرمز پوش در فیلم فهرست شیندلر ) آنها را به زور در قطار می چپانند تا زنده به گور شوند ، بدون هوا، آب و اکسیژن
مالاپارته با سربازان آلمانی مصاحبه می کند ، آنها به او از شکار موش می گویند ، موشها در حقیقت بچه های یهودی هستند که گودال در زیر دیوار گتو می سازند تا به شهربروند و غذا برای خانواده خود بیاورند . ( این سکانس هم به زیبایی در فیلم پیانیست به تصویر کشیده شده ، جایی که یکی از این قهرمانان کوچک گیر می افتد و با ضربات لگد و قنداق تفنگ از پا در می آید ، با تکه نانی در دست ).
کتاب قربانی شباهت زیادی به زندگی جنگ و دیگر هیچ اثر روزنامه نگار شهیر ایتالیایی اوریانا فالاچی دارد اما کتاب قربانی خالی از معناست ، نویسنده بر عکس خانم فالاچی در جستجوی پاسخ هیچ سوالی نیست ، به دنبال معنا و مفهومی هم نیست ، او فقط از فجایع جنگ می گوید . گویی که نویسنده جنگ را فقط از دریچه دوربین دیده ، چیزی که در این میان غایب است و در شاهکار خانم فالاچی به شدت حاضر روح انسانی ایست ، کتاب روح ندارد
بیشتر صفحات کتاب با ضیافتهای شام در حضور سران آلمان پر شده ، نازیها انسان های خشکی نشان داده شده اند که متلک گویی و تکه انداختن و بزله گویی های آقای مالاپارته را متوجه نمی شوند . گویی بار فاشیست بودن بر جسم خسته آقای مالاپارته سنگینی می کند گویا می خواهد ثابت کند که با نازیها فرق دارد .
شاید بتوان رگه هایی از پشیمانی یا شرمساری نویسنده به خاطر یک فاشیست سابق بودن و یا همکاری ایتالیا با آلمان نازی به خصوص در بالکان را بتوان در کتاب قربانی دید .
مالاپارته خاطرات وحشتناکی از مشاهدات خود را بازگو می کند ، او نگاه خاصی دارد و دنبال مناظر به خصوصی می گردد و آنها را می یابد :
در شمال فنلاند ، هنگامی که اسبهای وحشی براثر بمباران رم می کنند و به داخل یک دریاچه می روند ، زمانی که هر چه قدر تلاش می کنند نمی توانند از دریاچه لعنتی خارج شوند ، شب فرا می رسد و باد وحشتناک زمستان . تا چند ماه روستاییان فنلاندی منظره وحشتناکی می بینند : مجسمه های یخی اسبهای در حال فرار و دریاچه یخ زده
مالاپارته جنگ را در زندگی می یابد ، در میان مجروحین جنگی ، کسانی که پلک چشم خود را بر اثر سرمای روسیه از دست داده اند ، مالاپارته با خود فکر می کند که آنها چگونه می خوابند ، او می فهمد که مشاهده خواب دها نفر که پلک ندارند و شب با چشم های باز زل می زنند به آسمان چه تجربه دهشتناکی ایست .
مالاپارته به روستاها و شهرهای رومانی می رود ، جایی که یهودیان را از گتو خارج می کنند ( مانند سکانس فوق العاده دختربچه قرمز پوش در فیلم فهرست شیندلر ) آنها را به زور در قطار می چپانند تا زنده به گور شوند ، بدون هوا، آب و اکسیژن
مالاپارته با سربازان آلمانی مصاحبه می کند ، آنها به او از شکار موش می گویند ، موشها در حقیقت بچه های یهودی هستند که گودال در زیر دیوار گتو می سازند تا به شهربروند و غذا برای خانواده خود بیاورند . ( این سکانس هم به زیبایی در فیلم پیانیست به تصویر کشیده شده ، جایی که یکی از این قهرمانان کوچک گیر می افتد و با ضربات لگد و قنداق تفنگ از پا در می آید ، با تکه نانی در دست ).
کتاب قربانی شباهت زیادی به زندگی جنگ و دیگر هیچ اثر روزنامه نگار شهیر ایتالیایی اوریانا فالاچی دارد اما کتاب قربانی خالی از معناست ، نویسنده بر عکس خانم فالاچی در جستجوی پاسخ هیچ سوالی نیست ، به دنبال معنا و مفهومی هم نیست ، او فقط از فجایع جنگ می گوید . گویی که نویسنده جنگ را فقط از دریچه دوربین دیده ، چیزی که در این میان غایب است و در شاهکار خانم فالاچی به شدت حاضر روح انسانی ایست ، کتاب روح ندارد
بیشتر صفحات کتاب با ضیافتهای شام در حضور سران آلمان پر شده ، نازیها انسان های خشکی نشان داده شده اند که متلک گویی و تکه انداختن و بزله گویی های آقای مالاپارته را متوجه نمی شوند . گویی بار فاشیست بودن بر جسم خسته آقای مالاپارته سنگینی می کند گویا می خواهد ثابت کند که با نازیها فرق دارد .
شاید بتوان رگه هایی از پشیمانی یا شرمساری نویسنده به خاطر یک فاشیست سابق بودن و یا همکاری ایتالیا با آلمان نازی به خصوص در بالکان را بتوان در کتاب قربانی دید .
January 5, 2018
A word.
Read this title to a child. KA-putt. It's okay to show them the title. KAAA-putt. Their attention almost there, I say: Ka-PUUUUUUUTTTT. I say it again and again, inflection shifting, which is not illegal outside Germany. Ka-PUUTT. Ka-PUUUUTTT. KAAAAAAAA-PUUUUUUUUTTTTTT. It's not long before they are saying it with me and we are having a moment. It's a German word I tell them, not caring that they have no clue what a Germany is. It means broken, I tell them, but it can mean more: over, done with, obsolete. History.
It was a fun few moments for the pups. But it made me think about the power of a single word, and how there was that single, carnival word to name this book.
So I was on alert.
Then, far along, I heard this: Trrraaauuurrriiig!
"Trrraaauuurrriiig!" General Dietl was shouting in a very loud voice, imitating the horrible hiss of the Stuka, until Air General Mensch screamed, "Boom!" imitating the terrible crash of an exploding bomb. . . . "Trrraaauuurrriiig!" shouted Dietl. "Boom!" howled Mensch. . . .
. . ."Halt!" suddenly shouted General Mensch raising a hand. Turning toward de Foxa he asked him rudely, "How do you say traurig in Spanish?"
"We say triste, I think," replied de Foxa.
"Let's try with triste," Mensch said.
"Trrriiisssteee!" shouted General Dietle.
"Boom!" howled Mensch. Then he raised his hand and said, "No, trieste is no good. Spanish is not a warlike language."
"Spanish is a Christian language," said de Foxa. "It is Christ's language."
"Ah, Cristo!" shouted General Dietl.
"Boom!" General Mensch howled. Then he raised a hand, and said,"No, Cristo is no good."
"Cristo is not a German word," de Foxa said with a smile.
No, I might have added if I was there, but KA-PUUUUUTTTTTT is.
_________________ ___________________ _________________
The author, named Kurt Eric Suckert, was an Italian and loyal to Mussolini, until he wasn't. The exact epiphany may have been conscientious or existential, but is just as likely to have been political and wind-shifting. That cynicism aside, Curzio Malaparte (his pen name) was a stinker enough that he was imprisoned for years at a time, having written some unflattering things about Il Duce. He was banned from being a war correspondent because of those utterances, but then became a soldier and was ordered to be a war correspondent. Yes, I don't know either. This enabled him to dine with Nazi leaders, even take a steambath with Himmler. Unusual access, what they call it.
And so, we ask, as we always do when an author intrudes himself into the narrative: what is it?
Novel? History? Memoir? Journalism?
My sense is that Malaparte understood the evil. And he understood it early. Yet he was no martyr. Those that invaded countries, laughed at killing Jews, lined up outside 'brothels' -- these men did not fear Malaparte.
The war turned. And so did Malaparte. What we read here, then, sounded to me like what I wish I would have said. But I won't judge. Because what he would have said was pretty spectacular. But it comes down to words: pliable, elastic words.
"Before taking a crucial decision, or when he is very weary or depressed, sometimes in the midst of an important meeting," said Frau Brigitte Frank, "he shuts himself up in the cell, sits before the piano and seeks rest or inspiration from Schumann, Brahms, Chopin or Beethoven. Do you know what I call this cell? I call it the Eagle's Nest."
I bowed in silence.
"He is an extraordinary man, isn't he?" she added, gazing at me with a look of proud affection. "He is an artist, a great artist, with a pure and delicious soul. Only such an artist as he can rule over Poland."
"Yes," I said, "a great artist, and it is with this piano that he rules the Polish people."
"Oh, you understand so well!" said Frau Brigitte Frank in a voice full of emotion.
No, I won't judge.
_________________ _________________________ _______________
And a rhetorical question, once: Can you imagine what Madame Bovary would have been like if she were the daughter of Mussolini?
_________________ _________________________ _______________
Only someone who has been in prison can write this:
The sight of the sea moved me and I began to weep. A river, a plain, a mountain, not even a tree or a cloud--nothing has in it the feeling of freedom like the sea. A prisoner in jail stares hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year at the walls of his cell. They are always the same white smooth walls, and when he gazes at those walls, at the sea, he cannot imagine it blue; he can only imagine the sea's being white, smooth, bare, without waves, without storms--a squalid sea illuminated by the flat light penetrating through the bars of his window. That is his sea, that is his freedom--a white, smooth bare sea, a squalid and cold freedom.
_________________ _________________________ _______________
And so, perhaps, we should not be so harsh. If a man changes, let him change for the better. And if he amends a conversation, let him do it like this:
"See this wall?" said (Governor-General) Frank to me. "Does it look to you like the terrible concrete wall bristling with machine guns that the British and American papers write about?" And he added, smiling, "The wretched Jews all have weak chests. At any rate this wall protects them against the wind." . . .
"The atrocious immorality of this wall," I replied, "doesn't lie in the fact that it prevents the Jews from leaving the ghetto but in the fact that it does not prevent them from entering it."
______________________ ___________________ ________________
This is a book where both Max Schmeling and the Black Madonna of Częstochowa are heroes.
Read this title to a child. KA-putt. It's okay to show them the title. KAAA-putt. Their attention almost there, I say: Ka-PUUUUUUUTTTT. I say it again and again, inflection shifting, which is not illegal outside Germany. Ka-PUUTT. Ka-PUUUUTTT. KAAAAAAAA-PUUUUUUUUTTTTTT. It's not long before they are saying it with me and we are having a moment. It's a German word I tell them, not caring that they have no clue what a Germany is. It means broken, I tell them, but it can mean more: over, done with, obsolete. History.
It was a fun few moments for the pups. But it made me think about the power of a single word, and how there was that single, carnival word to name this book.
So I was on alert.
Then, far along, I heard this: Trrraaauuurrriiig!
"Trrraaauuurrriiig!" General Dietl was shouting in a very loud voice, imitating the horrible hiss of the Stuka, until Air General Mensch screamed, "Boom!" imitating the terrible crash of an exploding bomb. . . . "Trrraaauuurrriiig!" shouted Dietl. "Boom!" howled Mensch. . . .
. . ."Halt!" suddenly shouted General Mensch raising a hand. Turning toward de Foxa he asked him rudely, "How do you say traurig in Spanish?"
"We say triste, I think," replied de Foxa.
"Let's try with triste," Mensch said.
"Trrriiisssteee!" shouted General Dietle.
"Boom!" howled Mensch. Then he raised his hand and said, "No, trieste is no good. Spanish is not a warlike language."
"Spanish is a Christian language," said de Foxa. "It is Christ's language."
"Ah, Cristo!" shouted General Dietl.
"Boom!" General Mensch howled. Then he raised a hand, and said,"No, Cristo is no good."
"Cristo is not a German word," de Foxa said with a smile.
No, I might have added if I was there, but KA-PUUUUUTTTTTT is.
_________________ ___________________ _________________
The author, named Kurt Eric Suckert, was an Italian and loyal to Mussolini, until he wasn't. The exact epiphany may have been conscientious or existential, but is just as likely to have been political and wind-shifting. That cynicism aside, Curzio Malaparte (his pen name) was a stinker enough that he was imprisoned for years at a time, having written some unflattering things about Il Duce. He was banned from being a war correspondent because of those utterances, but then became a soldier and was ordered to be a war correspondent. Yes, I don't know either. This enabled him to dine with Nazi leaders, even take a steambath with Himmler. Unusual access, what they call it.
And so, we ask, as we always do when an author intrudes himself into the narrative: what is it?
Novel? History? Memoir? Journalism?
My sense is that Malaparte understood the evil. And he understood it early. Yet he was no martyr. Those that invaded countries, laughed at killing Jews, lined up outside 'brothels' -- these men did not fear Malaparte.
The war turned. And so did Malaparte. What we read here, then, sounded to me like what I wish I would have said. But I won't judge. Because what he would have said was pretty spectacular. But it comes down to words: pliable, elastic words.
"Before taking a crucial decision, or when he is very weary or depressed, sometimes in the midst of an important meeting," said Frau Brigitte Frank, "he shuts himself up in the cell, sits before the piano and seeks rest or inspiration from Schumann, Brahms, Chopin or Beethoven. Do you know what I call this cell? I call it the Eagle's Nest."
I bowed in silence.
"He is an extraordinary man, isn't he?" she added, gazing at me with a look of proud affection. "He is an artist, a great artist, with a pure and delicious soul. Only such an artist as he can rule over Poland."
"Yes," I said, "a great artist, and it is with this piano that he rules the Polish people."
"Oh, you understand so well!" said Frau Brigitte Frank in a voice full of emotion.
No, I won't judge.
_________________ _________________________ _______________
And a rhetorical question, once: Can you imagine what Madame Bovary would have been like if she were the daughter of Mussolini?
_________________ _________________________ _______________
Only someone who has been in prison can write this:
The sight of the sea moved me and I began to weep. A river, a plain, a mountain, not even a tree or a cloud--nothing has in it the feeling of freedom like the sea. A prisoner in jail stares hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year at the walls of his cell. They are always the same white smooth walls, and when he gazes at those walls, at the sea, he cannot imagine it blue; he can only imagine the sea's being white, smooth, bare, without waves, without storms--a squalid sea illuminated by the flat light penetrating through the bars of his window. That is his sea, that is his freedom--a white, smooth bare sea, a squalid and cold freedom.
_________________ _________________________ _______________
And so, perhaps, we should not be so harsh. If a man changes, let him change for the better. And if he amends a conversation, let him do it like this:
"See this wall?" said (Governor-General) Frank to me. "Does it look to you like the terrible concrete wall bristling with machine guns that the British and American papers write about?" And he added, smiling, "The wretched Jews all have weak chests. At any rate this wall protects them against the wind." . . .
"The atrocious immorality of this wall," I replied, "doesn't lie in the fact that it prevents the Jews from leaving the ghetto but in the fact that it does not prevent them from entering it."
______________________ ___________________ ________________
This is a book where both Max Schmeling and the Black Madonna of Częstochowa are heroes.
June 23, 2021
الكاتب " كورزيو مالابارته" عمل مراسلاً صحفياً في الحرب العالمية الثانية بصفوف الجيش الألماني في الجبهة الأوروبية الشرقية ومن ثم الجبهة الروسية..دامت الرحلة أربعة سنوات ، خاض فيها ميادين الحرب ..شاهداً على الجثث المتعفنة...الأجساد الملطخة بالدماء...والمثقوبة بطلقات الرصاص...الوجوه الزرقاء والعظام الناتئة والأعين المفتوحة التي مازالت تراقب...وتترصد...وأخيراً تودع القرى المحترقة..والمدن المحطمة...
ماذا عن الأحياء..؟؟...
ترى الوجوه الشاحبة...الابتسامات الباهتة..النظرات الخاوية لأعين تحوم حولها ظلال الخوف المروعة...
رأيتُ رؤوس الصغار وهى تطل خلسة من أفواه الأنفاق الضيقة لعل كسرة خبز تقع في أيديهم...
رأيتُ أشباحاُ تُسلم إلى الموت..!!
ألم يكن في خضم تلك الحرب البشعة بريق خاطف للإنسانية... ؟..بلى كان هناك ...تود لو تتشبث به وتهمس له متوسلاً...بألا ينذوي...لا ينطفيء ويدعنا في ظلمة دامسة مريرة....
وانتهت الرحلة عند أقدام "نابولي" المحطمة آنذاك...
أخيراً...بالرغم من بشاعة كل ما كان..فليس هنالك أبشع من حياة هؤلاء الذين عادوا من جبهة القتال...لابد وأنهم غدوا جثثاً تسير على قدمين....
ماذا عن الأحياء..؟؟...
ترى الوجوه الشاحبة...الابتسامات الباهتة..النظرات الخاوية لأعين تحوم حولها ظلال الخوف المروعة...
رأيتُ رؤوس الصغار وهى تطل خلسة من أفواه الأنفاق الضيقة لعل كسرة خبز تقع في أيديهم...
رأيتُ أشباحاُ تُسلم إلى الموت..!!
ألم يكن في خضم تلك الحرب البشعة بريق خاطف للإنسانية... ؟..بلى كان هناك ...تود لو تتشبث به وتهمس له متوسلاً...بألا ينذوي...لا ينطفيء ويدعنا في ظلمة دامسة مريرة....
