Chapter 1 - Mussolini the Critic

Summary

“Mussolini the Critic” explores the dictator’s engagement with his preferred contemporary dramatists: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Luigi Pirandello, and George Bernard Shaw. Moving from a recounting of il Duce’s personal acquaintance with the writers into a discussion of how he interpreted their works (drawing on his writings and interviews and various third-party testimonies), the chapter identifies the theatrical traditions that inspired the dictator and shaped his thinking, and works through the philosophical elements that united the authors and drew Mussolini to them: Nietzschean exaltations of the will to power; the command of word and ritual in moving the modern masses; the celebration of intuitive action; and, most surprisingly, a fascination for heroic, rebellious women. The chapter concludes with reflections on fascism’s reputed “aesthetic pluralism,” suggesting that the ideological affinities in such apparently different authors counters the reigning postulate that this perceived pluralism is the result of an ideological vacuity in fascist thought.