Guido Bonsaver. Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. 405 pp. $35.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-8020-9496-4.

Reviewed by Silvia Valisa

Published on H-Italy (March, 2008)

The interest in Fascist editorial and ideologi‐ question the notion of absolute consistency that is cal politics has produced some excellent work in often ascribed to "censorship" as a phenomenon. the last decade, including Giorgio Fabre's L'elenco: He discusses the role that publishers and authors censura fascista, editoria e autori ebrei (1998), de‐ came to have in terms of practices of preventive voted to the regime's racial politics; as well as censorship and/or self-censorship. He, thus, ad‐ Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Fascist Modernities: Italy, dresses the issue of censorship as a hinge point of 1922-1945 (2001) and Marla S. Stone's The Patron the relations between state and cultural agents, State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (1998), relations that occur "sometimes in oppositional both of which address state-culture relations dur‐ terms but more often in self-adjusting, complicit ing the Fascist regime. Guido Bonsaver's new vol‐ ones" (p. 5). Such a perspective contributes to ume, Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy, Bonsaver's success in discussing the complexity of adds to these an idiosyncratic, thoroughly re‐ cultural practices of modern Italy. His book is a searched, and very readable portrait of what it fundamental contribution to the study of literary meant to be a writer and/or a cultural operator culture during the Fascist years. during the ventennio. (In 2005, Bonsaver also edit‐ Bonsaver organizes his research along the ed, together with Robert Gordon, the proceedings "three distinguishable phases of Fascist censor‐ of a conference, Culture, Censorship and the State ship" (p. 9). In the frst phase, from 1922 to 1933, in Twentieth Century Italy.) the pre-existing conditions of censorship in Italy As this new monograph cogently confrms, are examined, while accounting for Benito Mus‐ "Fascist censorship was not a monolithic and solini's enforcement of a more explicit set of rules tightly coordinated machine of repression" (p. 5). and for his progressive centralization of cultural Bonsaver illustrates the extent to which censor‐ policies. In the second period, covering the years ship needs to be contextualized, historicized, and 1934-39, Bonsaver reviews the more professional‐ examined from multiple standpoints to call into ized censorship system put in place and the at‐ H-Net Reviews tempts to create an "Italian" culture, with all that solini ordered that three copies of each new book entailed in terms of gender and racial profling. be submitted to, respectively, the local prefect, the For the third phase, from 1940 to 1943, he exam‐ DGPS (Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, ines the diferent issues and concerns arising responding to the head of the police) and the from the war efort and from Italy's military al‐ Press Ofce of the Head of Government (the num‐ liance with Nazi Germany, as well as the continu‐ ber grew to eight in 1939). Thus, the frst "implicit ities with the previous phase. pre-publication censorship" was set in place in In all three periods, Bonsaver also refers to 1934, although the author rightly stresses that the role played by a non-state institution, such as such directives remained legally invisible for the Vatican. In general, he contextualizes the Fas‐ much longer, as it only became an ofcial bill in cist period within a broader overview of the Ital‐ 1939 (p. 185). Bonsaver notes the tragic irony be‐ ian cultural panorama from the end of the nine‐ hind the sudden ofcial "visibility" of this law, teenth century on, thus showing the extent to since it occurred just as a diferent, much more which certain cultural and political practices re‐ serious policy was unofcially introduced, one lated to censorship were in place before Mussoli‐ with a clear anti-Semitic orientation. ni's ascent to power. For example, from Francesco The ascent to power of Adolf Hitler and his Crispi's government to post-World War I, regulato‐ quick instauration of a centralized "Ministry for ry concerns (when present) were mostly directed Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda" were toward journalistic production and periodicals, as also likely inspirations for Mussolini and his aids opposed to books, a characteristic that also ap‐ to devote an entire ministry to matters of press plies to the frst phase of Fascist censoring poli‐ and propaganda. Between 1934 and 1935, the cies. It was only from 1931 that books, both Italian Press Ofce of the Head of Government, lead by and foreign, became the object of censorship in‐ Ciano, became frst an undersecretariat and then terest in their own right, starting in particular a full-fedged ministry. Bonsaver explains that with Don Luigi Sturzo's anti-Fascist publications prefectures maintained their banning power, but and Henry Barbusse's Communist works. The the Ministero per la Stampa e Propaganda (in "frst collection of national data with regard to 1937, renamed Ministero della Cultura Popolare) books" came in 1932, when theatrical censorship became the main authority in the feld; that is, as was organized at a national scale as well (p. 25). long as Mussolini did not interfere. And, interfere If "in the early years of the regime, Fascist he did: Mussolini's own "passion for detail" led censorship was far from being an all-pervading him to often mingle in the most minute cultural and systematic process," from the beginning of matters (p. 58). (Bonsaver jokingly argues that the 1930s, the attention devoted to what could such an attitude would be considered, by contem‐ and could not be published in the Italian literary porary managerial standards, "a serious lack of realm began to increase, all the way to what Bon‐ delegating ability" [p. 58].) The results were often saver labels "a turn of the screw," as Italy entered confusing for all parties involved: as the example WWII ("giro di vite" is actually an expression used of Guido da Verona's parody of I promessi sposi by Galeazzo Ciano in his diary, in a 1938 entry on (1929) shows, censorship decisions could change anti-Semitic measures, as Bonsaver attests) (pp. very quickly because of the public's or the Vati‐ 90-91, 173). In 1934, following the scandal of can's reactions to a certain publication, and they "Mura's" (Maria Volpi) novel (Sambadù, amore ne‐ were carried out in as unofcial a manner as pos‐ gro), whose cover depicted interracial love be‐ sible. Bonsaver also gives remarkable examples of tween a white woman and an African man, Mus‐ Mussolini's "selective tolerance" toward certain writers and works ("Trilussa" [Carlo Alberto