وانتهت الرحلة عند أقدام "نابولي" المحطمة آنذاك...
أخيراً...بالرغم من بشاعة كل ما كان..فليس هنالك أبشع من حياة هؤلاء الذين عادوا من جبهة القتال...لابد وأنهم غدوا جثثاً تسير على قدمين....
March 26, 2011
I've written two prior reviews of this strange, revolting, macabre, beautiful book: some initial musings about fifty pages into it; a singularly outraged review at the midway point when I was all but ready to pack Malaparte and his sleazy manipulations in; and now this—final—one, in which that previous fire of ire has been reduced to a bed of barely smoldering embers, quenched by Malaparte's less morally reprehensible second half of the book and, frankly, his wizardry with the written word, which goes a long way towards appeasing this reader.
Although Malaparte earned a living as a polemical political writer and a journalist, he was also a poet, and he merged these differing styles into the narrative tone of Kaputt; the result is writing that is simply gorgeous, rife with sugarplum similes and meteoric metaphors blossoming throughout a series of eerie, haunting vignettes about everyday life under the suzerainty of total war in such places as Warsaw, Cracow, Romania, the Ukraine, Stockholm, Leningrad, Helsinki, Lapland, and, finally, Italy itself. Even accepting that Malaparte was freely mixing his own subjective experiences as a roving Italian pseudo-Fascist plenipotentiary with a good measure of lurid invention drawn from the febrile-but-fertile bounty of his imagination, much that is contained within just seems wrong. Appalled by Malaparte's self-serving suggestion that the endless suffering of the Jews in the filthy, starved, disease- and death-ridden nightmare of the Warsaw Ghetto was ameliorated by the fact that he smiled at them and sotto voce muttered Excuse me, please whilst wandering aimlessly to drink his fill of their wretched misery—which, mind you, he describes with heartbreakingly stark imagery—I began to suspect that this was but another of the highly implausible events—which painted him in an at least tolerable, at best sympathetic light—of which he wrote about so stunningly and yet, to me, so falsely; and so I skipped forward to the book's excellent afterword by Dan Hofstadter, which confirmed pretty much all of the suspicions that had been building within me.
Now, it's not the fictionalization of such chaotic and tumultuous and murderous events as were enacted and carried out across the various theaters of the Second World War that bothers me—I tend to be willing to give the author a great deal of leeway in working out how he wishes to depict his story. Malaparte, however, as I quickly discovered, is a different case: a self-identified Fascist and lifelong opportunist seemingly in it only for the power and the glory, perfectly willing to insincerely spout abusive and violent rhetoric if it helped him achieve as much and, apparently, having had to go back and rewrite the entire first half of Kaputt once he realized that the Germans were going to lose—and thus that those whom he had buffed and polished through encomium now had to be battered and bruised through indictment. That this was the case can actually be discerned by reading Kaputt, as much that is most objectionable about Malaparte's story arises in the first half, when he presumably had to scramble to insert justifications or create rehabilitations for brutal and pitiless acts that he originally had planned to defend or justify—as well as finding a way to make his own disinterested non-involvement seem more heroic or upright than it actually was.
Yet I could even deal with that—it was the way in which, even whilst admitting to possessing neither the courage nor the conviction to intervene in the horrors he was (allegedly) experiencing first-hand, he still wrote himself into the script such that, with a few righteous moves here and an outburst of anger there, he wrapped himself with the moral armor of the disapproving, civilized man forced to negotiate his way amidst warring tribes of bloodthirsty barbarians whilst dispensing what little justice he could that really frosted my cookies. It may be entirely true that he hated the Fascists and their violent incompetences and excesses, their giving free reign to all the black demons from the soul's deepest recesses; that he loathed the Nazi apparatchiks and hierarchs and their crude manners and gross appetites; even that, at heart, he was appalled by the systematic decimation of European Jewry; yet, for me, to keep all of this vituperation bottled up inside, to be unleashed only when it was safe to do so—and knowing that there existed a Western audience hungry for such lurid affirmations of their deepest-held suspicions—strikes all of the wrong notes for the tune he is trying to play.
Still, the man can write, and this is a lyrical and truly beautiful work of literature, with images that will stay with the reader forever—the regiment of stricken horse's heads in various strained postures spread about the merciless, imprisoning ice of a Lake Ladoga; a purplish steppe thunderstorm serving as the backdrop to a purposefully-crazed pogrom and a hallucinatory parachute drop by Soviet special forces; a train stuffed to bursting with human cattle who, having suffocated to death en route, tumble outwards like timber; a march of the crippled and the malformed through the rubbled streets of Naples. Malaparte has his weaknesses—a tendency towards repetition and revisiting select themes; a belief that within catty gossip he was inscribing subtle truths; an overbearing tendency to (improbably) place himself at the center of events; but, in the end, his fucking luscious pen, his inflamed imagination, his ability to stare at the bounty of death and ruin produced by the Second World War—through Nazi and Fascist and Falangist eyes—and capture its essence in a variety of vignettes that are spread across the Eastern European continent, including such little-visited theaters as Lapland and Moldavia, more than amend for these imperfections. At times, Malaparte also (seemingly) honestly mines his own personality and choices to discover just how he wound up where he did. What's more, he gives the impression of nailing many of the incidental details, the feel of the brutality of a Karelian winter, the colors of the boundless plains of the Ukraine, the sea-mist cityscapes of autumnal Stockholm, and, especially, the malicious banter between the new party-member and older lineage-based aristocracies, feasting and exchanging quips and bon mots and insulating themselves from both what was occurring out in the real world and their guilt for overseeing and orchestrating such ruthless and inhuman severity; Malaparte really wields the stiletto with a flourish in such urbane settings.
In the afterword, a plaint of Hofstadter's is that too many of Malaparte's chapters relate naught but anecdotal minutiae—I can entirely see where he is coming from, but cannot share his dissatisfaction with these; this book held me captive, even when disgusted, and fascinated me from start to finish. After writing my irascible review at the midpoint, I was quite prepared to abandon Kaputt, though such actions always prove easier for me to proclaim than to actually carry through with; but this time I meant it. When I got home, I convinced myself I would flip through a mere two or three pages—give him the briefest of chances for redemption—and then move on to better things on those overloaded shelves. Yet after opening to the bookmark, I was plunged into Malaparte's mesmerizing tale of an elevator-riding ghost that haunted the shimmery nocturnal sunlight of Helsinki in the summer—and before I knew it, I was settled comfortably upon the couch and all thoughts of abandonment, well, abandoned. It is true that the second half carries itself less objectionably, can be stomached more readily, than the first, perhaps because the author wisely discarded any further embellishments of his humane relief efforts in the midst of extirpation; this part focuses upon Finland, Germany, and Italy, upon nations wearied and exhausted by the endless demands of total war, upon the dignitaries and military commanders of the Axis nations who effect to support each other with a forced bonhomie and witty banter, heavily fueled by a wide variety of strong alcohol, that cannot conceal the fact that they all, to a man, comprehend that their nations have bitten off far more than they can chew; that everything will, in fact, end very badly indeed. Still, it is hard for the reader to feel any sympathy for them, and least of all for Malaparte himself, even though the final chapters present an elegiac tone to his character, freshly sprung from a nasty prison in Rome, and his shattered native land. At one point, Malaparte upbraids his erstwhile boss—and reliable protector—Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law and a man who has tasted his closing doom, with the admonition You should have done something, risked something! Though he would likely be oblivious of the fact, these are words that cannot help but rebound back into their speaker's face.
Although Malaparte earned a living as a polemical political writer and a journalist, he was also a poet, and he merged these differing styles into the narrative tone of Kaputt; the result is writing that is simply gorgeous, rife with sugarplum similes and meteoric metaphors blossoming throughout a series of eerie, haunting vignettes about everyday life under the suzerainty of total war in such places as Warsaw, Cracow, Romania, the Ukraine, Stockholm, Leningrad, Helsinki, Lapland, and, finally, Italy itself. Even accepting that Malaparte was freely mixing his own subjective experiences as a roving Italian pseudo-Fascist plenipotentiary with a good measure of lurid invention drawn from the febrile-but-fertile bounty of his imagination, much that is contained within just seems wrong. Appalled by Malaparte's self-serving suggestion that the endless suffering of the Jews in the filthy, starved, disease- and death-ridden nightmare of the Warsaw Ghetto was ameliorated by the fact that he smiled at them and sotto voce muttered Excuse me, please whilst wandering aimlessly to drink his fill of their wretched misery—which, mind you, he describes with heartbreakingly stark imagery—I began to suspect that this was but another of the highly implausible events—which painted him in an at least tolerable, at best sympathetic light—of which he wrote about so stunningly and yet, to me, so falsely; and so I skipped forward to the book's excellent afterword by Dan Hofstadter, which confirmed pretty much all of the suspicions that had been building within me.
Now, it's not the fictionalization of such chaotic and tumultuous and murderous events as were enacted and carried out across the various theaters of the Second World War that bothers me—I tend to be willing to give the author a great deal of leeway in working out how he wishes to depict his story. Malaparte, however, as I quickly discovered, is a different case: a self-identified Fascist and lifelong opportunist seemingly in it only for the power and the glory, perfectly willing to insincerely spout abusive and violent rhetoric if it helped him achieve as much and, apparently, having had to go back and rewrite the entire first half of Kaputt once he realized that the Germans were going to lose—and thus that those whom he had buffed and polished through encomium now had to be battered and bruised through indictment. That this was the case can actually be discerned by reading Kaputt, as much that is most objectionable about Malaparte's story arises in the first half, when he presumably had to scramble to insert justifications or create rehabilitations for brutal and pitiless acts that he originally had planned to defend or justify—as well as finding a way to make his own disinterested non-involvement seem more heroic or upright than it actually was.
Yet I could even deal with that—it was the way in which, even whilst admitting to possessing neither the courage nor the conviction to intervene in the horrors he was (allegedly) experiencing first-hand, he still wrote himself into the script such that, with a few righteous moves here and an outburst of anger there, he wrapped himself with the moral armor of the disapproving, civilized man forced to negotiate his way amidst warring tribes of bloodthirsty barbarians whilst dispensing what little justice he could that really frosted my cookies. It may be entirely true that he hated the Fascists and their violent incompetences and excesses, their giving free reign to all the black demons from the soul's deepest recesses; that he loathed the Nazi apparatchiks and hierarchs and their crude manners and gross appetites; even that, at heart, he was appalled by the systematic decimation of European Jewry; yet, for me, to keep all of this vituperation bottled up inside, to be unleashed only when it was safe to do so—and knowing that there existed a Western audience hungry for such lurid affirmations of their deepest-held suspicions—strikes all of the wrong notes for the tune he is trying to play.
Still, the man can write, and this is a lyrical and truly beautiful work of literature, with images that will stay with the reader forever—the regiment of stricken horse's heads in various strained postures spread about the merciless, imprisoning ice of a Lake Ladoga; a purplish steppe thunderstorm serving as the backdrop to a purposefully-crazed pogrom and a hallucinatory parachute drop by Soviet special forces; a train stuffed to bursting with human cattle who, having suffocated to death en route, tumble outwards like timber; a march of the crippled and the malformed through the rubbled streets of Naples. Malaparte has his weaknesses—a tendency towards repetition and revisiting select themes; a belief that within catty gossip he was inscribing subtle truths; an overbearing tendency to (improbably) place himself at the center of events; but, in the end, his fucking luscious pen, his inflamed imagination, his ability to stare at the bounty of death and ruin produced by the Second World War—through Nazi and Fascist and Falangist eyes—and capture its essence in a variety of vignettes that are spread across the Eastern European continent, including such little-visited theaters as Lapland and Moldavia, more than amend for these imperfections. At times, Malaparte also (seemingly) honestly mines his own personality and choices to discover just how he wound up where he did. What's more, he gives the impression of nailing many of the incidental details, the feel of the brutality of a Karelian winter, the colors of the boundless plains of the Ukraine, the sea-mist cityscapes of autumnal Stockholm, and, especially, the malicious banter between the new party-member and older lineage-based aristocracies, feasting and exchanging quips and bon mots and insulating themselves from both what was occurring out in the real world and their guilt for overseeing and orchestrating such ruthless and inhuman severity; Malaparte really wields the stiletto with a flourish in such urbane settings.
In the afterword, a plaint of Hofstadter's is that too many of Malaparte's chapters relate naught but anecdotal minutiae—I can entirely see where he is coming from, but cannot share his dissatisfaction with these; this book held me captive, even when disgusted, and fascinated me from start to finish. After writing my irascible review at the midpoint, I was quite prepared to abandon Kaputt, though such actions always prove easier for me to proclaim than to actually carry through with; but this time I meant it. When I got home, I convinced myself I would flip through a mere two or three pages—give him the briefest of chances for redemption—and then move on to better things on those overloaded shelves. Yet after opening to the bookmark, I was plunged into Malaparte's mesmerizing tale of an elevator-riding ghost that haunted the shimmery nocturnal sunlight of Helsinki in the summer—and before I knew it, I was settled comfortably upon the couch and all thoughts of abandonment, well, abandoned. It is true that the second half carries itself less objectionably, can be stomached more readily, than the first, perhaps because the author wisely discarded any further embellishments of his humane relief efforts in the midst of extirpation; this part focuses upon Finland, Germany, and Italy, upon nations wearied and exhausted by the endless demands of total war, upon the dignitaries and military commanders of the Axis nations who effect to support each other with a forced bonhomie and witty banter, heavily fueled by a wide variety of strong alcohol, that cannot conceal the fact that they all, to a man, comprehend that their nations have bitten off far more than they can chew; that everything will, in fact, end very badly indeed. Still, it is hard for the reader to feel any sympathy for them, and least of all for Malaparte himself, even though the final chapters present an elegiac tone to his character, freshly sprung from a nasty prison in Rome, and his shattered native land. At one point, Malaparte upbraids his erstwhile boss—and reliable protector—Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law and a man who has tasted his closing doom, with the admonition You should have done something, risked something! Though he would likely be oblivious of the fact, these are words that cannot help but rebound back into their speaker's face.
July 7, 2014
Somewhere in the meaty middle of Jacques Rivette's superb film Va Savoir two characters discuss the proper pronunciation of Curzio Malaparte's name. Apparently one character wasn't sufficiently stressing the Italianate swagger of such.
My wife bought me this book per my request. Kaputt is WWII war journalism from various fronts filtered through Malaparte's artistic eye. I found it startling. Herr Vollmann never formerly acknowledged a debt to this work, but it may have slipped his mind. The scenes from The Winter War provide images on par with Goya. The interview with the Ustaše may lean towards propaganda. Certainly the historical record condemns the NDH without these flourishes.
I give this my highest recommendation.
My wife bought me this book per my request. Kaputt is WWII war journalism from various fronts filtered through Malaparte's artistic eye. I found it startling. Herr Vollmann never formerly acknowledged a debt to this work, but it may have slipped his mind. The scenes from The Winter War provide images on par with Goya. The interview with the Ustaše may lean towards propaganda. Certainly the historical record condemns the NDH without these flourishes.
I give this my highest recommendation.
February 1, 2021
DI CAVALLI, TOPI, CANI, UCCELLI, RENNE E MOSCHE
Malaparte, capitano dell'esercito italiano e inviato del Corriere della Sera, attraversa l'Europa - Finlandia, Svezia, Romania, Ucraina, Polonia, Germania - in piena seconda guerra mondiale, tra il 1941 e il 1943. Kaputt ci racconta queste esperienze.
Non è un saggio storico né un resoconto giornalistico. E' un romanzo basato su vicende vissute in prima persona, è auto-fiction. Una scrittura raffinata, con una sua musica e ritmo. Una descrizione di scorci, città paesaggi, a tratti poetica. Scene forti, per alcuni troppo forti, troppo artefatte, per me credibili e necessarie. Un capolavoro del novecento italiano.
L’autore-narratore frequenta i circoli diplomatici e militari, fitti di titoli nobiliari, lingua ufficiale il francese, location sfarzose, vestiti eleganti, gioielli e profumi, grandi libagioni e bevute. Ove si discute chiaramente di questioni politico-militari oltreché di gossip. Poi di tanto in tanto i piani luogo-temporali si sfalsano, Malaparte inserisce ricordando vicende, aneddoti, incontri, personaggi catapultandoci da quelle oasi alle macerie di un’Europa kaputt.
L'incontro con i gerarchi nazisti e fascisti di tutta Europa - Frank, governatore della Polonia occupata, il capo delle SS Himler, Antonescu maresciallo della Romania, Ante Pavelic capo degli ustascia Croati, Mussolini, Galeazzo Ciano - è spiazzante per il realismo con cui entrano nel romanzo e per come ci sono presentati, in maniera da tratteggiarne in alcuni casi i tratti più umani, in altri gli aspetti, anche fisicamente, più grotteschi - memorabile la scena di Himmler nella sauna del Comando supremo del fronte Nord - demolendoli a volte con qualche battuta ironica ed in fondo generando un senso di pietà. E' quindi implicitamente e per contrasto che viene esaltato il giudizio morale sugli orrori e sofferenze che questi mostri/carnefici hanno provocato.
Orrori e sofferenze che non ci vengono risparmiati e ci colpiscono al cuore e fanno male, come forse mai nonostante i tanti libri letti in argomento. La descrizione della vita nel ghetto di Varsavia, il pogrom di Jassy, le ragazze-prostitute di Soroca.
