Curzio Malaparte Book order

"Every "diary" is a portrait, chronicle, tale, record, history. Notes taken day by day are not a diary but merely moments selected at random in the current of time, in the river of the passing day. A "diary" is a tale: the tale of a tranche de vie (the very definition of the novel, according to one celebrated school), of a period, a year, many years of our life. And as life follows the logic of a tale, it has a beginning, middle, and end (a life is a series of beginnings, middles, and ends, within the closed circle of the beginning, middle, and end of life, in the circle of life). It's not true that a "diary" begins by chance, progresses by chance, has no conclusion but the end of life. A diary, like every tale, calls for a beginning, a plot, and a denouement. The subject of Diary of a Foreigner in Paris is my return to Paris after a fourteen-year absence. It's my discovery of a new France, of a new French people. It's the portrait of a moment in the history of the French nation, of French civilization, that coincides with a particular moment in my life, in the story of my life. I don't claim to be breaking new ground in the "diary" genre. I'm simply suggesting that a diary is a tale, as a play is a tale. And now I arrive at my point: a "diary" is a theatrical work brought to the boards of the page. It's the point at which a tale comes closest to the theater. Everything there tends toward an ending, a conclusion, following the classical rules of unity, but centered on the character called "I." It's the Das Da, Kafka's "present moment," brought to the stage-page. My "diary," at least, is this."-- Provided by publisher

"Perhaps only the impeccably perverse imagination of Curzio Malaparte could have conceived of The Kremlin Ball, which might be described as Proust in the corridors of Soviet power. The book is set at the end of the 1920s, when the Great Terror may have been nothing more than a twinkle in Stalin's eye, but when the revolution was accompanied by a growing sense of doom. In Malaparte's vision it is from his nightly opera box, rather than the Kremlin, that Stalin surveys Soviet high society, its scandals and amours and intrigues among beauties and bureaucrats, including the legendary ballerina Marina Semyonova and Olga Kameneva, a sister of the exiled Trotsky, who though a powerful politician is so consumed by dread that everywhere she goes she gives off the smell of rotting meat. This extraordinary court chronicle of Communist life (for which Malaparte also contemplated the title God Is a Killer) was published posthumously and appears now in English for the first time"--

La nobile lotta tra due campioni - e tra due volti immutabili del nostro paese.

Malaparte war Faschist, Kommunist, Wendehals, Egozentriker, Narziss, Dandy und Held und manchmal wirkt es, als habe Malaparte keine Sünde auslassen wollen, wie sie sich die Intellektuellen während der Totalitarismen des 20. Jahrhunderts haben zuschulden kommen lassen. Dass er aber zugleich ein großer Reisender, ein Kenner des alten Kontinents, einer der schärfsten Beobachter und originellsten Denker Europas war, ist kaum bekannt. Egal, ob er über die »englischen Manieren« oder die »schwedische Insel« schreibt, aus der Nachkriegsgesellschaft in Deutschland und Frankreich berichtet, oder ob er in den frühen fünfziger Jahren sich für die Welt der chilenischen Indios begeistert oder am Ende seines Lebens von Maos China fasziniert ist: Seine stilistisch unverwechselbaren Reisereportagen sind oft von einer überraschenden Weitsicht und noch in ihren Fehlurteilen erhellend. Erstmals ins Deutsche übersetzt, präsentieren sie einen ebenso eigenwilligen wie faszinierenden Beobachter der europäischen Katastrophe.

Pubblicate in varie edizioni, nel 1936, nel 1943 e, infine, nel 1954 (quella qui riproposta), queste "Fughe in prigione" sono state scritte durante i periodi trascorsi da Malaparte nel carcere romano di Regina Coeli e al confino di Lipari, dove venne inviato per i suoi atteggiamenti liberi, provocatori, non allineati al regime fascista, che anzi attaccò violentemente. A queste pagine del tempo di prigionia Malaparte volle aggiungere alcuni testi scritti in Francia e in Inghilterra poco prima dell'arresto. Si tratta di memorie, riflessioni di carattere culturale, studi letterari nei quali l'autore sembra cercare un rifugio e una via di fuga per lo spirito.

Un viaggio allucinato e infernale nella Napoli appena liberata dagli americani, un susseguirsi di storie al limite della visionarietà nei meandri di una città distrutta, sfinita, quasi in putrefazione, una grottesca rappresentazione del dolore, della bestialità, della miseria e della turpitudine: il romanzo-scandalo di Curzio Malaparte pare voler colpire con tutti i mezzi a disposizione le pigre coscienze dei lettori, proponendo un vasto e terrorizzante campionario di orrori e di abiezioni. Dal pranzo del generale Cork, in cui viene imbandita una bambina, alla vendita della ragazzina ancora vergine, al frenetico sabba omosessuale della “figliata”, si delinea a poco a poco un universo oscuro e perverso, che ha smarrito il senso della distinzione fra bene e male, e che tutti ingloba, sia vincitori che vinti, in un vischioso e insensato Nulla, ove l’unica cosa che resta da fare è «lottare e soffrire per la propria pelle».

Slovenskému čitateľovi nie je meno talianskeho spisovateľa a publicistu Curzia Malaparteho neznáme. Roku 1965 vyšiel vo Vydavateľstve politickej literatúry jeho prvý mimoriadne úspešný a známy román Kaput. V oboch svojich rozsiahlych dielach Malaparte s neobyčajnou odvahou, vtipom a pútavosťou akojeden z prvých európskych spisovateľov neľútostne strhával masku z tváre nemeckého nacizmu, ale aj osloboditeľskej americkej armády. Irónia, miestami trpká i smutná, i ostrý výsmech amerických vojakov v oslobodenom Neapoli sú o to živšie, pravdivejšie a úprimnejšie, že autor ich hlboko precítil takpovediac priamo ,,v teréne“ ako styčný dôstojník a tlmočník pri Piatej armáde. Všeobecný morálny rozklad znásobujú a rozsievajú vojaci, ktorí neprichádzajú ako skutoční osloboditelia, keďže oslobodzujú len napoly, od fašistickej pliagy, zatiaľ čo na druhej strane prinášajú anarchiu. Nevraždia obyvateľstvo, ani ho neterorizujú, ale hlboko a drsne zraňujú psychiku, najvnútornejšie vnútro oslobodených Talianov, čím len iným spôsobom mrzačia ľudskú dôstojnosť. Túto tragickú i tragikomickú skutočnosť odhaľuje Malaparte s neúprosnou, drsnou a až naturalistickou pravdivosťou.