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Salustri], Benedetto Croce, the collaborators of the by-product of a specifc political system. He, L'Enciclopedia italiana, Sem Benelli, or Luigi Ein‐ nonetheless, does an excellent job in outlining the audi's youngest son, Roberto), while he continued uncertain boundaries of "acceptance" drawn and to represent himself as "the supreme head of book redrawn by Fascist ideologues and ofcers in censorship in Fascist Italy" (pp. 63, 126). their daily dealings with literary censorship. Another telling example of the possible confu‐ Closely following Fabre's fndings in L'elenco, sions arising from the fact that two diferent state Bonsaver also discusses the question of anti- agencies (the Ministry for the Press and the pre‐ Semitism, from its early manifestations to the ef‐ fectures, responding to the police) handled mat‐ fects of the Racial Laws. He disagrees with Fabre ters of censorship was the ban on a novel by Fas‐ about the importance of Mussolini's 1939 direc‐ cist author Dino Segre, alias Pitigrilli. Disconcert‐ tives about Jewish authors and editors. In his ingly enough, in 1936, his Vergine a 18 carati ap‐ view, these were not "the turning point in the de‐ peared in the newly produced list of banned velopment of Fascist anti-Semitic policies"; he pro‐ books (the frst of these lists had been compiled poses to consider the "turn of the screw" as more by the ministry in August 1935), even as his work directly tied to Italy's involvement in World War as an informer for the Fascist police was leading II (p. 186). It remains, nonetheless, clear that, until to the arrest of, among others, Einaudi editors the end, a discrepancy between intentions and Leone Ginzburg and Cesare Pavese, for their anti- practical efects remained, although with increas‐ Fascist leanings. Bonsaver writes that "it would be ingly less space for exceptions and ad hoc solu‐ tempting to suspect that the ban on this novel was tions. Segre and Verona were the frst two authors perhaps a form of cover for Pitigrilli's spying ac‐ to experience a "blanket ban" on racial grounds in tivities. However, such a plan would have re‐ 1939, although several of their books were still quired a level of coordination" between state available in bookstores in 1941 (p. 184). Margheri‐ agencies "that would have been unprecedented ta Sarfatti's books were banned the same year, yet and of which there is no archival trace" (p. 119). her name as a periodical contributor still ap‐ In analyzing another famous instance of literary peared in "friendly" lists well into the war years, censorship, Elio Vittorini's Il garofano rosso (pub‐ arguably due to mere oversight. lished in installments in Solaria in 1933-34), Bon‐ A diferent discrimination practice that Bon‐ saver counters the postwar interpretation of such saver examines is along the lines of gender, that an episode as politically motivated by ofering a is, with respect to women. As Mura's case attests, "moral" rationale: the incriminated passages, in female writers were often at the center of censor‐ fact, concerned the protagonist's involvement ship debates, but the various cases brought for‐ with a prostitute (and not, as Vittorini claimed af‐ ward in the book (among them Gianna Manzini ter the war, more politically relevant passages). and Alba De Cespedes) seem to suggest, once For Vittorini's case, as in all the censorship cases again, a variety of approaches and reactions. Bon‐ in which "morality" was concerned (Pavese and saver brings evidence to the claim that both the Alberto Moravia's troubles with censorship might regime's daily newspaper, Mussolini's Il popolo be also exemplary of this, although, in Moravia's d'Italia, and Giuseppe Bottai's journal Primato case, his "ambiguous" racial status might have were actively banning women contributors, and counted as well), Bonsaver does not investigate skillfully details the editorial misadventures that further the topic of moral censorship in its specif‐ such a writer as Paola Masino endured during the cally Fascist declination. That is, he does not focus regime. He ultimately writes that "it is arguable specifcally on the fact that such censorship, al‐ though supposedly non-ideological, was clearly

3 H-Net Reviews that women remained the most easily attacked and marginalized group of authors" (p. 260). Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy is organized "dialectically," so as to provide, for each of the three chronological phases, an overview of the institutional context, on the one hand, and of the general trends and specifc examples of and/ or exception to the rules, on the other. This has the efect of contributing both a general picture and a vivid microhistory of the Italian cultural cli‐ mate. It is a structural choice that successfully ad‐ dresses the potential contradictions between ex‐ plicit ideological statements and concrete cultural enforcements, and that reifes the sometimes schizophrenic nature of Mussolini's cultural direc‐ tives (such as his comparison of press journalists to members of a well-tuned orchestra, absolutely "free" to play what the director chooses for them). It is also a book that cogently flls a void in the sto‐ ria dell'editoria by contributing more than a few episodes from the vicissitudes and publishing practices of many famous and lesser-known Ital‐ ian publishing houses--Gobetti, Corbaccio, Monan‐ ni, Vallecchi, Mondadori, Sonzogno, and Einaudi, among others. As such, it also draws attention to how much more could be done in terms of the his‐ tory of publishing. As every good study should do, Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy pro‐ vides excellent answers to many questions, but it opens up just as many new and compelling ones.

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Citation: Silvia Valisa. Review of Bonsaver, Guido. Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy. H-Italy, H- Net Reviews. March, 2008.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14302

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