Ogni tanto mi toccava scavalcare un morto: camminavo in mezzo alla folla senza vedere dove mettevo i piedi, e ogni tanto inciampavo in un cadavere disteso sul marciapiede tra i rituali candelabri ebraici. I morti giacevano abbandonati sulla neve, in attesa che il carro dei monatti passasse a portarli via: ma la moria era grande, i carri erano scarsi, non si faceva in tempo a portarli via tutti, e i cadaveri restavano lì giorni e giorni, distesi nella neve tra i candelabri spenti. Molti giacevano sul pavimento negli ànditi delle case, nei corridoi, sui pianerottoli delle scale, o sui letti nelle stanze affollate di gente pallida e silenziosa. Avevano la barba sporca di nevischio e di fango. Alcuni avevano gli occhi spalancati, ci seguivano a lungo con lo sguardo bianco, guardavan la folla passare. Erano rigidi e duri, parevano statue di legno. Simili ai morti ebrei di Chagall. Le barbe sembravano azzurre negli scarni visi illividiti dal gelo e dalla morte. Di un azzurro così puro, che ricordava quello di certe alghe marine. Di un azzurro così misterioso, che ricordava il mare, quell’azzurro misterioso del mare in certe ore misteriose del giorno.
E poi tutti quegli animali, innocenti senza colpa, a cui sono intestate le sei sezioni di cui si compone il libro, sterminati anche loro, in scene di grande impatto (i cavalli di ghiaccio, il cimitero delle renne, i cani anticarro sovietici, l'omicidio dell'ultimo salmone finlandese), metafora dell'uomo contro l'uomo.
«Ci son molti salmoni, nel fiume?».
«Ce n’erano moltissimi, prima che i tedeschi iniziassero la costruzione del ponte sull’Juutuanjoki. I carpentieri fanno un grande strepito di seghe, di martelli, e di scuri, e lo strepito disturba i salmoni. Anche a Ivalo i tedeschi costruiscono un ponte, e i salmoni hanno abbandonato l’Ivalojoki. E non è tutto. I tedeschi vanno a pesca con le bombe a mano. Un vero massacro. Distruggono non soltanto i salmoni, ma ogni specie di pesce. Credono forse di poter trattare i salmoni come trattano gli ebrei? Noi non lo permetteremo mai. L’altro giorno ho detto al generale von Heunert: se i tedeschi invece di far la guerra ai russi, continueranno a far la guerra ai salmoni, noi difenderemo i salmoni».
«È più facile» dissi «far la guerra ai salmoni che ai russi».
«Vi sbagliate,» disse Juho Nykänen «i salmoni sono coraggiosissimi, e non è facile vincerli. A parer mio, i tedeschi, facendo la guerra ai salmoni, hanno commesso un grosso sbaglio. Verrà un giorno in cui i tedeschi avranno paura perfino dei salmoni. Finirà così. Anche l’altra guerra è finita così».
Il libro si chiude in una Napoli ancora non liberata. Sotto le bombe degli Alleati, nei rifugi sotterranei, si ricreano il colore, gli odori, le voci, i canti, la vita della città. Anche la guerra finirà e verrà il tempo della ricostruzione. “... Non c’è che aver pazienza. Si vedrà chi ha più pazienza, la guerra o Napoli.” A Napoli O’ Sangue di San Gennaro è salvo, neppure una goccia è stata versata. A Napoli hanno fatto la guerra alle mosche e hanno vinto le mosche.
Marc Chagall, Crocifissione bianca
Malaparte, capitano dell'esercito italiano e inviato del Corriere della Sera, attraversa l'Europa - Finlandia, Svezia, Romania, Ucraina, Polonia, Germania - in piena seconda guerra mondiale, tra il 1941 e il 1943. Kaputt ci racconta queste esperienze.
Non è un saggio storico né un resoconto giornalistico. E' un romanzo basato su vicende vissute in prima persona, è auto-fiction. Una scrittura raffinata, con una sua musica e ritmo. Una descrizione di scorci, città paesaggi, a tratti poetica. Scene forti, per alcuni troppo forti, troppo artefatte, per me credibili e necessarie. Un capolavoro del novecento italiano.
L’autore-narratore frequenta i circoli diplomatici e militari, fitti di titoli nobiliari, lingua ufficiale il francese, location sfarzose, vestiti eleganti, gioielli e profumi, grandi libagioni e bevute. Ove si discute chiaramente di questioni politico-militari oltreché di gossip. Poi di tanto in tanto i piani luogo-temporali si sfalsano, Malaparte inserisce ricordando vicende, aneddoti, incontri, personaggi catapultandoci da quelle oasi alle macerie di un’Europa kaputt.
L'incontro con i gerarchi nazisti e fascisti di tutta Europa - Frank, governatore della Polonia occupata, il capo delle SS Himler, Antonescu maresciallo della Romania, Ante Pavelic capo degli ustascia Croati, Mussolini, Galeazzo Ciano - è spiazzante per il realismo con cui entrano nel romanzo e per come ci sono presentati, in maniera da tratteggiarne in alcuni casi i tratti più umani, in altri gli aspetti, anche fisicamente, più grotteschi - memorabile la scena di Himmler nella sauna del Comando supremo del fronte Nord - demolendoli a volte con qualche battuta ironica ed in fondo generando un senso di pietà. E' quindi implicitamente e per contrasto che viene esaltato il giudizio morale sugli orrori e sofferenze che questi mostri/carnefici hanno provocato.
Orrori e sofferenze che non ci vengono risparmiati e ci colpiscono al cuore e fanno male, come forse mai nonostante i tanti libri letti in argomento. La descrizione della vita nel ghetto di Varsavia, il pogrom di Jassy, le ragazze-prostitute di Soroca.
Ogni tanto mi toccava scavalcare un morto: camminavo in mezzo alla folla senza vedere dove mettevo i piedi, e ogni tanto inciampavo in un cadavere disteso sul marciapiede tra i rituali candelabri ebraici. I morti giacevano abbandonati sulla neve, in attesa che il carro dei monatti passasse a portarli via: ma la moria era grande, i carri erano scarsi, non si faceva in tempo a portarli via tutti, e i cadaveri restavano lì giorni e giorni, distesi nella neve tra i candelabri spenti. Molti giacevano sul pavimento negli ànditi delle case, nei corridoi, sui pianerottoli delle scale, o sui letti nelle stanze affollate di gente pallida e silenziosa. Avevano la barba sporca di nevischio e di fango. Alcuni avevano gli occhi spalancati, ci seguivano a lungo con lo sguardo bianco, guardavan la folla passare. Erano rigidi e duri, parevano statue di legno. Simili ai morti ebrei di Chagall. Le barbe sembravano azzurre negli scarni visi illividiti dal gelo e dalla morte. Di un azzurro così puro, che ricordava quello di certe alghe marine. Di un azzurro così misterioso, che ricordava il mare, quell’azzurro misterioso del mare in certe ore misteriose del giorno.
E poi tutti quegli animali, innocenti senza colpa, a cui sono intestate le sei sezioni di cui si compone il libro, sterminati anche loro, in scene di grande impatto (i cavalli di ghiaccio, il cimitero delle renne, i cani anticarro sovietici, l'omicidio dell'ultimo salmone finlandese), metafora dell'uomo contro l'uomo.
«Ci son molti salmoni, nel fiume?».
«Ce n’erano moltissimi, prima che i tedeschi iniziassero la costruzione del ponte sull’Juutuanjoki. I carpentieri fanno un grande strepito di seghe, di martelli, e di scuri, e lo strepito disturba i salmoni. Anche a Ivalo i tedeschi costruiscono un ponte, e i salmoni hanno abbandonato l’Ivalojoki. E non è tutto. I tedeschi vanno a pesca con le bombe a mano. Un vero massacro. Distruggono non soltanto i salmoni, ma ogni specie di pesce. Credono forse di poter trattare i salmoni come trattano gli ebrei? Noi non lo permetteremo mai. L’altro giorno ho detto al generale von Heunert: se i tedeschi invece di far la guerra ai russi, continueranno a far la guerra ai salmoni, noi difenderemo i salmoni».
«È più facile» dissi «far la guerra ai salmoni che ai russi».
«Vi sbagliate,» disse Juho Nykänen «i salmoni sono coraggiosissimi, e non è facile vincerli. A parer mio, i tedeschi, facendo la guerra ai salmoni, hanno commesso un grosso sbaglio. Verrà un giorno in cui i tedeschi avranno paura perfino dei salmoni. Finirà così. Anche l’altra guerra è finita così».
Il libro si chiude in una Napoli ancora non liberata. Sotto le bombe degli Alleati, nei rifugi sotterranei, si ricreano il colore, gli odori, le voci, i canti, la vita della città. Anche la guerra finirà e verrà il tempo della ricostruzione. “... Non c’è che aver pazienza. Si vedrà chi ha più pazienza, la guerra o Napoli.” A Napoli O’ Sangue di San Gennaro è salvo, neppure una goccia è stata versata. A Napoli hanno fatto la guerra alle mosche e hanno vinto le mosche.
Marc Chagall, Crocifissione bianca
April 2, 2018
L’imbeccata per leggere Kaputt, mi è venuta da Benioff quando, alla fine de La città dei ladri ringrazia Harrison Salisbury per il libro "I 900 giorni" e Malaparte per quest’opera che definisce “bizzarra e geniale”, e questi termini mmi hanno incuriosito. Avevo letto La pelle non ancora maggiorenne e mi era piaciuto, ma poi ricordavo vagamente sue vicissitudini strampalate, le accuse di fascismo e voltagabbana che lo inseguirono fino alla morte.
All’inizio sono andata a rilento, ma il libro, impostato come una serie di capitoli/racconti a se stanti, si prestava ad una lettura che mi ha permesso nel frattempo di leggere altro. E poi le prime 100 pagine cominciavano a irritarmi. Scritto in prima persona le vicende narrate da Curzio Malaparte che, corrispondente di guerra viaggia in lungo e in largo per l’Europa distrutta dalla guerra, siede in banchetti di ufficiali, invitato da principi, Ministri, Consoli, può entrare e uscire col permesso dei gerarchi tedeschi da ghetti devastati dalla fame, si permette di dare una mano a salvare ebrei durante i pogrom, di rifiutare l’invito di Himmler, frequenta bordelli, registrandone impressioni, vicende umane, e raccontandone gli orrori mi dava l’idea di avere a che fare con un narciso un po’ troppo pieno di se. Poi tutti i suoi racconti di prigionia, cinque anni al confino da parte dei fascisti…. mi tornavano male con i conti. Ciò che stava descrivendo era realtà o fantasia? Era lui un cronista, o un romanziere?
Prima di farmelo diventare antipatico dovevo saperne di più, così sono andato a spulciare il libro di Serra Malaparte: vite e leggende che, da quel punto in poi, ha progredito parallelamente all’altro. E ho scoperto un sacco di cose interessanti, che mi hanno non solo fatto finire in fretta il libro, ma anche permesso di apprezzarne lo scrittore.
E di scrittore qui voglio parlare, perché sull’uomo Malaparte il discorso sarebbe diverso. Per capire Kaputt bisogna quindi comprendere la realtà di quell’Europa del fronte orientale sconvolto dalla distruzione di una guerra tremenda: Malaparte capisce che la descrizione della realtà non basta, che deve essere trasfigurata per poter guardare in faccia l’orrore e comprenderne la misura e il tracollo che ne determinerà la caduta finale.
E’ seguendo questi labirinti che mi sono imbattuta in articoli come questo su di lui, scritto da Tarabbia:
https://andreatarabbia.wordpress.com/...
e da altri , che mi hanno permesso di comprendere come quest’opera non sia un vero reportage, ma un’allegoria. Lui stesso dirà di Kaputt, che «dentro non c’è altro che soldati, cadaveri, cani, girasoli, cavalli e nuvole». Con una lingua elegante, che ricorda D’Annunzio, Malaparte racconta di ceste piene di occhi umani, bambini napoletani venduti ai soldati, cavalli imprigionati nel ghiaccio, sirene (o bambine?) servite come portata principale in casa dei generali. Ci sbatte in faccia una distruzione morale per farci comprendere che l’orrore e la crudeltà e il disastro di quella guerra non avevano precedenti, e così facendo si distingue perchè pochi intellettuali della sua epoca hanno predetto con tanta precisione e denunciato con più vigore il declino dell’Occidente. Alcuni episodi li ho ritrovati pari pari nel libro di Benioff, specie quello del Kolcotz dove i prigionieri russi vengono decimati a sfavore di quelli che sanno leggere, ma anche altri.
Vi si possono trovare personaggi che ritaglia con le cesoie del buon scrittore, parole che raccontano con la voce suadente dell’affabulatore che sa trascinarti dietro il suo flauto magico per narrare efferatezze crudeli, pogrom che avvengono sotto gli occhi indifferenti di chi sta tornando ubriaco da una festa, acque di laghi finnici grigi come l’acciaio degli occhi degli ufficiali tedeschi, ebrei impiccati in ogni villaggio, ragazze ebree ridotte a schiave del sesso.
È solo guardando negli occhi queste allegorie che Malaparte riesce a provare, e a farci provare, dolore e compassione. E questo conta alla fine.
Dell’uomo, invece c’è altro da dire. Ma di questo dirò a commento del libro sulla sua vita. Per ora accontentatevi: Kaputt è si, un libro “bizzarro”, ma è valsa la pena leggerlo.
All’inizio sono andata a rilento, ma il libro, impostato come una serie di capitoli/racconti a se stanti, si prestava ad una lettura che mi ha permesso nel frattempo di leggere altro. E poi le prime 100 pagine cominciavano a irritarmi. Scritto in prima persona le vicende narrate da Curzio Malaparte che, corrispondente di guerra viaggia in lungo e in largo per l’Europa distrutta dalla guerra, siede in banchetti di ufficiali, invitato da principi, Ministri, Consoli, può entrare e uscire col permesso dei gerarchi tedeschi da ghetti devastati dalla fame, si permette di dare una mano a salvare ebrei durante i pogrom, di rifiutare l’invito di Himmler, frequenta bordelli, registrandone impressioni, vicende umane, e raccontandone gli orrori mi dava l’idea di avere a che fare con un narciso un po’ troppo pieno di se. Poi tutti i suoi racconti di prigionia, cinque anni al confino da parte dei fascisti…. mi tornavano male con i conti. Ciò che stava descrivendo era realtà o fantasia? Era lui un cronista, o un romanziere?
Prima di farmelo diventare antipatico dovevo saperne di più, così sono andato a spulciare il libro di Serra Malaparte: vite e leggende che, da quel punto in poi, ha progredito parallelamente all’altro. E ho scoperto un sacco di cose interessanti, che mi hanno non solo fatto finire in fretta il libro, ma anche permesso di apprezzarne lo scrittore.
E di scrittore qui voglio parlare, perché sull’uomo Malaparte il discorso sarebbe diverso. Per capire Kaputt bisogna quindi comprendere la realtà di quell’Europa del fronte orientale sconvolto dalla distruzione di una guerra tremenda: Malaparte capisce che la descrizione della realtà non basta, che deve essere trasfigurata per poter guardare in faccia l’orrore e comprenderne la misura e il tracollo che ne determinerà la caduta finale.
E’ seguendo questi labirinti che mi sono imbattuta in articoli come questo su di lui, scritto da Tarabbia:
https://andreatarabbia.wordpress.com/...
e da altri , che mi hanno permesso di comprendere come quest’opera non sia un vero reportage, ma un’allegoria. Lui stesso dirà di Kaputt, che «dentro non c’è altro che soldati, cadaveri, cani, girasoli, cavalli e nuvole». Con una lingua elegante, che ricorda D’Annunzio, Malaparte racconta di ceste piene di occhi umani, bambini napoletani venduti ai soldati, cavalli imprigionati nel ghiaccio, sirene (o bambine?) servite come portata principale in casa dei generali. Ci sbatte in faccia una distruzione morale per farci comprendere che l’orrore e la crudeltà e il disastro di quella guerra non avevano precedenti, e così facendo si distingue perchè pochi intellettuali della sua epoca hanno predetto con tanta precisione e denunciato con più vigore il declino dell’Occidente. Alcuni episodi li ho ritrovati pari pari nel libro di Benioff, specie quello del Kolcotz dove i prigionieri russi vengono decimati a sfavore di quelli che sanno leggere, ma anche altri.
Vi si possono trovare personaggi che ritaglia con le cesoie del buon scrittore, parole che raccontano con la voce suadente dell’affabulatore che sa trascinarti dietro il suo flauto magico per narrare efferatezze crudeli, pogrom che avvengono sotto gli occhi indifferenti di chi sta tornando ubriaco da una festa, acque di laghi finnici grigi come l’acciaio degli occhi degli ufficiali tedeschi, ebrei impiccati in ogni villaggio, ragazze ebree ridotte a schiave del sesso.
È solo guardando negli occhi queste allegorie che Malaparte riesce a provare, e a farci provare, dolore e compassione. E questo conta alla fine.
Dell’uomo, invece c’è altro da dire. Ma di questo dirò a commento del libro sulla sua vita. Per ora accontentatevi: Kaputt è si, un libro “bizzarro”, ma è valsa la pena leggerlo.
