Kurt Erich von Suckert, alias Malaparte: A Maledetto Toscano (Part 3)
We conclude with the excerpt titled “The Widows” (Le vedove), which contains observations on social customs that may seem outdated today but remain partly valid.
My “Battibecco” column on that difficult profession of being a widow earned me a hundred letters from widows all over Italy. Not all, of course, poisoned their husbands with rat poison; not all were robbed of their legitimate inheritance by their husbands’ relatives; not all were reduced to the status of servants by mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. Yet all of them—even those less grieved by their loss, even the less “inconsolabili”—declare themselves dissatisfied with their condition as widows. Not because they cannot get used to the void left by their husband in the double bed, but because they feel surrounded by suspicion, ill will, and gossip. This is the ambiguous atmosphere that always surrounds a widow, especially if she is young and beautiful. In a country like ours, of ancient superstitions, feudal prejudices, and vulgar moralism—which is nothing but a low form of hypocrisy—the existence of widows is spied upon and judged through a veil of mystery. The sexual life of widows: this is the ugly and stupid “mystery” that excites everyone’s imagination and malice. What is not forgiven of widows is being women.
America (and modern, civilized countries in general), where husbands almost always die before their wives, is a paradise for widows. The American widow is a public institution. Everything is public about her. Her role is that of a guardian of morality in every field of public and private life, especially in politics. It is the widows, organized in extremely powerful associations, who dominate American public opinion. In Italy, on the contrary, and generally in Latin countries, a woman, as soon as she becomes a widow, is pushed aside, to the margins of family and social life, becoming a stranger, an intruder, an “enemy,” a sort of ghost without rights or authority. If a widow here remarries, public opinion condemns her without mercy.
In many regions of Italy, a wife who betrays a living husband commits a crime infinitely less serious than a widow who betrays her deceased husband. A widow’s wedding is a pretext for nocturnal noise, of ancient pagan origin, which hides contempt, hatred, and a veiled threat under the guise of a vulgar joke. And while in America and other civilized countries, widowhood is a second youth for a woman, a sort of public revenge on that limitation of freedom that marriage inevitably is, in Italy and Latin countries, widowhood is premature old age, the renunciation of life’s joys, the desolation of a cold and solitary existence, made even colder and more painful by public ill-will and slander.
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Having closed this long parenthesis on “Malaparte and Women,” let us add that the writer loved—besides himself—animals, particularly dogs. He owned many and took them with him on his travels around Italy.
Among them was the mixed-breed dog FEBO, to whom he dedicated a touching page in his book La Pelle (The Skin).
Continuing his biography, in 1938 we find him as a correspondent for the Corriere della Sera in East Africa, and later in Russia and on the Finnish front (1939).
In 1940, when Italy entered the war, he was recalled to service and sent to the French front and then to the Eastern front, following the German army and the Italian army in Russia.
From these experiences, some of his most famous books were born: Il Volga nasce in Europa (1943), Il sole è cieco (1941), and above all, the famous—both praised and reviled—Kaputt (1944).
(TO BE CONTINUED)
Alberto Pachera
