Curzio Malaparte Kaputt (epub)

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.The happy fact that I and my manuscript were released from prison is due to the quick intervention of Ambassador Rocco, then Minister of Popular Culture and later Ambassador at Ankara, of General Castellano who met with the Allies to discuss Armistice terms, of Minister Pietromarchi, and of Counselor of the Legation Rulli, then chief of the foreign press section.Once out of prison, I left Rome and sought refuge on Capri where I awaited the arrival of the Allies and where in September, 1943, I finished the last chapter of Kaputt.Kaputt is a horribly gay and gruesome book.Its gruesome gaiety is the most extraordinary spectacle that I have witnessed in the debacle of Europe in the war years.Among the characters in this book War is of secondary importance.I am tempted to say that it serves only as a pretext, but pretexts inevitably belong to the sphere of Destiny.So in Kaputt, War is Destiny.It does not appear on the scene in any other way.War is not so much a protagonist as a spectator, in the same sense that a landscape is a spectator.War is the objective landscape of this book.The chief character is Kaputt, the gay and gruesome monster.Nothing can convey better than this hard, mysterious German word Kaputt— which literally means, "broken, finished, gone to pieces, gone to ruin, " the sense of what we are, of what Europe is—a pile of rubble.But I prefer this Kaputt Europe to the Europe of yesterday— and of twenty or thirty years ago.I prefer starting anew, rather than accepting everything as if it were an immutable heritage.Let us hope that the new era will really be new and that writers will enjoy liberty and respect, because Italian literature needs respect as much as it needs liberty I say "let us hope " not because I lack faith in liberty and its benefits—I belong to that group of people who have suffered imprisonment and deportation to the Island of Lipari for their freedom of spirit and their contribution to the cause of liberty—but because we all know how difficult it is in Italy and throughout large sections of Europe to be a human being, and how dangerous it is to be a writer.May the new era be an era of liberty and respect for everyone— including writers! Only through liberty and respect for culture can Europe be saved from the cruel days of which Montesquieu spoke in the Esprit des lois: "Thus, in the days of fables, after the floods and deluges, there came forth from the soil armed men who exterminated each other."—BOOK XXXII, CHAPTER XXIII.&MDASH;CURZIO MALAPARTEPART ONEThe HorsesI.Du côté de GuermantesPRINCE Eugene of Sweden stopped in the middle of the room."Listen," he said.A sad, yearning wail was swept with the wind through the oaks of Oakhill, the pines of Valdemarsudden Park, from beyond the inlet of the sea stretching as far as Nybroplan, in the heart of Stockholm.It was not the nostalgic sound of the ships' sirens rising from the sea to the harbor, nor the raucous cry of the seagulls,- it was a feminine voice, doleful and distracted."It is the horses of the Tivoli, the amusement park opposite the Skansen," said Prince Eugene in a low voice.We went and stood by the large windows overlooking the park, pressing our foreheads against the windowpanes that were filmed with the blue mist rising from the sea.Three white horses, followed by a little girl in a yellow dress, were limping along the path that slopes down the hill.They passed through a gate to a small beach cluttered with sloops, canoes and fishermen's boats painted green and red.It was a clear September day of almost springlike softness.Autumn was already reddening the old trees of Oakhill.Large gray ships with huge Swedish flags—a yellow cross on a blue field—painted on their bulwarks, steamed along the inlet onto which juts the headland where stands the Villa Valdemarsudden, the residence of Prince Eugene, brother of King Gustav V of Sweden.Flocks of seagulls screeched their laments, like wailing children.Below, by the docks of Nybroplan and of Strandvägen rocked white steamers that bear the quaint names of villages and islands and that ply back and forth between Stockholm and the islands.Beyond the arsenal a cloud of blue smoke was rising that a darting seagull pierced from time to time with a flash of white.The wind carried the sound of the music played by the little orchestras at Belmannere and Hasselbacken, the shouts of sailors, soldiers, girls and children crowding around acrobats, jugglers and the strolling musicians who hang about the entrance to the Skansen.Prince Eugene followed the horses with his attentive, affectionate half-closed eyes, his light eyelids traced by green veins.Seen in profile against the tired glow of sunset, his rosy face (the lips rather swollen, greedy, to which his white mustache lent a childlike gentleness, the arched nose, the high forehead crowned with curly white hair, ruffled like that of a newly awakened child) had the medallion-like cast of the Bernadotte.Of the whole Swedish royal family, Prince Eugene is the one who most resembles Napoleon's marshal, the founder of the Swedish dynasty; that clear-cut, sharp, almost hard profile contrasts strangely with the sweetness of his expression, and with the delicate elegance of his mannerisms in talking, smiling and moving his shapely hands, the Bernadotte hands with pale slender fingers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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