July 21, 2023
Sconcertante questo romanzo, come singolare è stato lo scrittore, un personaggio ambiguo, camaleontico. Come prima cosa voglio dire che vi sono troppe parti scritte in francese, che mi hanno dato fastidio costringendomi ad interrompere la lettura (il francese era la lingua dei diplomatici negli anni ’40 del novecento?).
A parte questo disguido, il libro mi ha colpito proprio per la sua poliedricità, perché non si incasella in una categoria, non è un saggio, non è un reportage giornalistico, non è un diario, non è una biografia, non è un’opera storica, non è un romanzo in senso stretto, ma alla fine può dirsi che è anche tutto quanto sopra. E’ un’opera complessa, difficile da entrarci dentro, che meriterebbe le cinque stelle (se non fosse per il “problema” di cui sopra).
A cene eleganti con principi, ministri, diplomatici europei e generali nazisti, che sembrano non finire mai perché la notte non scende nella interminabile estate finlandese, in soggiorni di fortuna nelle zone di guerra dell’Europa dell’Est, tra soldati tedeschi, rumeni o ucraini, sotto i bombardamenti di Belgrado, ed in mille altre situazioni in cui la guerra fa da padrona, il camaleontico Malaparte si aggira come un funambolo, o meglio con l’ambiguità che ha contraddistinto la sua vita, si muove tra la condanna (sempre con ironia) di coloro che sono causa degli orrori narrati e la complicità con quegli stessi potenti che gli sono amici e lo riconoscono come uno di loro, quale l’orrido generale Himmler, il Generalgoverneur di Polonia, Hans Frank (poi condannato a morte a Norimberga) o il crudele dittatore croato Ante Pavelic, fino all’italiano conte Galeazzo Ciano e la sua “corte” di nobili.
Più volte ho pensato a Celine mentre leggevo: quello di Malaparte è stato un Viaggio al termine della notte in una cornice storica precisa, gli orrori della seconda guerra mondiale in una Europa oramai “kaputt”, in rovina, dove tutti gli esseri viventi, uomini e animali (ai quali sono intitolati i sei capitoli del libro, i cavalli, i topi, i cani, gli uccelli, le renne e le mosche) sono accomunati da un tragico e crudele destino.
A parte questo disguido, il libro mi ha colpito proprio per la sua poliedricità, perché non si incasella in una categoria, non è un saggio, non è un reportage giornalistico, non è un diario, non è una biografia, non è un’opera storica, non è un romanzo in senso stretto, ma alla fine può dirsi che è anche tutto quanto sopra. E’ un’opera complessa, difficile da entrarci dentro, che meriterebbe le cinque stelle (se non fosse per il “problema” di cui sopra).
A cene eleganti con principi, ministri, diplomatici europei e generali nazisti, che sembrano non finire mai perché la notte non scende nella interminabile estate finlandese, in soggiorni di fortuna nelle zone di guerra dell’Europa dell’Est, tra soldati tedeschi, rumeni o ucraini, sotto i bombardamenti di Belgrado, ed in mille altre situazioni in cui la guerra fa da padrona, il camaleontico Malaparte si aggira come un funambolo, o meglio con l’ambiguità che ha contraddistinto la sua vita, si muove tra la condanna (sempre con ironia) di coloro che sono causa degli orrori narrati e la complicità con quegli stessi potenti che gli sono amici e lo riconoscono come uno di loro, quale l’orrido generale Himmler, il Generalgoverneur di Polonia, Hans Frank (poi condannato a morte a Norimberga) o il crudele dittatore croato Ante Pavelic, fino all’italiano conte Galeazzo Ciano e la sua “corte” di nobili.
Più volte ho pensato a Celine mentre leggevo: quello di Malaparte è stato un Viaggio al termine della notte in una cornice storica precisa, gli orrori della seconda guerra mondiale in una Europa oramai “kaputt”, in rovina, dove tutti gli esseri viventi, uomini e animali (ai quali sono intitolati i sei capitoli del libro, i cavalli, i topi, i cani, gli uccelli, le renne e le mosche) sono accomunati da un tragico e crudele destino.
September 19, 2025
19/10/2018 (*****)
Se il giudizio arrivasse fino a 6 stelle, meriterebbe 6 stelle; se arrivasse a 10, ne meriterebbe 10. In poche parole un romanzo, nella sua complessità, di livello assoluto. Direi enorme, per quanto tale aggettivo mal si presti a un libro.
Ridondante, ricercata, cinica, è la cronaca del declino e dell'abisso in cui è sprofondata l'intera Europa durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale raccontata in una maniera unica, che spazia dal più spietato neorealismo al raffinato lirismo di certe descrizioni al grottesco quasi allucinatorio all'afflato sublime, in stile romantico (con annesso gusto dell'horror). Malaparte si mostra per quello che è, ossia uno scrittore semplicemente straordinario, capace in maniera superba di dare corpo all'apocalisse in corso. E quando dico "dare corpo", intendo letteralmente: credo non mi sia mai capitato di leggere un testo che riesce a trasmettere sensazioni a tutti e cinque i sensi del lettore in questo modo, attraverso descrizioni che trasmutano in maniera tangibile e immediatamente comprensibili le cose (odori, suoni, visioni che diventano masse concrete e informi, incubi vivi e materici).
La cronaca è figlia evidente dello scrittore, e come lui esagerata, raffinata, barocca, contraddittoria: tutto si può dire dell'uomo (e del personaggio) Malaparte, ma non che non avesse uno stile letterario proprio, unico e perfettamente riconoscibile.
Così come in generale non si può nemmeno negarne l'immenso talento.
Il viaggio narrato comincia in Ucraina, prosegue in Romania e Finlandia e finisce in Italia. Malaparte, diplomatico e ufficiale del Regio Esercito, addentro i circoli che contano, galleggia sulla superficie del colossale sfacelo della guerra europea, sostenuto da una curiosa miscela di cinismo, tristezza, rassegnazione, indifferenza e pietà. Nel suo galleggiamento, quel curioso uomo che è stato Curzio Malaparte segue la corrente, pur con scarti evidente alla stregua dei salmoni (pesce a cui, forse non a caso, dedica uno dei più divertenti brani del libro). Il comune denominatore di tutto quello che è raccontato nel libro sono, ovviamente, i tedeschi. Tedeschi intesi come popolo, non come nazionalsocialisti. Tedeschi da cui Malaparte - il cui vero nome era peraltro Kurt Erich Suckert, ed era figlio di un sassone - fugge, di cui ha profondamente paura e della cui profonda e oscura anima ha somma pietà (sarebbe meglio dire umana compassione).
E' forse una delle migliori analisi sociologiche di un intero popolo mai scritte su carta, e rimane sempre attuale, ieri come oggi.
Malaparte rifugge le spiegazioni al lettore, e molto accenna o lascia intendere o lascia sospeso nell'aria: gli stretti dialoghi inframezzati da numerose battute in francese (la lingua della diplomazia europea, fino alla Seconda Guerra Mondiale) non aiutano. Il libro tuttavia, nei suoi episodi - cruenti o divertenti - nelle sue immaginifiche descrizioni, nei suoi riuscitissimi ritratti, si legge che è un piacere, e la prosa densa non appesantisce, miracolosamente. In definitiva posso solo consigliarlo.
Per quel che ho letto e che conosco, siamo di fronte a uno dei dieci migliori romanzi del Novecento. Europeo, non solo italiano.
Edizione Adelphi, peraltro e come sempre, superba.
Se il giudizio arrivasse fino a 6 stelle, meriterebbe 6 stelle; se arrivasse a 10, ne meriterebbe 10. In poche parole un romanzo, nella sua complessità, di livello assoluto. Direi enorme, per quanto tale aggettivo mal si presti a un libro.
Ridondante, ricercata, cinica, è la cronaca del declino e dell'abisso in cui è sprofondata l'intera Europa durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale raccontata in una maniera unica, che spazia dal più spietato neorealismo al raffinato lirismo di certe descrizioni al grottesco quasi allucinatorio all'afflato sublime, in stile romantico (con annesso gusto dell'horror). Malaparte si mostra per quello che è, ossia uno scrittore semplicemente straordinario, capace in maniera superba di dare corpo all'apocalisse in corso. E quando dico "dare corpo", intendo letteralmente: credo non mi sia mai capitato di leggere un testo che riesce a trasmettere sensazioni a tutti e cinque i sensi del lettore in questo modo, attraverso descrizioni che trasmutano in maniera tangibile e immediatamente comprensibili le cose (odori, suoni, visioni che diventano masse concrete e informi, incubi vivi e materici).
La cronaca è figlia evidente dello scrittore, e come lui esagerata, raffinata, barocca, contraddittoria: tutto si può dire dell'uomo (e del personaggio) Malaparte, ma non che non avesse uno stile letterario proprio, unico e perfettamente riconoscibile.
Così come in generale non si può nemmeno negarne l'immenso talento.
Il viaggio narrato comincia in Ucraina, prosegue in Romania e Finlandia e finisce in Italia. Malaparte, diplomatico e ufficiale del Regio Esercito, addentro i circoli che contano, galleggia sulla superficie del colossale sfacelo della guerra europea, sostenuto da una curiosa miscela di cinismo, tristezza, rassegnazione, indifferenza e pietà. Nel suo galleggiamento, quel curioso uomo che è stato Curzio Malaparte segue la corrente, pur con scarti evidente alla stregua dei salmoni (pesce a cui, forse non a caso, dedica uno dei più divertenti brani del libro). Il comune denominatore di tutto quello che è raccontato nel libro sono, ovviamente, i tedeschi. Tedeschi intesi come popolo, non come nazionalsocialisti. Tedeschi da cui Malaparte - il cui vero nome era peraltro Kurt Erich Suckert, ed era figlio di un sassone - fugge, di cui ha profondamente paura e della cui profonda e oscura anima ha somma pietà (sarebbe meglio dire umana compassione).
E' forse una delle migliori analisi sociologiche di un intero popolo mai scritte su carta, e rimane sempre attuale, ieri come oggi.
Malaparte rifugge le spiegazioni al lettore, e molto accenna o lascia intendere o lascia sospeso nell'aria: gli stretti dialoghi inframezzati da numerose battute in francese (la lingua della diplomazia europea, fino alla Seconda Guerra Mondiale) non aiutano. Il libro tuttavia, nei suoi episodi - cruenti o divertenti - nelle sue immaginifiche descrizioni, nei suoi riuscitissimi ritratti, si legge che è un piacere, e la prosa densa non appesantisce, miracolosamente. In definitiva posso solo consigliarlo.
Per quel che ho letto e che conosco, siamo di fronte a uno dei dieci migliori romanzi del Novecento. Europeo, non solo italiano.
Edizione Adelphi, peraltro e come sempre, superba.
June 29, 2021
In questo periodo di rigurgito del cretinismo censorio tanto più becero in quanto con pretese progressiste, mentre si manda al macero la biografia di uno dei massimi scrittori americani e ci si accapiglia su un gesto, una parola, il nome di una via, una statua, con una vacuità salottiera febbricitante che sfonda d’impeto il muro del ridicolo, ho deciso di dedicare le letture estive a uno dei grandi scrittori che stavano dalla parte sbagliata.
Ho pensato subito a Malaparte (che è stato da tutte le parti, non solo geograficamente parlando). La sua prosa ha pochi confronti in fatto di eleganza, esattezza e carica di suggestione. ”La Pelle“ é probabilmente il più bel romanzo sulla seconda guerra mondiale in Italia (libri sulla Resistenza compresi). Kaputt é il romanzo della fine di una certa idea dell’Europa, dell’illusione positivista, della scommessa sulla cultura come vaccino contro la violenza e la sopraffazione. E la scelta di strutturarlo attorno al filo conduttore degli animali assunti come simboli di dolcezza, come paradigma delle vittime e insieme come portatori di una sapienza pre-umana, l’unica sopravvissuta a quella catastrofe della Ragione, è il colpo di genio di un grande romanziere.
E poi ci sono pagine indimenticabili: l’alba in un campo di girasoli, i cavalli prigionieri nel lago ghiacciato, il governatore nazista della Polonia occupata che suona Chopin e poi va a caccia di “topi” nel ghetto, Himmler nella sauna, il generale tedesco che fa la caccia al salmone, il serraglio della buona società romana al golf dell’Acquasanta, le ragazze ebree del postribolo di guerra e si potrebbe continuare.
Una lettura che è un bagno rinfrescante nell’intelligenza e nella classe più pura. Altro che i sacerdioti del politicamente corretto!
Ho pensato subito a Malaparte (che è stato da tutte le parti, non solo geograficamente parlando). La sua prosa ha pochi confronti in fatto di eleganza, esattezza e carica di suggestione. ”La Pelle“ é probabilmente il più bel romanzo sulla seconda guerra mondiale in Italia (libri sulla Resistenza compresi). Kaputt é il romanzo della fine di una certa idea dell’Europa, dell’illusione positivista, della scommessa sulla cultura come vaccino contro la violenza e la sopraffazione. E la scelta di strutturarlo attorno al filo conduttore degli animali assunti come simboli di dolcezza, come paradigma delle vittime e insieme come portatori di una sapienza pre-umana, l’unica sopravvissuta a quella catastrofe della Ragione, è il colpo di genio di un grande romanziere.
E poi ci sono pagine indimenticabili: l’alba in un campo di girasoli, i cavalli prigionieri nel lago ghiacciato, il governatore nazista della Polonia occupata che suona Chopin e poi va a caccia di “topi” nel ghetto, Himmler nella sauna, il generale tedesco che fa la caccia al salmone, il serraglio della buona società romana al golf dell’Acquasanta, le ragazze ebree del postribolo di guerra e si potrebbe continuare.
Una lettura che è un bagno rinfrescante nell’intelligenza e nella classe più pura. Altro che i sacerdioti del politicamente corretto!
June 5, 2017
In a million years, I would not have picked up this obscure book published in the 40s had it not been listed by David Benioff as a source of information for "City of Thieves." In describing the narration of various novels, people will often use the term "unreliable narrator." Malaparte is THE poster child for that!
He may likely have been pro-German before realizing that Hitler's defeat was around the corner (when he rewrote portions of the book to denigrate the Germans), but regardless, he was an Italian war correspondent who traveled throughout Europe. Malaparte wrote this book describing various scenes he happened upon first hand and others he may only have heard about from others. There are horrors and atrocities here that most of us have never heard of.
In a surreal chapter, he describes a frozen lake, with a beach full of the carcasses of horses that froze standing upright before they could make it ashore. Im not sure that buoyancy and the laws of physics would support this, but Ive no doubt that the army did try to herd them across the lake to either use as mounts or for meals. As spring time comes, the sun gradually melts the top layer of ice revealing the sparkling upright heads of these equine statues still locked in the lake. Very bizarre.
If you are interested in the history of World War II, this is definitely worth the read. The outlandish opulence of German dinner parties and extravagance compared to the slaughter of entire villages of innocents is mind boggling. Malaparte certainly was a sly tiger who changed his political stripes, but his writing was gorgeous.
He may likely have been pro-German before realizing that Hitler's defeat was around the corner (when he rewrote portions of the book to denigrate the Germans), but regardless, he was an Italian war correspondent who traveled throughout Europe. Malaparte wrote this book describing various scenes he happened upon first hand and others he may only have heard about from others. There are horrors and atrocities here that most of us have never heard of.
In a surreal chapter, he describes a frozen lake, with a beach full of the carcasses of horses that froze standing upright before they could make it ashore. Im not sure that buoyancy and the laws of physics would support this, but Ive no doubt that the army did try to herd them across the lake to either use as mounts or for meals. As spring time comes, the sun gradually melts the top layer of ice revealing the sparkling upright heads of these equine statues still locked in the lake. Very bizarre.
If you are interested in the history of World War II, this is definitely worth the read. The outlandish opulence of German dinner parties and extravagance compared to the slaughter of entire villages of innocents is mind boggling. Malaparte certainly was a sly tiger who changed his political stripes, but his writing was gorgeous.
February 4, 2023
ما برای دفاع از تمدن با توحش میجنگیم.
و درواقع «کاپوت» کتاب قربانیان است و قبل از همه این حیوانات هستند که قربانی اند و از این رو هر کدام شان به فصل های رمان نام می دهند: اسب ها، موش ها، سگ ها، پرندگان، گوزن ها و مگس ها.
این احساس نسبت به مخلوقات جنبه ای غیرقابل چشم پوشی در این رمان و به طور کلی در داستان سرایی مالاپارته است و رابطه صمیمی و تنگاتنگ او را با طبیعت روشن می کند. فبو، سگ محبوبی که روی میز تشریح جانداران زنده برایش گریه می کنند حضوری منقلب کننده در کتاب «پوست» دارد و مجموعه «خون» حداقل دو داستان دارد که در آنها حیوانات تصویر و تجسم معصومیتی هستند که به ناحق مورد تجاوز قرار گرفته اند. قساوت بی دلیل بشر، قساوت و بی رحمی آلمانی ها، در «قربانی» از ترس ناشی می شود؛ ترسی که موجودی معصوم، برهنه درتاریخ و زندگی ایجاد می کند.
پس این حیوانات هستند که با درد و رنج و مرگ شان آه و فریاد تسکین ناپذیر از نهاد خواننده و کسانی که می نگرند و می بینند بر می آورند: اسب های سرزمین های فنلاندی که در یخ گیر کرده و سرشان را دراز کرده اند تا نفس بکشند. موش ها که در محله کلیمیان ورشو بچه هایی هستند که در جست و جوی غذا از سوراخ های سنگفرش بیرون می آیند. در روزهای گرفته پایان ناپذیر زمستان، حوالی ظهر، وقتی نور خفیف از آسمان می بارد، سربازان سرهنگ مریکالیو می رفتند روی سر اسب ها بنشینند.
