Egocentric, narcissistic, opportunistic, provocative, a social climber, turncoat and liar are just some of the terms used to describe Curzio Malaparte, but few would dispute his talent as a writer and journalist. Endowed with a dark sense of humour and a camera-like ability to describe what he observed, in his numerous books and articles he penned some of the most compelling lyrical prose of any Italian author in the early to mid-20th century. Much of what he wrote depicted with almost clinical detachment the depravity of the worst kinds of human behaviour. This was especially evident in two of his most famous books, Kaputt (published in 1944) and La Pelle (“The Skin”, 1949), based on his wartime experiences.
Born Curt Erich Suckert in Prato on June 9, 1898, to an Italian mother and German father, with whom he had little affinity, he was the third of seven children. In his youth he became interested in politics, supporting the anarchists and then the Italian Republican Party. It would be a lifetime passion that would result in him launching diverse periodicals on the subject. During World War I, at 16 years old he volunteered to go to the front with one of his brothers, first in the Garibaldi Legion, which went on to be incorporated into the French Foreign Legion. Once Italy joined the war in 1915, he became part of the Royal Army and, after fighting in both Italy and France, he was decorated. In 1918, his unit was gassed, causing permanent damage to his lungs, which forced him to jump out of the window of the hospital where he was recovering to escape the bombing.
In 1921, Malaparte published his first book, Viva Caporetto!, under his real name. It was seized almost immediately and censored for “vilification of the armed forces” because its title was an obvious allusion to the Italian defeat at Caporetto. In 1923, it was republished as La rivolta dei santi maledetti, but was censored again. It was not until 1980 that the full version was published. He only changed his name to Curzio Malaparte on Luigi Pirandello’s suggestion in 1925, as a play on Bonaparte.
Attracted by the idea of a fascist revolution, Malaparte joined the party, participating in the march on Rome in 1922, but gradually changed his mind. This resulted in him being exiled on Lipari in 1933, only to be released with the help of his friend, Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law. After the September 8 armistice in 1943, he joined the Italian Co-Belligerent Army and worked as a captain in counter espionage for the Allies for two years. A journalist since 1919, between 1939 and 1943 he was sent as a war correspondent to Ethiopia, France, Greece, the Balkans, Romania, Ukraine and Finland. During this time, despite his prior anticommunism, he became close to the Italian Communist Party, although he would eventually turn his back on them as well. Many within the Italian intelligentsia would never forgive his fascist past, while there were those amongst the communists who harboured a deep and lasting distrust towards him.
A tall, slim, handsome, dark-haired man who dressed immaculately, Malaparte was never short of female company. One notable conquest was Virginia Bourbon del Monte, the widow of Edoardo Agnelli, heir to the Fiat fortune, whom the author had intended to marry in October 1936. Virginia would pay dearly for this relationship when her father-in-law, Senator Giovanni Agnelli, threatened to take her seven children away from her because he could not abide Malaparte. Virginia chose her children over her love for him and Malaparte never married.
In 1937, Malaparte decided to build a house on the isolated, rugged cliff top of Capo Masullo, Capri. Although he claimed he financed the project with severance pay from a newspaper he worked for and from royalties from his books, how he managed to afford it and circumvent local building regulations remained puzzling.
The year before his death, Malaparte published a “lighter” book titled Maledetti Toscani (“Those Cursed Tuscans”), which had taken him 20 years of reflection to complete. In it, he examines what he considers to be the main Tuscan traits with special attention paid to his own townspeople. Translated into several European languages, the book remains essential reading for lovers of the region.
An inveterate traveller who lived in many different countries, Malaparte fell ill during a visit to Mao’s China, a place and people he admired. Returning to Italy, he was hospitalized in Rome where, after being baptized a Catholic, he died aged 59 of lung cancer on July 19, 1957. He was buried in a mausoleum at Spazzavento, on top of Monte Le Coste, near Prato, where one of the two inscriptions taken from Maledetti Toscani reads, in his words, “I am from Prato, I am happy to be from Prato and if I had not been born in Prato I would like not to have come into the world.”