«فراوو بریژیت فرانک پرسید: «موش کجاست؟» سرباز در حالی که نشانه می گرفت، گفت: «توجه!» از سوراخی حفر شده در پای دیوار مشتی موی سیاه ژولیده سرک کشید، سپس دو دست از سوراخ بیرون آمدند، روی برف قرار گرفتند. یک بچه بود. تیر حرکت کرد، اما این بار هم با اندکی خطا به هدف نخورد. سر بچه ناپدید شد.
فرانک با صدای مضطرب گفت: «بلد نیستی حتی تفنگی را به دست بگیری.» تفنگ سرباز را قاپید و نشانه رفت. در سکوت برف می بارید.»
با وجود این، همان طور که در این تکه از رمان به وضوح آمده، اگر ضعفا اولین قربانیان اجتناب ناپذیر تاریخ هستند، مالاپارته جلادان را که مقدرند وارونه شدن نقش قدرتشان را ببینند و در نهایت هر انسانی را در این دسته می گنجاند. طنز به عناوین مختلف در متن وجود دارد. واژه های خارجی «ناب» و تفسیرشان که یکی از خصوصیات کتاب است در جای جای رمان گنجانده شده است. نویسنده نگاهی تراژیک و هشداردهنده به آینده های اروپایی می اندازد که مقدر به نابودی و فروپاشی است؛ نگاهی که از انتقادها به شیوه های مختلف سیاسی ناشی می شود.
با چنین خوانشی «قربانی» کورتزیو مالاپارته که تحت تاثیر قرار می دهد و متاثر و منقلب می گرداند از لذت زیباشناسی وحشت که غالبا به خاطرش بر آن خرده گرفته اند کاملا به دور می ماند. «قربانی» بیشتر کتابی طنز است به مفهومی که بیان شد؛ تراژدی اطمینان به نفس ظاهر و قدرت است که سرانجامش شکست است و در مناظر جنگ به خاکستر بدل می شود. رمان مالاپارته از روحیه ای قوی و آزاد در تقابل با عذاب و سودازدگی برخوردار است؛ سودازدگی ای که شور مدیترانه ای و سردی شمال اروپا را در درون خویش دارد. کنایه ای سست توام با غرور و پریشانی. کلام مردی ست که تخته سنگی منزوی رو به دریای کاپری را به عنوان اقامتگاه خویش برگزید و در شکل یک خانه اسطوره ای سودای عصیانگر خویش را روایت کرد.
و درواقع «کاپوت» کتاب قربانیان است و قبل از همه این حیوانات هستند که قربانی اند و از این رو هر کدام شان به فصل های رمان نام می دهند: اسب ها، موش ها، سگ ها، پرندگان، گوزن ها و مگس ها.
این احساس نسبت به مخلوقات جنبه ای غیرقابل چشم پوشی در این رمان و به طور کلی در داستان سرایی مالاپارته است و رابطه صمیمی و تنگاتنگ او را با طبیعت روشن می کند. فبو، سگ محبوبی که روی میز تشریح جانداران زنده برایش گریه می کنند حضوری منقلب کننده در کتاب «پوست» دارد و مجموعه «خون» حداقل دو داستان دارد که در آنها حیوانات تصویر و تجسم معصومیتی هستند که به ناحق مورد تجاوز قرار گرفته اند. قساوت بی دلیل بشر، قساوت و بی رحمی آلمانی ها، در «قربانی» از ترس ناشی می شود؛ ترسی که موجودی معصوم، برهنه درتاریخ و زندگی ایجاد می کند.
پس این حیوانات هستند که با درد و رنج و مرگ شان آه و فریاد تسکین ناپذیر از نهاد خواننده و کسانی که می نگرند و می بینند بر می آورند: اسب های سرزمین های فنلاندی که در یخ گیر کرده و سرشان را دراز کرده اند تا نفس بکشند. موش ها که در محله کلیمیان ورشو بچه هایی هستند که در جست و جوی غذا از سوراخ های سنگفرش بیرون می آیند. در روزهای گرفته پایان ناپذیر زمستان، حوالی ظهر، وقتی نور خفیف از آسمان می بارد، سربازان سرهنگ مریکالیو می رفتند روی سر اسب ها بنشینند.
«فراوو بریژیت فرانک پرسید: «موش کجاست؟» سرباز در حالی که نشانه می گرفت، گفت: «توجه!» از سوراخی حفر شده در پای دیوار مشتی موی سیاه ژولیده سرک کشید، سپس دو دست از سوراخ بیرون آمدند، روی برف قرار گرفتند. یک بچه بود. تیر حرکت کرد، اما این بار هم با اندکی خطا به هدف نخورد. سر بچه ناپدید شد.
فرانک با صدای مضطرب گفت: «بلد نیستی حتی تفنگی را به دست بگیری.» تفنگ سرباز را قاپید و نشانه رفت. در سکوت برف می بارید.»
با وجود این، همان طور که در این تکه از رمان به وضوح آمده، اگر ضعفا اولین قربانیان اجتناب ناپذیر تاریخ هستند، مالاپارته جلادان را که مقدرند وارونه شدن نقش قدرتشان را ببینند و در نهایت هر انسانی را در این دسته می گنجاند. طنز به عناوین مختلف در متن وجود دارد. واژه های خارجی «ناب» و تفسیرشان که یکی از خصوصیات کتاب است در جای جای رمان گنجانده شده است. نویسنده نگاهی تراژیک و هشداردهنده به آینده های اروپایی می اندازد که مقدر به نابودی و فروپاشی است؛ نگاهی که از انتقادها به شیوه های مختلف سیاسی ناشی می شود.
با چنین خوانشی «قربانی» کورتزیو مالاپارته که تحت تاثیر قرار می دهد و متاثر و منقلب می گرداند از لذت زیباشناسی وحشت که غالبا به خاطرش بر آن خرده گرفته اند کاملا به دور می ماند. «قربانی» بیشتر کتابی طنز است به مفهومی که بیان شد؛ تراژدی اطمینان به نفس ظاهر و قدرت است که سرانجامش شکست است و در مناظر جنگ به خاکستر بدل می شود. رمان مالاپارته از روحیه ای قوی و آزاد در تقابل با عذاب و سودازدگی برخوردار است؛ سودازدگی ای که شور مدیترانه ای و سردی شمال اروپا را در درون خویش دارد. کنایه ای سست توام با غرور و پریشانی. کلام مردی ست که تخته سنگی منزوی رو به دریای کاپری را به عنوان اقامتگاه خویش برگزید و در شکل یک خانه اسطوره ای سودای عصیانگر خویش را روایت کرد.
December 15, 2024
It only took me a few pages to feel like I wanted to give up on this overwritten monster. I was like “enough with all these flowery descriptions and excessive name dropping”. However, as much as I thought about throwing it across the room, the truth is I couldn’t stop reading, and after twenty pages I knew, not only that it was going to be hard work, but also that I had no choice but to finish it - the beast was in control.
It was also around the twenty page mark that I first thought about Bolaño, another author who, I’m sure, was completely aware of his tendency to overwrite. Because, for me, ironically, the beauty of their writing lies exactly on the fact that it can only be found among all the “unnecessary” and quite ordinary ramblings. Sounds relatable, hey…?
I’m so glad I’ve found this book at this exact point of my life; a point where I’m simply not interested in reading about a topic as mind boggling as war (or slavery, by the way) in the exploitative way I’ve been seeing in recent years.
Just like Malaparte did with this book, I think it’s time to shift the focus a bit from the victims to the perpetrators.
We should all ask ourselves what have we been doing to prevent all this miserable shit from happening again? Well, considering that I’m not a spring chicken, and I’ve never lived through a time without wars, I’d say that WE have not learned a single thing, and all those bestselling books and blockbusters about children in bombarded places have done absolutely nothing to stop history from repeating itself.
Apparently, crying can be quite distracting.
I think it’s well past the time to start seeing all this for what it really is: a “problem” entirely caused by elected politicians obsessed with power who refuse to see a thing that doesn’t suit their personal agendas, and “pay” the media to brainwash the exact same people who have put them in charge in the first place.
You know I’m talking about all the bullshit that used to be called propaganda, but these days, for some reason, people prefer to call it information, right?
My brain hurts.
”What is more horrible in war (…) is precisely what is gentle in it. I cannot bear to see smiling monsters”
It was also around the twenty page mark that I first thought about Bolaño, another author who, I’m sure, was completely aware of his tendency to overwrite. Because, for me, ironically, the beauty of their writing lies exactly on the fact that it can only be found among all the “unnecessary” and quite ordinary ramblings. Sounds relatable, hey…?
I’m so glad I’ve found this book at this exact point of my life; a point where I’m simply not interested in reading about a topic as mind boggling as war (or slavery, by the way) in the exploitative way I’ve been seeing in recent years.
Just like Malaparte did with this book, I think it’s time to shift the focus a bit from the victims to the perpetrators.
We should all ask ourselves what have we been doing to prevent all this miserable shit from happening again? Well, considering that I’m not a spring chicken, and I’ve never lived through a time without wars, I’d say that WE have not learned a single thing, and all those bestselling books and blockbusters about children in bombarded places have done absolutely nothing to stop history from repeating itself.
Apparently, crying can be quite distracting.
I think it’s well past the time to start seeing all this for what it really is: a “problem” entirely caused by elected politicians obsessed with power who refuse to see a thing that doesn’t suit their personal agendas, and “pay” the media to brainwash the exact same people who have put them in charge in the first place.
You know I’m talking about all the bullshit that used to be called propaganda, but these days, for some reason, people prefer to call it information, right?
My brain hurts.
”What is more horrible in war (…) is precisely what is gentle in it. I cannot bear to see smiling monsters”
August 27, 2023
Come una Sherazad con il gusto del macabro Curzio Malaparte snocciola fatti di cui è stato testimone, o che gli sono stati raccontati mentre girava l'Europa come corrispondente di guerra. Leggendo altre opinioni ho notato che in tanti ne mettono in dubbio la veridicità, ma penso che lo scopo del romanzo non sia la semplice cronaca. La mia idea è che Malaparte abbia inserito nei suoi romanzi storie inverosimili, magari inventate di sana pianta, non per sensazionalismo ma in virtù di un’efficace espediente narrativo: il fatto che durante la lettura io possa anche solo credere alle sue storie, che ci sia questo dubbio, dice tanto sull’orrore della Seconda Guerra Mondiale - molto più di altri resoconti più aderenti alla realtà. C’è chi critica il romanzo per questo suo aspetto quando invece è proprio la sua forza.
"A un certo punto l'ufficiale si ferma davanti al ragazzo, lo fissa a lungo, in silenzio, poi gli dice con voce lenta, stanca, piena di noia: "Ascolta, non ti voglio far del male. Sei un bambino, io non fo la guerra ai bambini. Hai sparato sui miei soldati, ma io non fo la guerra ai bambini. Lieber Gott, non l'ho inventata io la guerra". L'ufficiale s'interrompe, poi dice al ragazzo con una voce stranamente dolce: "Ascolta, io ho un occhio di vetro. È difficile riconoscerlo da quello vero. Se mi sai dire subito, senza pensarci su, quale dei due occhi è l'occhio di vetro, ti lascio andar via, ti lascio libero".
"L'occhio sinistro" risponde pronto il ragazzo.
"Come hai fatto ad accorgertene?"
"Perché dei due è l'unico che abbia qualcosa di umano"."
"A un certo punto l'ufficiale si ferma davanti al ragazzo, lo fissa a lungo, in silenzio, poi gli dice con voce lenta, stanca, piena di noia: "Ascolta, non ti voglio far del male. Sei un bambino, io non fo la guerra ai bambini. Hai sparato sui miei soldati, ma io non fo la guerra ai bambini. Lieber Gott, non l'ho inventata io la guerra". L'ufficiale s'interrompe, poi dice al ragazzo con una voce stranamente dolce: "Ascolta, io ho un occhio di vetro. È difficile riconoscerlo da quello vero. Se mi sai dire subito, senza pensarci su, quale dei due occhi è l'occhio di vetro, ti lascio andar via, ti lascio libero".
"L'occhio sinistro" risponde pronto il ragazzo.
"Come hai fatto ad accorgertene?"
"Perché dei due è l'unico che abbia qualcosa di umano"."
March 16, 2020
The sun was setting. For many months I had not seen a sunset. After the long northern summer, after the endless unbroken day without dawn or sunset, the sky at last began to fade above the woods, above the sea and the roofs of the city; and something like a shadow (it was perhaps only the reflection of a shadow—the shadow of a shadow) was gathering in the east. Little by little, night was being born, a night loving and delicate; and in the west, the sky was blazing above the woods and the lakes, curling itself up within the glow of sunset like an oak leaf in the fragile light of autumn.
*
[...] he spent his nights in tortured wakefulness, listening to the call of the wind through the trees, to the distant voice of the sea.
*
By degrees, something bitter was arising in me, something like a sad anger; bitter words came to my lips, and my effort to choke them back was useless.
*
Look at the sun," I said, "when it rises above the blue pine woods, on the light birch groves, on the old silver of the water, on the greeny blue of the meadows,- look at the sun," I said, "when it rises on the horizon lighting up the landscape with the liquid splendor of a large, staring equine eye. There is something unreal in Swedish nature, full of fancies and whims, of that tender and lyrical madness that shines from the eye of a horse. The Swedish landscape is a galloping horse. Listen," I said, "to the neighing of the wind through the trees. Listen to the neighing of the wind among the leaves and the grass."
*
Night had fallen and the large, black, golden-lashed eyes of the sunflowers shone in the faint light. They gazed at me swaying their heads in the wind, already damp with the far-off rain.
*
I inhaled the stench of the dead mare with a strange enjoyment. The prisoner also seemed to breathe with a delicate, sad pleasure. His nostrils quivered, they throbbed strangely. And I became aware only then that all the life in that pale, ashen face in which the untroubled, slanting eyes had the fixed glassy stare of a corpse, had gathered about his nostrils. His old homeland, the homeland he had found again, was in the odor of the dead mare. We looked into each other's eyes, in silence, and inhaled with a delicate and sad enjoyment that sweetish smell. That carrion odor was his homeland, his ageless and living homeland, and now nothing stood between us any longer. We were brothers living in the ageless odor of the dead mare.
*
Soon the moon became entangled in the branches of the trees, it hung for a moment on a branch, dangled like the head of a man from the gallows, and sank to the bottom of an abyss of black stormy clouds.
*
I threw myself onto the bed and closed my eyes. I felt abased. All was over by now. The dead were dead. There was nothing more to do. La dracu, I thought. It was ghastly not to be able to do something.
*
I, too, was certainly a ghost, a dull ghost of a remote age—perhaps of a happy age, perhaps of a dead age, perhaps of a very happy age—
I was a shadow, uneasy and saddened, standing by that window, gazing on that landscape of my youthful years. Out of the depths of my memory rose the gentle shadows of that far-off age, and I laughed sweetly. I closed my eyes and looked again at those pale phantoms.
*
We looked smiling at one another as if those unexpected memories of the soil were freeing us from the sad spell of the northern night. We were lost in that desert of snow and ice, in that watery land of a hundred thousand lakes, in that sweet stern Finland where the smell of the sea penetrates the inmost depths of the most remote forests of Karelia and Lapland, where the glitter of water may be traced in the blue and gray eyes of man and beast and in the slow and distracted manner, not unlike the movements of swimmers, with which people walk along streets ablaze with the white fire of the snow, or wander in the summer night through parks, raising their eyes to the blue-green, watery glow over the roofs in the endless day without dawn or sunset of the white northern summer. The unexpected memories of the soil made us feel earthy deep down within our bones, and we looked at one another smiling, as if we had escaped from a shipwreck.
*
What horizons of white snow, deserted water and limitless forests are in these blue eyes of a man of the North! What serene boredom in that clear, almost white gaze—the noble and ancient boredom of the modern world, already aware of its death! What loneliness on that pale brow!
*
We sat like that, in silence, in the twilight of the room, and I was filled with bitter sadness. I no longer trusted my own words. My words were false and evil. Our silence also seemed to me false and evil.
*
I was running away from the war, the slaughter, typhus and hunger; I was running away from the prison, from the stinking, dark, airless cell, the filthy straw mattress, the loathsome soup, bugs, lice and the pail full of excrement. I wanted to go home, I wanted to go to Capri, to my lonely house high above the sea.
*
The sight of the sea moved me and I began to weep. A river, a plain, a mountain, not even a tree or a cloud—nothing has in it the feeling of freedom like the sea.
[...]
But there, before me, was the warm and delicate sea, the Neapolitan sea, the free blue sea of Naples—all crumpled into little waves that rippled after one another with a gentle sound under the caress of a wind scented with brine and rosemary. There, before me, was the blue sea, the free and limitless sea rippling in the wind; not the white, cold, smooth bare sea of the prison but the warm, deep blue sea. There, before me, was the sea, there was freedom, and I wept gazing at it from a distance, from the road that descended to the sea across a large square. I did not dare to come any closer. I even did not dare to stretch out my hand toward it lest it flee, lest it disappear beyond the skyline, lest it retreat in disgust from my dirty, greasy hand with its cracked nails.
*
[...] he spent his nights in tortured wakefulness, listening to the call of the wind through the trees, to the distant voice of the sea.
*
By degrees, something bitter was arising in me, something like a sad anger; bitter words came to my lips, and my effort to choke them back was useless.
*
Look at the sun," I said, "when it rises above the blue pine woods, on the light birch groves, on the old silver of the water, on the greeny blue of the meadows,- look at the sun," I said, "when it rises on the horizon lighting up the landscape with the liquid splendor of a large, staring equine eye. There is something unreal in Swedish nature, full of fancies and whims, of that tender and lyrical madness that shines from the eye of a horse. The Swedish landscape is a galloping horse. Listen," I said, "to the neighing of the wind through the trees. Listen to the neighing of the wind among the leaves and the grass."
*
Night had fallen and the large, black, golden-lashed eyes of the sunflowers shone in the faint light. They gazed at me swaying their heads in the wind, already damp with the far-off rain.
*
I inhaled the stench of the dead mare with a strange enjoyment. The prisoner also seemed to breathe with a delicate, sad pleasure. His nostrils quivered, they throbbed strangely. And I became aware only then that all the life in that pale, ashen face in which the untroubled, slanting eyes had the fixed glassy stare of a corpse, had gathered about his nostrils. His old homeland, the homeland he had found again, was in the odor of the dead mare. We looked into each other's eyes, in silence, and inhaled with a delicate and sad enjoyment that sweetish smell. That carrion odor was his homeland, his ageless and living homeland, and now nothing stood between us any longer. We were brothers living in the ageless odor of the dead mare.
*
Soon the moon became entangled in the branches of the trees, it hung for a moment on a branch, dangled like the head of a man from the gallows, and sank to the bottom of an abyss of black stormy clouds.
*
I threw myself onto the bed and closed my eyes. I felt abased. All was over by now. The dead were dead. There was nothing more to do. La dracu, I thought. It was ghastly not to be able to do something.
*
I, too, was certainly a ghost, a dull ghost of a remote age—perhaps of a happy age, perhaps of a dead age, perhaps of a very happy age—
I was a shadow, uneasy and saddened, standing by that window, gazing on that landscape of my youthful years. Out of the depths of my memory rose the gentle shadows of that far-off age, and I laughed sweetly. I closed my eyes and looked again at those pale phantoms.
*
We looked smiling at one another as if those unexpected memories of the soil were freeing us from the sad spell of the northern night. We were lost in that desert of snow and ice, in that watery land of a hundred thousand lakes, in that sweet stern Finland where the smell of the sea penetrates the inmost depths of the most remote forests of Karelia and Lapland, where the glitter of water may be traced in the blue and gray eyes of man and beast and in the slow and distracted manner, not unlike the movements of swimmers, with which people walk along streets ablaze with the white fire of the snow, or wander in the summer night through parks, raising their eyes to the blue-green, watery glow over the roofs in the endless day without dawn or sunset of the white northern summer. The unexpected memories of the soil made us feel earthy deep down within our bones, and we looked at one another smiling, as if we had escaped from a shipwreck.
*
What horizons of white snow, deserted water and limitless forests are in these blue eyes of a man of the North! What serene boredom in that clear, almost white gaze—the noble and ancient boredom of the modern world, already aware of its death! What loneliness on that pale brow!
*
We sat like that, in silence, in the twilight of the room, and I was filled with bitter sadness. I no longer trusted my own words. My words were false and evil. Our silence also seemed to me false and evil.
*
I was running away from the war, the slaughter, typhus and hunger; I was running away from the prison, from the stinking, dark, airless cell, the filthy straw mattress, the loathsome soup, bugs, lice and the pail full of excrement. I wanted to go home, I wanted to go to Capri, to my lonely house high above the sea.
*
The sight of the sea moved me and I began to weep. A river, a plain, a mountain, not even a tree or a cloud—nothing has in it the feeling of freedom like the sea.
[...]
But there, before me, was the warm and delicate sea, the Neapolitan sea, the free blue sea of Naples—all crumpled into little waves that rippled after one another with a gentle sound under the caress of a wind scented with brine and rosemary. There, before me, was the blue sea, the free and limitless sea rippling in the wind; not the white, cold, smooth bare sea of the prison but the warm, deep blue sea. There, before me, was the sea, there was freedom, and I wept gazing at it from a distance, from the road that descended to the sea across a large square. I did not dare to come any closer. I even did not dare to stretch out my hand toward it lest it flee, lest it disappear beyond the skyline, lest it retreat in disgust from my dirty, greasy hand with its cracked nails.
September 29, 2023
كتاب مرعب يصف بشاعة الحرب وتوحش الإنسان، عندما يكون التغني بحصد الرؤوس انتصاراً، واقتلاع العيون ورص الجثث مدعاةً لرفع الأنخاب. يمثل هذا الكتاب شهادات من قبل الكاتب الذي عمل صحفياً في صفوف الألمان في جبهة أوروبا الشرقية والجبهة الروسية.
جحظت عيناي مراتٍ كثيرة وهو يصف أفعال القتل، الجثث المزرقّة التي لم تجد من يواريها الثرى، الفتيات اللواتي تم تسخيرهن للعمل في الدعارة لصالح الجنود الألمان ومن ثم إعدامهن واستبدالهن بأخريات، وغيرها من الممارسات البشعة.
كدتُ أتقيأ قلبي عندما ذكر الكاتب قصة الضابط الألماني الذي رسم ابتسامة على وجهه عندما عرض عليه ثلاثين رطلاً من العيون التي تم اقتلاعها من محاجر الجثث وتم إرسالها له كهدية من قبل جنوده في الجبهة.
سأقتبس قول الكوني في رباعية الخسوف:" ولكن ألا تساعد الحرب في الكشف عن معدن البشر الأصلي؟ أليست هذه الرذائل جزءاً كامناً في طبيعة الناس يحاولون أن يخفوها في الظروف العادية؟"
جحظت عيناي مراتٍ كثيرة وهو يصف أفعال القتل، الجثث المزرقّة التي لم تجد من يواريها الثرى، الفتيات اللواتي تم تسخيرهن للعمل في الدعارة لصالح الجنود الألمان ومن ثم إعدامهن واستبدالهن بأخريات، وغيرها من الممارسات البشعة.
كدتُ أتقيأ قلبي عندما ذكر الكاتب قصة الضابط الألماني الذي رسم ابتسامة على وجهه عندما عرض عليه ثلاثين رطلاً من العيون التي تم اقتلاعها من محاجر الجثث وتم إرسالها له كهدية من قبل جنوده في الجبهة.
سأقتبس قول الكوني في رباعية الخسوف:" ولكن ألا تساعد الحرب في الكشف عن معدن البشر الأصلي؟ أليست هذه الرذائل جزءاً كامناً في طبيعة الناس يحاولون أن يخفوها في الظروف العادية؟"
June 29, 2020
Durante la seconda guerra mondiale, Malaparte che aveva già vissuto giovanissimo la guerra come volontario, a soli sedici anni, durante il primo conflitto ( si ricordi che morirà alla soglia dei sessanta anni in seguito alle lesioni polmonari da iprite) e che ne aveva criticato aspramente la conduzione con “Viva Caporetto” poi divenuto “La rivolta dei santi maledetti”, è un personaggio scomodo al regime. Dopo l’entusiastica adesione in prima linea, con la partecipazione alla Marcia su Roma, dopo l’accettazione dello squadrismo più bieco, dopo l’assassinio Matteotti - fu testimone a processo a favore dell’imputato principale – il colpevole materiale, non quello ideologico, dopo la rottura con Mussolini e la sua estromissione dal partito nel 1933 in seguito alla sua critica a fascismo e nazismo, lo ritroviamo corrispondente di guerra per varie testate giornalistiche, testimone diretto nei principali fronti, soprattutto quelli del nord Europa e dell’est più prossimo alla Russia: Finlandia, Polonia, Ucraina. Questo lavoro è la sintesi di quella esperienza, traslata in carta per i giornali e per una sua rivisitazione più letteraria in un manoscritto poi smembrato in tre parti consegnate al ministro di Spagna ad Helsinki, al segretario della legazione di Romania a Hensinki e all’addetto stampa della legazione romena nella capitale di Finlandia per poi giungere “dopo una lunga odissea” a Roma. A detta del suo autore è un libro crudele per il fatto che la grande tragedia della guerra offre uno spettacolo unico che la sua penna non esita a cesellare e a rendere ancor più crudele con l’obiettivo di fare protagonista della scrittura non già la guerra, utilizzata come sfondo integratore, ma l’idea di disfatta , di rottura, di schianto secco che è quello prodotto dalla morte dell’Europa. Un’araba fenice che si spera risorga dalle sue ceneri. Quelle ceneri descrive il testo ma non come nel successivo “La pelle” , a posteriori, nell’onda lunga del passaggio dello tsunami bellico devastante, ma in divenire, negli anni compresi tra il 1941 e il 1943 quando, caduto il regime, Malaparte farà rientro nella sua villa a Capri per concludere l’ultimo capitolo dello scritto, il più simile a “La pelle”. Le altre pagine in realtà non lo sono, manca il lirismo, manca la teatralità, emerge invece un disperato bisogno di raccontare che ha la meglio su tutto. Malaparte si rappresenta infatti alle prese con conversazioni che intrattiene con personaggi eminenti: ambasciatori, principi, funzionari, e l’oggetto del suo narrare è sempre una crudele e disturbante galleria di impressioni, visioni, fermo immagini che restituiscono un complicato insieme di cui però non riesce a superare la frammentarietà. Sono quadri singoli, feroci, oggettivi e al tempo stesso visionari, comprendere dove termini la realtà, nuda e cruda, e dove intervenga il surrealismo visionario non è semplice. Può trattarsi di un canestro contenente ventimila occhi umani scambiati per ostriche prive di guscio, o di busti di soldati emergenti da una landa immensa e innevata posizionati col braccio teso, congelato, a mo’ di segnaletica o ancora cavalli anch’essi congelati nel Ladoga le cui acque ghiacciate restituiscono solo la testa, in superficie, in attesa di un disgelo che li restituirà come sfatte e marcescenti carcasse. Ci sono poi le condizioni disperate del ghetto di Varsavia, le notizie dei pogrom, i tentativi di aiutare qualcuno, se possibile. In realtà proprio questo aspetto è particolare perché Malaparte è dentro le stanze degli ufficiali tedeschi e conversa con loro o si intrattiene con l’invasore nelle residenze più ricche delle terre conquistate e contemporaneamente accoglie e riporta le storie dei vinti, dei conquistati, dei piegati e in modo, rappresentato sempre come fosse un fatto del tutto fortuito e occasionali, diretto li aiuta. Difficile capire, difficile trovare una collocazione al bene, in questo caso. Tutto è passeggero, irreale e tremendamente vero; la scorza narrativa non chiarisce, lascia perplessi, attoniti; restituisce probabilmente le contraddizioni implicite al fenomeno bellico. Tutto è secco, schiantato, kaputt.
June 2, 2025
"Kaputt" is een absoluut uniek, vreemd en bevreemdend werk. Het is inderdaad een "wreed en vrolijk boek" zoals de auteur in het voorwoord zelf aangeeft; een soort van afwisselend poëtische en weerzinwekkende schelmenroman over de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
Malaparte schreef het boek tijdens de oorlog tussen 1941 en 1943 en putte inspiratie uit zijn omzwervingen en ontmoetingen als diplomaat en oorlogscorrespondent aan het Oostfront en in het hoge Noorden.
In zijn enthousiaste voorwoord bij de Nederlandse vertaling vergelijkt Lanoye Kaputt met "Voyage au bout de la nuit". Zelf vind ik die vergelijking weinig overtuigend. Net als Malaparte hield ook Céline er radicale, anti-democratische politieke opvattingen en een cynisch mensbeeld op na. Met een beetje goede wil kan je ook "Voyage au bout de la Nuit" als een gitzwarte moderne schelmenroman lezen. Maar daar houden de gelijkenissen tussen beide werken op.
Noch vormelijk, noch inhoudelijk heeft "Kaputt" veel gemeen met Céline. Het is al een hele tijd geleden maar van die laatste herinner ik me vooral het rauwe realisme, het nihilistische perspectief en het bargoens. “Kaputt” bevat ook een aantal aangrijpende rauw realistische scènes. Wat de personages, de vertelstructuur, de stijl en de taal betreft, echter, refereert Malaparte’s werk meer aan "A la recherche du temps perdu" dan aan Céline's eerste roman.
De auteur maakt er overigens geen geheim van dat hij "Kaputt" schreef met Proust in gedachten. Het allereerste hoofdstuk draagt de titel "Le côté des Guermantes" en zet al meteen de toon. In tegenstelling tot Céline richt Malaparte zich niet op de onderkant van de samenleving, maar ligt de focus hier overduidelijk op de hogere kringen. De roman wordt in hoofdzaak bevolkt door diplomaten en diplomatenvrouwen uit heel Europa, officieren uit het Derde Rijk, leden van de Zweedse koninklijke familie en Italiaanse adel, allemaal figuren die de oorlog van op een afstand beleven. Er is uiteraard ook sprake van de vele slachtoffers van de oorlog en de genocide maar zij komen slechts indirect aan bod, in de verhalen die de hoofdrolspelers elkaar vertellen rond het haardvuur, tijdens het diner of het aperitief. Die indirecte manier om de oorlogsgruwel ter sprake te brengen staat haaks op de reportagestijl die Céline hanteert en maakt van "Kaputt" een erg ongemakkelijk boek.
Af en toe kruist de verteller ook het pad van historische figuren zoals Heinrich Himmler (steevast "de mens Himmler" genoemd), Ante Pavelic, de leider van de Kroatische ultrafascistische Ustase en Oswald Mosley, stichter van de Britse Union of Fascists. Mussolini speelt ook een belangrijke rol, als gespreksonderwerp en voorwerp van spot, maar komt zelf niet aan het woord.
De schelm of picaro van dienst is Malaparte zelf die zich schijnbaar moeiteloos in de meest uiteenlopende situaties weet te handhaven en ongestoord én ongestraft de spot drijft met de mensen die hij ontmoet. Hij spaart noch Duitsers, noch Sovjets, noch Italianen, maar heeft het toch in hoofdzaak op die eerste gemunt.
Ook de vertelstructuur doet soms wat aan Proust denken, zeker in de eerste hoofdstukken die de vorm aannemen van een reeks meanderende herinneringen geïnspireerd door zintuigelijke indrukken. Zo voert het gehinnik van paarden in de verte de verteller terug naar de Ladogameer in Finland terwijl het geblaf van honden hem er toe brengt om te vertellen over de antitankhonden aan de Dnjepr in Oekraïne.
Zelfs stilistisch laat Malaparte zich graag door Proust inspireren, en dan met name in het gebruik van aan de schilderkunst refererende metaforen en in de pointillistische portretten en natuurbeschrijvingen die zich kenmerken door een overdaad aan subtiele kleurtoetsen. "Kaputt" is inderdaad niet alleen een "wreed en vrolijk" maar ook een erg poëtisch werk en het is net die combinatie die het zo uniek maakt.
Een spottende schelm met Proustiaanse gevoeligheden als oorlogsverslaggever achter de oostfrontlinies tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog? Als u zich daar weinig bij kan voorstellen kan ik u "Kaputt" van harte aanbevelen. 😉
Malaparte schreef het boek tijdens de oorlog tussen 1941 en 1943 en putte inspiratie uit zijn omzwervingen en ontmoetingen als diplomaat en oorlogscorrespondent aan het Oostfront en in het hoge Noorden.
In zijn enthousiaste voorwoord bij de Nederlandse vertaling vergelijkt Lanoye Kaputt met "Voyage au bout de la nuit". Zelf vind ik die vergelijking weinig overtuigend. Net als Malaparte hield ook Céline er radicale, anti-democratische politieke opvattingen en een cynisch mensbeeld op na. Met een beetje goede wil kan je ook "Voyage au bout de la Nuit" als een gitzwarte moderne schelmenroman lezen. Maar daar houden de gelijkenissen tussen beide werken op.
Noch vormelijk, noch inhoudelijk heeft "Kaputt" veel gemeen met Céline. Het is al een hele tijd geleden maar van die laatste herinner ik me vooral het rauwe realisme, het nihilistische perspectief en het bargoens. “Kaputt” bevat ook een aantal aangrijpende rauw realistische scènes. Wat de personages, de vertelstructuur, de stijl en de taal betreft, echter, refereert Malaparte’s werk meer aan "A la recherche du temps perdu" dan aan Céline's eerste roman.
De auteur maakt er overigens geen geheim van dat hij "Kaputt" schreef met Proust in gedachten. Het allereerste hoofdstuk draagt de titel "Le côté des Guermantes" en zet al meteen de toon. In tegenstelling tot Céline richt Malaparte zich niet op de onderkant van de samenleving, maar ligt de focus hier overduidelijk op de hogere kringen. De roman wordt in hoofdzaak bevolkt door diplomaten en diplomatenvrouwen uit heel Europa, officieren uit het Derde Rijk, leden van de Zweedse koninklijke familie en Italiaanse adel, allemaal figuren die de oorlog van op een afstand beleven. Er is uiteraard ook sprake van de vele slachtoffers van de oorlog en de genocide maar zij komen slechts indirect aan bod, in de verhalen die de hoofdrolspelers elkaar vertellen rond het haardvuur, tijdens het diner of het aperitief. Die indirecte manier om de oorlogsgruwel ter sprake te brengen staat haaks op de reportagestijl die Céline hanteert en maakt van "Kaputt" een erg ongemakkelijk boek.
Af en toe kruist de verteller ook het pad van historische figuren zoals Heinrich Himmler (steevast "de mens Himmler" genoemd), Ante Pavelic, de leider van de Kroatische ultrafascistische Ustase en Oswald Mosley, stichter van de Britse Union of Fascists. Mussolini speelt ook een belangrijke rol, als gespreksonderwerp en voorwerp van spot, maar komt zelf niet aan het woord.
De schelm of picaro van dienst is Malaparte zelf die zich schijnbaar moeiteloos in de meest uiteenlopende situaties weet te handhaven en ongestoord én ongestraft de spot drijft met de mensen die hij ontmoet. Hij spaart noch Duitsers, noch Sovjets, noch Italianen, maar heeft het toch in hoofdzaak op die eerste gemunt.
Ook de vertelstructuur doet soms wat aan Proust denken, zeker in de eerste hoofdstukken die de vorm aannemen van een reeks meanderende herinneringen geïnspireerd door zintuigelijke indrukken. Zo voert het gehinnik van paarden in de verte de verteller terug naar de Ladogameer in Finland terwijl het geblaf van honden hem er toe brengt om te vertellen over de antitankhonden aan de Dnjepr in Oekraïne.
Zelfs stilistisch laat Malaparte zich graag door Proust inspireren, en dan met name in het gebruik van aan de schilderkunst refererende metaforen en in de pointillistische portretten en natuurbeschrijvingen die zich kenmerken door een overdaad aan subtiele kleurtoetsen. "Kaputt" is inderdaad niet alleen een "wreed en vrolijk" maar ook een erg poëtisch werk en het is net die combinatie die het zo uniek maakt.
Een spottende schelm met Proustiaanse gevoeligheden als oorlogsverslaggever achter de oostfrontlinies tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog? Als u zich daar weinig bij kan voorstellen kan ik u "Kaputt" van harte aanbevelen. 😉
July 30, 2019
For the ice horses, the rats of Jassy, the dinner parties in Poland, the glass eye, the salmon, and the flies. But especially for the unforgettable Soroca Girls.
This savage slab of literature shouldn't be so timely, but reading it feels like encountering today's attitudes while reading tomorrow's headlines. Chilling and essential.
This savage slab of literature shouldn't be so timely, but reading it feels like encountering today's attitudes while reading tomorrow's headlines. Chilling and essential.
July 22, 2013
Rogozkin’s Cuckoo razzledazzled me by taking magical realism up a notch: making it situational rather than transactional concept. A Finn, Lapp and Russian end up cloistered together in Finland during WWII, communicating with each other in their own languages. An amicable, collaborative existence dawns, eloquent conversations ensue, despite the fact that there is no verbal understanding between the three, who are perfectly normal as standalone executors and surreal in combo. Its mesmerising, and this, in fact, is what happens in Kaputt ubiquitously. Malaparte, as a war correspondent, attends high command German parties and bluntly denigrates his German hosts, whilst they go on pontificating obliviously, presumably too punch drunk on the legends they are in their own minds, and I sighed with pleasure at this surrealistic overture. But then I found out Malaparte didn’t mean it. A consummate turn face, and ex Fascist he wrote the book initially under the supposition Germany would win the war: once the writing was on the wall, he went back and ‘fixed’ a few things here and there. Most of the ‘fixing’ of course he would have reserved for his own participation in these Le Grand Buffouet style, pan-Roman dinner do-s, where he emerges as an exalted Lone Ranger in defending the victimised populations of Europe against German Kultur. Bashful, Malaparte is not. And the German guests? Here the artist’s quilt falters: as it always does in these circumstances. I remember admiring Queen Hatshepsuts temple in Egypt where her furious nephew Thutmoses III sought to have her annihilated from public memory by altering her statues to look like him. The grotesque outcome only served to reinstate her, IMO. Similarly here, Malaparte revisits his montage of figures and starts painting by numbers. The end result: polyphemic Beryl Cook-esque caricatures of self delusional grandeur coupled with an odd, emphemeral dreaminess and sensitivity. Like bloated pigs who eat truffles rather than trough.
I’m tempted to say very stereotypical, except given the novel was published 1946, perhaps it was the van guard which yielded the sterotypes later on: the cultured but cruel Aryana. I’m less appalled than accepting. It doesn’t matter which Culture you belong to: its always better than the rest. In Pillars of Salt the Jordanian nomads claimed supremacy over the invading English: and so it goes. As Malaparte would say here, Bittania may rule the waves, but even she can’t waive the rules. Which are, that we are all legends in our own minds.
So, Malaparte scurries hither and thither across the European map, extolling the virtues of every nation apart from the Germans, singlehandedly saving scores of Jews and other prisoners from a gruesome end some of the time, and recording the macabre details of death and destruction the rest of the time. The pace is frenetic, the man seemingly ubiquitous, the atrocities a cotillion of Boschean strokes with no end in sight, til we get to a passage concerning the execution of a group of Russian prisoners when the proverbial light bulb finally clicks over my head and I realise Malaparte is a cheat and a phantasmagorist. Now, the man is extremely erudite and well educated: he pepers his ccounts with all sorts of posh references. Jews are not just jews: they are Chagall’s jews. Dinner parties spring right out of Lucas Cranach paintings, and Ante Pavelic’s ears arouse in him the same impression of deformity as is produced by listening to musical compositions by Eric Satie and Darius Milhaud. Well hum dee dum. I have had a very good listen to both of these subsequently: there could be nothing, btw, deformed in any of their compositions. Milhaud I found average, Satie is mesmerising: very tonally centred and melodic. Anyway that’s by the by. My point is to set the background here apropos Malaparte’s enormous general knowledge.
Now the execution scene. He saw, Malaparte says, a group of Russian peasant POWs who were executed in a most brutal manner: horrific really. But just prior, they were laughing and ‘slapped each other on their backs with the simple minded gaiety of the Russian peasant’. Whoooa. Now, on the back of a steady diet of Russian classics (Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev and Goncharev), I happen to know that Russian intelligentsia is very fond of the simple peasant moniker; its like a Russian trademark, the calling card issued to their peasant classes. But how the deuce does Malaparte, who has come as close to Russian peasantry as I have to an orange butt baboon (read: never), identify this group as simple buffoons in the space of 5 minutes? He can’t, can he? He can only be paraphrasing and making it up as he goes along. Quick flip to the afterword, and sure enough: Kaputt is only partially real, it seems. A very small part, perhaps. The rest: well, we all have imaginations, right? Now, Jerzy Kosinksi The Painted Birdwas lambasted for using his in the Painted Bird to similar effect in the 1960s, the effect being of embellishing and exaggerating grotesquerie for brownie points, not unlike David Madsen’s approach Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf. Here, it is Germanic bezobrazan in the klieglight, a compilation of the macabre and deconstructed, a peisage of decomposition and ontological breakdown – well apart from Malaparte. He never breaks down.
For a more authentic experience, I’d go withThe Long Voyage
I’m tempted to say very stereotypical, except given the novel was published 1946, perhaps it was the van guard which yielded the sterotypes later on: the cultured but cruel Aryana. I’m less appalled than accepting. It doesn’t matter which Culture you belong to: its always better than the rest. In Pillars of Salt the Jordanian nomads claimed supremacy over the invading English: and so it goes. As Malaparte would say here, Bittania may rule the waves, but even she can’t waive the rules. Which are, that we are all legends in our own minds.
So, Malaparte scurries hither and thither across the European map, extolling the virtues of every nation apart from the Germans, singlehandedly saving scores of Jews and other prisoners from a gruesome end some of the time, and recording the macabre details of death and destruction the rest of the time. The pace is frenetic, the man seemingly ubiquitous, the atrocities a cotillion of Boschean strokes with no end in sight, til we get to a passage concerning the execution of a group of Russian prisoners when the proverbial light bulb finally clicks over my head and I realise Malaparte is a cheat and a phantasmagorist. Now, the man is extremely erudite and well educated: he pepers his ccounts with all sorts of posh references. Jews are not just jews: they are Chagall’s jews. Dinner parties spring right out of Lucas Cranach paintings, and Ante Pavelic’s ears arouse in him the same impression of deformity as is produced by listening to musical compositions by Eric Satie and Darius Milhaud. Well hum dee dum. I have had a very good listen to both of these subsequently: there could be nothing, btw, deformed in any of their compositions. Milhaud I found average, Satie is mesmerising: very tonally centred and melodic. Anyway that’s by the by. My point is to set the background here apropos Malaparte’s enormous general knowledge.
Now the execution scene. He saw, Malaparte says, a group of Russian peasant POWs who were executed in a most brutal manner: horrific really. But just prior, they were laughing and ‘slapped each other on their backs with the simple minded gaiety of the Russian peasant’. Whoooa. Now, on the back of a steady diet of Russian classics (Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev and Goncharev), I happen to know that Russian intelligentsia is very fond of the simple peasant moniker; its like a Russian trademark, the calling card issued to their peasant classes. But how the deuce does Malaparte, who has come as close to Russian peasantry as I have to an orange butt baboon (read: never), identify this group as simple buffoons in the space of 5 minutes? He can’t, can he? He can only be paraphrasing and making it up as he goes along. Quick flip to the afterword, and sure enough: Kaputt is only partially real, it seems. A very small part, perhaps. The rest: well, we all have imaginations, right? Now, Jerzy Kosinksi The Painted Birdwas lambasted for using his in the Painted Bird to similar effect in the 1960s, the effect being of embellishing and exaggerating grotesquerie for brownie points, not unlike David Madsen’s approach Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf. Here, it is Germanic bezobrazan in the klieglight, a compilation of the macabre and deconstructed, a peisage of decomposition and ontological breakdown – well apart from Malaparte. He never breaks down.
For a more authentic experience, I’d go withThe Long Voyage
October 21, 2018
Im polnischen Königspalast, dem Wawel zu Krakau, delektieren sich Generalgouverneur Hans Frank, auch bekannt als »Schlächter von Polen«, und seine Vasallen nebst Gattinnen bei Kerzenlicht an üppig gedeckter Tafel und ergehen sich in affektierter Konversation. Wenige Seiten später ziehen in der Ukraine dreckstarrende Militärkonvois durch brennende Dörfer, an den Bäumen baumeln die nackten Leichen ermordeter Juden.
Curzio Malaparte hatte 1940 bis 43 als Offizier der italienischen Streitkräfte und offizieller Kriegsberichterstatter des Corriere della Sera Zugang zu den höchsten Kreisen der Achsenmächte und zum Kriegsgeschehen an der Nord- und Ostfront. Seine Aufzeichnungen bilden die Basis für dieses erschütternde Buch.
Es erzielt seine ungeheuerliche Wirkung durch die Gegenüberstellung von Grausamkeit, Elend und Tod an der Front und in den zerstörten Städten und der Dekadenz, der Selbstherrlichkeit und dem Zynismus in den Palästen der Machthaber. Es dokumentiert die unterschiedlichsten Facetten dieser dunklen Epoche Europas und stellt den Irrsinn von Totalitarismus, Krieg und Größenwahn mit allen Mitteln bloß. Es entsteht ein Riesenrundgemälde aus schockierendem Realismus, Groteske, Reportage, Ironie, Reflexionen z.B. über »German Angst«, aber auch aus erstaunlichen Bildern von Menschen, Stimmungen und Landschaften - und nicht zuletzt von Pferden, Ratten, Hunden, Vögeln und Fliegen - die jeweils einen Teil des Buches als Leitmotiv begleiten.
Zwangsarbeiterinnen aus den besetzten Gebieten gehen abends heim, müde, verschmutzt, schwarz von Maschinenöl, das Haar verrußt von fliegendem Eisenstaub, die Haut an Gesicht und Händen von Säuren geätzt, die Augen fahl umrändert mit Ringen der Müdigkeit, der Angst und der Sorge, und kurz darauf parlieren an der Gästetafel der italienischen Botschaft die jungen deutschen Damen, ihre Toiletten kamen aus Paris, aus Rom, aus Stockholm, aus Madrid, sie wurden in den Koffern der diplomatischen Kuriere eingeschmuggelt, zusammen mit Parfüms, Puder, Schuhen, Handschuhen und Wäsche und in ihren Gesichtern die gleiche Beklemmung, die gleiche Angst, nur beschmutzt und getrübt von anmaßender Sinnlichkeit, von schamlosem Hochmut, von einer traurigen moralischen Gleichgültigkeit.
Aber nicht nur die Heftigkeit dieser Szenerien fasziniert, Malaparte beschreibt Landschaften und Stimmungen, Architektur und Interieurs überaus detailliert und auch in poetischen Tönen und schafft so zwischen aufwühlenden Momenten immer wieder beschauliche Ruhepunkte. Die Schilderungen der Charaktere, deren Habitus, Physiognomie und Psychologie sind sprachlich originell, sehr detailliert ausgearbeitet und zeugen von Gespür und Menschenkenntnis.
Ein ausgeprägter Sinn für Humor ist vielleicht die stärkste Waffe gegen die Unmenschlichkeit. Der Autor setzt die gesamte Palette der Satire ein, mit Witz, Hohn und Spott wird die ganze Absurdität der Barbarei erst richtig sichtbar. Besonders gelungen sind seine Dialoge mit den befehlshabenden Eliten, die er mit subtiler Ironie vorführt.
Malaparte berichtet als Ich-Erzähler von seinen Missionen in Skandinavien, Polen, Deutschland, der Ukraine und dem Balkan, wo er meist bei honorablen Persönlichkeiten zu Gast ist und seinen Gesprächspartnern wiederum Episoden und Anekdoten von seinen Reisen zum Besten gibt. Diese Form des Geschichtenerzählens innerhalb der Geschichten erinnert an Klassiker wie Boccaccios Decamerone oder Tausendundeine Nacht. Der damit erzeugte Eindruck des Fabulierens steht im Widerspruch zur Form der journalistischen Reportage und wirft die berechtigte Frage nach der tatsächlichen Authentizität der Episoden auf.
Alle erwähnten Personen sind jedenfalls historisch gesichert und auch einige besonders abartig erscheinende Kriegsereignisse sind belastbar dokumentiert. Viele Anekdoten dürften jedoch geflunkert sein, wie der nackte Himmler, der in der finnischen Sauna mit Birkenzweigen traktiert wird oder die Anwesenheit des legendären Max Schmeling am Tisch von Hans Frank, zumindest gibt es dafür keinerlei Hinweise in historischen Dokumenten.
In Die Haut , seinem zweiten Roman (den ich, nebenbei bemerkt, noch besser finde), gibt Malaparte selbst einen anschaulichen Hinweis auf seinen Umgang mit Fakt und Fiktion: Beim Essen mit amerikanischen und französischen Offizieren schockiert er diese mit der Behauptung, die abgetrennte Hand eines am selben Tag schwer verletzten Marokkaners sei in die Hammelsuppe gefallen. Zum Beweis fischt er (Hammel-)Knöchelchen aus seinem Teller und ordnet sie als glaubhaftes Skelett einer menschlichen Hand auf dem Tisch an.
War Curzio Malaparte der eigentliche Begründer des New Journalism, lange vor Truman Capote und Tom Wolfe? Er vermischt jedenfalls erfolgreich journalistische und literarische Formen, Reportage und Roman. Was tatsächlich so stattgefunden haben könnte und was tatsächlich so stattgefunden hat, bilden zusammen oft einen stimmigeren Eindruck der Wirklichkeit als nüchterne Dokumentation und sind zugleich Ausdruck künstlerischer Kreativität. Das Mäandern zwischen Tatsache und Dichtung entspricht auch Malapartes widersprüchlich schillernder Persönlichkeit und ist die eigentliche Stärke seiner Kunst.
Kaputt wurde in 15 Sprachen übersetzt und war ein internationaler Bestseller (in Deutschland ein Skandal). Malaparte war in seiner Zeit nicht nur als Autor und Journalist, auch als Salonlöwe, extravaganter Querkopf und Enfant terrible bekannt wie ein bunter Hund.
Schade, dass seine von ihm selbst entworfene Villa auf Capri, die von der NYT als das schönste Haus der Welt gekürt wurde und in Jean Luc Godards Le Mépris (Die Verachtung) mit Brigitte Bardot als Kulisse diente, heute noch berühmt ist, Malaparte selbst und seine Bücher aber fast vergessen sind.
Curzio Malaparte hatte 1940 bis 43 als Offizier der italienischen Streitkräfte und offizieller Kriegsberichterstatter des Corriere della Sera Zugang zu den höchsten Kreisen der Achsenmächte und zum Kriegsgeschehen an der Nord- und Ostfront. Seine Aufzeichnungen bilden die Basis für dieses erschütternde Buch.
Es erzielt seine ungeheuerliche Wirkung durch die Gegenüberstellung von Grausamkeit, Elend und Tod an der Front und in den zerstörten Städten und der Dekadenz, der Selbstherrlichkeit und dem Zynismus in den Palästen der Machthaber. Es dokumentiert die unterschiedlichsten Facetten dieser dunklen Epoche Europas und stellt den Irrsinn von Totalitarismus, Krieg und Größenwahn mit allen Mitteln bloß. Es entsteht ein Riesenrundgemälde aus schockierendem Realismus, Groteske, Reportage, Ironie, Reflexionen z.B. über »German Angst«, aber auch aus erstaunlichen Bildern von Menschen, Stimmungen und Landschaften - und nicht zuletzt von Pferden, Ratten, Hunden, Vögeln und Fliegen - die jeweils einen Teil des Buches als Leitmotiv begleiten.
Zwangsarbeiterinnen aus den besetzten Gebieten gehen abends heim, müde, verschmutzt, schwarz von Maschinenöl, das Haar verrußt von fliegendem Eisenstaub, die Haut an Gesicht und Händen von Säuren geätzt, die Augen fahl umrändert mit Ringen der Müdigkeit, der Angst und der Sorge, und kurz darauf parlieren an der Gästetafel der italienischen Botschaft die jungen deutschen Damen, ihre Toiletten kamen aus Paris, aus Rom, aus Stockholm, aus Madrid, sie wurden in den Koffern der diplomatischen Kuriere eingeschmuggelt, zusammen mit Parfüms, Puder, Schuhen, Handschuhen und Wäsche und in ihren Gesichtern die gleiche Beklemmung, die gleiche Angst, nur beschmutzt und getrübt von anmaßender Sinnlichkeit, von schamlosem Hochmut, von einer traurigen moralischen Gleichgültigkeit.
Aber nicht nur die Heftigkeit dieser Szenerien fasziniert, Malaparte beschreibt Landschaften und Stimmungen, Architektur und Interieurs überaus detailliert und auch in poetischen Tönen und schafft so zwischen aufwühlenden Momenten immer wieder beschauliche Ruhepunkte. Die Schilderungen der Charaktere, deren Habitus, Physiognomie und Psychologie sind sprachlich originell, sehr detailliert ausgearbeitet und zeugen von Gespür und Menschenkenntnis.
Ein ausgeprägter Sinn für Humor ist vielleicht die stärkste Waffe gegen die Unmenschlichkeit. Der Autor setzt die gesamte Palette der Satire ein, mit Witz, Hohn und Spott wird die ganze Absurdität der Barbarei erst richtig sichtbar. Besonders gelungen sind seine Dialoge mit den befehlshabenden Eliten, die er mit subtiler Ironie vorführt.
Malaparte berichtet als Ich-Erzähler von seinen Missionen in Skandinavien, Polen, Deutschland, der Ukraine und dem Balkan, wo er meist bei honorablen Persönlichkeiten zu Gast ist und seinen Gesprächspartnern wiederum Episoden und Anekdoten von seinen Reisen zum Besten gibt. Diese Form des Geschichtenerzählens innerhalb der Geschichten erinnert an Klassiker wie Boccaccios Decamerone oder Tausendundeine Nacht. Der damit erzeugte Eindruck des Fabulierens steht im Widerspruch zur Form der journalistischen Reportage und wirft die berechtigte Frage nach der tatsächlichen Authentizität der Episoden auf.
Alle erwähnten Personen sind jedenfalls historisch gesichert und auch einige besonders abartig erscheinende Kriegsereignisse sind belastbar dokumentiert. Viele Anekdoten dürften jedoch geflunkert sein, wie der nackte Himmler, der in der finnischen Sauna mit Birkenzweigen traktiert wird oder die Anwesenheit des legendären Max Schmeling am Tisch von Hans Frank, zumindest gibt es dafür keinerlei Hinweise in historischen Dokumenten.
In Die Haut , seinem zweiten Roman (den ich, nebenbei bemerkt, noch besser finde), gibt Malaparte selbst einen anschaulichen Hinweis auf seinen Umgang mit Fakt und Fiktion: Beim Essen mit amerikanischen und französischen Offizieren schockiert er diese mit der Behauptung, die abgetrennte Hand eines am selben Tag schwer verletzten Marokkaners sei in die Hammelsuppe gefallen. Zum Beweis fischt er (Hammel-)Knöchelchen aus seinem Teller und ordnet sie als glaubhaftes Skelett einer menschlichen Hand auf dem Tisch an.
War Curzio Malaparte der eigentliche Begründer des New Journalism, lange vor Truman Capote und Tom Wolfe? Er vermischt jedenfalls erfolgreich journalistische und literarische Formen, Reportage und Roman. Was tatsächlich so stattgefunden haben könnte und was tatsächlich so stattgefunden hat, bilden zusammen oft einen stimmigeren Eindruck der Wirklichkeit als nüchterne Dokumentation und sind zugleich Ausdruck künstlerischer Kreativität. Das Mäandern zwischen Tatsache und Dichtung entspricht auch Malapartes widersprüchlich schillernder Persönlichkeit und ist die eigentliche Stärke seiner Kunst.
Kaputt wurde in 15 Sprachen übersetzt und war ein internationaler Bestseller (in Deutschland ein Skandal). Malaparte war in seiner Zeit nicht nur als Autor und Journalist, auch als Salonlöwe, extravaganter Querkopf und Enfant terrible bekannt wie ein bunter Hund.
Schade, dass seine von ihm selbst entworfene Villa auf Capri, die von der NYT als das schönste Haus der Welt gekürt wurde und in Jean Luc Godards Le Mépris (Die Verachtung) mit Brigitte Bardot als Kulisse diente, heute noch berühmt ist, Malaparte selbst und seine Bücher aber fast vergessen sind.
September 5, 2020
4 ½ *.
Ο πόλεμος των μετόπισθεν, η υποκρισία, εγκατάλειψη και αδιαφορία των ήδη χαμένων, οι γκροτέσκες φιγούρες και σκηνές οι οποίες είναι τόσο σουρρεαλιστικές που, στα δικά μου μάτια τουλάχιστον, φαντάζουν απόλυτα αληθινές. Δεν θέλω να αναφερθώ σε συγκεκριμένες περιγραφές, θα αφαιρούσα πολλά από την ομορφία της απόδοσης και τον πλούτο της γλώσσας αλλά και του χωρίς μελοδραματισμούς συναισθήματος. Ο Μαλαπάρτε ήταν, από ό,τι διαβάζω, ένα ζωντανό εκκρεμές και αυτό τον καθιστά γήινο και όχι λογοτεχνικό, αλλά και διαυγή σε ό,τι αφορά την κρίση του, καθώς στο μόνο στο οποίο δείχνει να πιστεύει είναι μία ιδιότυπη ανθρωπιά, αμελητέα ποσότητα σε έναν κόσμο διαβρωμένο, χρεωκοπημένο, σε μία Ευρώπη που δεν είχε, δεν έχει και άγνωστο αν ποτέ θα αποκτήσει, όραμα και ήθος.
Το Καπούτ δεν είναι χρονικό πολέμου, και δεν διαθέτει την παραμικρή γραμμική δομή. Είναι ένα χρονογράφημα στιγμών, ανθρώπων που σε άλλα, εκτός βιβλίου, γεγονότα έχουν πρωταγωνιστήσει, αλλά εδώ δείχνουν μόνο τον ηθικό και διανοητικό τους ξεπεσμό. Η Φινλανδία, η Ουκρανία, η Ρωσία, ίδια η Ιταλία, όλα, όλοι βρωμάνε και ξεχνάνε με το ποτό, την συκοφαντία και την προσωπική καταδίκη. Ο πόλεμος αυτός, η μελέτη και ανάγνωση του οποίου συνεχίζει να μας διεγείρει, κάπως διαστροφικά νομίζω και όχι μόνο χάριν της ιστορικής μνήμης, παρουσιάζεται στο Καπούτ όχι ως μία αέναη μάχη αλλά ως μία διαρκής πτώση του ανθρώπινου πολιτισμού. Ως ο απόλυτος, σύγχρονος, ξεπεσμός.
Μοναδική, μικρή ίσως,ένσταση, αλλά και αυτόματη αντίδραση, ήταν η σχετική αδιαφορία μου στις υπέρ του προτιμητέου λυρικές περιγραφές, οι οποίες αν και εξυπηρετούν την απόδοση της ειρωνείας μεταξύ πολεμικής φρίκης και πανέμορφης φύσης, διαρκούσαν σε ορισμένα σημεία περισσότερο από ό,τι προσωπικά προτιμώ. Call a spade a spade, το προτιμώ, το ίδιο επέλεξε, στα περισσότερα σημεία και ο Μαλαπάρτε, αλλά ήταν Ιταλός, κι έτσι δεν μπορούσε να αποφύγει την κάπως εκτενέστερη φιλοσοφική ανάλυση της κόλασης που έζησε, κι ας μην πολέμησε ποτέ.
Πολύ σημαντικό και απρόσμενα πρωτότυπο, στην γραφή και ατμόσφαιρα, έργο, έντονη απόδοση της (υποδόριας ή μη) βίας, ακόμα και στις ωμότερες περιγραφές του, και το «Δέρμα» είναι στις άμεσες επόμενες προτεραιότητές μου.
Ο πόλεμος των μετόπισθεν, η υποκρισία, εγκατάλειψη και αδιαφορία των ήδη χαμένων, οι γκροτέσκες φιγούρες και σκηνές οι οποίες είναι τόσο σουρρεαλιστικές που, στα δικά μου μάτια τουλάχιστον, φαντάζουν απόλυτα αληθινές. Δεν θέλω να αναφερθώ σε συγκεκριμένες περιγραφές, θα αφαιρούσα πολλά από την ομορφία της απόδοσης και τον πλούτο της γλώσσας αλλά και του χωρίς μελοδραματισμούς συναισθήματος. Ο Μαλαπάρτε ήταν, από ό,τι διαβάζω, ένα ζωντανό εκκρεμές και αυτό τον καθιστά γήινο και όχι λογοτεχνικό, αλλά και διαυγή σε ό,τι αφορά την κρίση του, καθώς στο μόνο στο οποίο δείχνει να πιστεύει είναι μία ιδιότυπη ανθρωπιά, αμελητέα ποσότητα σε έναν κόσμο διαβρωμένο, χρεωκοπημένο, σε μία Ευρώπη που δεν είχε, δεν έχει και άγνωστο αν ποτέ θα αποκτήσει, όραμα και ήθος.
Το Καπούτ δεν είναι χρονικό πολέμου, και δεν διαθέτει την παραμικρή γραμμική δομή. Είναι ένα χρονογράφημα στιγμών, ανθρώπων που σε άλλα, εκτός βιβλίου, γεγονότα έχουν πρωταγωνιστήσει, αλλά εδώ δείχνουν μόνο τον ηθικό και διανοητικό τους ξεπεσμό. Η Φινλανδία, η Ουκρανία, η Ρωσία, ίδια η Ιταλία, όλα, όλοι βρωμάνε και ξεχνάνε με το ποτό, την συκοφαντία και την προσωπική καταδίκη. Ο πόλεμος αυτός, η μελέτη και ανάγνωση του οποίου συνεχίζει να μας διεγείρει, κάπως διαστροφικά νομίζω και όχι μόνο χάριν της ιστορικής μνήμης, παρουσιάζεται στο Καπούτ όχι ως μία αέναη μάχη αλλά ως μία διαρκής πτώση του ανθρώπινου πολιτισμού. Ως ο απόλυτος, σύγχρονος, ξεπεσμός.
Μοναδική, μικρή ίσως,ένσταση, αλλά και αυτόματη αντίδραση, ήταν η σχετική αδιαφορία μου στις υπέρ του προτιμητέου λυρικές περιγραφές, οι οποίες αν και εξυπηρετούν την απόδοση της ειρωνείας μεταξύ πολεμικής φρίκης και πανέμορφης φύσης, διαρκούσαν σε ορισμένα σημεία περισσότερο από ό,τι προσωπικά προτιμώ. Call a spade a spade, το προτιμώ, το ίδιο επέλεξε, στα περισσότερα σημεία και ο Μαλαπάρτε, αλλά ήταν Ιταλός, κι έτσι δεν μπορούσε να αποφύγει την κάπως εκτενέστερη φιλοσοφική ανάλυση της κόλασης που έζησε, κι ας μην πολέμησε ποτέ.
Πολύ σημαντικό και απρόσμενα πρωτότυπο, στην γραφή και ατμόσφαιρα, έργο, έντονη απόδοση της (υποδόριας ή μη) βίας, ακόμα και στις ωμότερες περιγραφές του, και το «Δέρμα» είναι στις άμεσες επόμενες προτεραιότητές μου.
September 3, 2023
این کتاب برای من یک معنای ویژه دارد، دوست عزیز به ناچار مشهوری که دیگر نیست سالها پیش این کتاب را آورد که من بخوانم ومن بخشی را خواندم وباید کتاب را می بُرد به شهری دیگر که دانشجو بود. مدتها بود که دوست داشتم بخوانمش وامسال چاپ چهارمش را با ترجمه درخشان استاد قاضی گرفتم از همان صفحات نخست وفصلی به نام خانۀ گرمانت متوجه اثر پذیری اش از جست وجوی پروست شدم وبعد که خواندم دیدم این گونه است واو به صراحت از پروست یاد می کند اما گرچه به بیان پروست نزدیک شده است وبخش اساسی ماجراها در جمع های خاص وحین گفت وگو به سبک جست وجو پیش می رود اما موضوع تلخ کتاب وسخن از جنگ جهانی دوم تفاوت دنیاهای مالاپارته وپروست را به نیکی نشان می دهد الحق از خواندن اثر لذت بردم وبهره مند شدم
May 11, 2024
Curzio Malaparte travelled around Europe during World War 2 in service of the Italian government and as a journalist, witnessing the Eastern front, Poland, Finland, Romania, Ukraine. Here he creates a (mostly) fictional account of what he had seen and experienced. As such, the content is grim and brutal revealing a diseased continent in turmoil and decay, grasping at ideology and destiny, all while the bodies pile up. It is an account which is honest in its descriptions of the horrors of war but somewhat less convincing in its moral stance.
Firstly, it should be noted that Malaparte's writing can often be truly exquisite. It is descriptive and romantic all while being engaging and entertaining. There are moments of levity and decadence (which I disliked and we will get to that) but when he's being serious, describing the dead suffocated Jews falling out of the train, the frozen bodies, the prostitutes, when he's setting the scene and exposing the moral poison in the veins of his (often) caricatured characters, he is at his best and conjures up language that is fluid, creative, and mesmerising.
Ultimately the combination of his prose and the war content makes for a fascinating reading experience. But then we come to the issue of Malaparte's complicity. Italians have always had a tendency to pretend they were always with the allies and Malaparte is no different. As he dines on succulent meals with high ranking Nazis, he is keen to impart his superior opinion that these people are indeed monsters and yet if that were so, why does he so readily accept their invitations and glasses of wine? There is a distinct feeling when reading the book that Malaparte is waiting to see which way the wind will blow before making any firm commitment. One suspects had the Nazis won the war he would have tweaked a few chapters here and there but ultimately published the same book. There is something unquestionably distasteful and inauthentic about his putative sense of grief and shame. It stinks of being sorry... because you got caught.
That being said, the book is still magnificent. He so desperately wants to be Proust but doesn't quite have what it takes. There are moments when he comes close but certainly not enough of them. And then there are too many chapters where rich people have self-indulgent and condescending conversations. A good editor could have done wonders for Malaparte. It's close to being something glorious but never quite gets there.
Firstly, it should be noted that Malaparte's writing can often be truly exquisite. It is descriptive and romantic all while being engaging and entertaining. There are moments of levity and decadence (which I disliked and we will get to that) but when he's being serious, describing the dead suffocated Jews falling out of the train, the frozen bodies, the prostitutes, when he's setting the scene and exposing the moral poison in the veins of his (often) caricatured characters, he is at his best and conjures up language that is fluid, creative, and mesmerising.
Hearing Alesi's voice the prisoners saw opening before their eyes that free, limitless view, lit by a clear, even, mellow light which, falling from above, tinged the valleys with transparent half shadows, pierced the secret of the woods, revealed the mystery of the shining silvery rivers and lakes at the end of the plain and the delicate tremor of the sea.
In the warm dining room the light of two large, silver candelabra standing in the centre of the table, delicate and warm, melted into the reflection of the ice-bound sea and of the snow covered square, breaking on the frosty windowpanes with a harsh violence.
That the wheels of his "Stork" gliding over the grass of the landing field would touch off a mine, and he would disappear among a cluster of red flowers in a sudden explosion, and only his blue linen handkerchief with his white embroidered initials would drop intact on the grass of the airport.
Ultimately the combination of his prose and the war content makes for a fascinating reading experience. But then we come to the issue of Malaparte's complicity. Italians have always had a tendency to pretend they were always with the allies and Malaparte is no different. As he dines on succulent meals with high ranking Nazis, he is keen to impart his superior opinion that these people are indeed monsters and yet if that were so, why does he so readily accept their invitations and glasses of wine? There is a distinct feeling when reading the book that Malaparte is waiting to see which way the wind will blow before making any firm commitment. One suspects had the Nazis won the war he would have tweaked a few chapters here and there but ultimately published the same book. There is something unquestionably distasteful and inauthentic about his putative sense of grief and shame. It stinks of being sorry... because you got caught.
That being said, the book is still magnificent. He so desperately wants to be Proust but doesn't quite have what it takes. There are moments when he comes close but certainly not enough of them. And then there are too many chapters where rich people have self-indulgent and condescending conversations. A good editor could have done wonders for Malaparte. It's close to being something glorious but never quite gets there.
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