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The Construction of a Masculine Warrior Ideal in the Italian Narratives of the First World War, 1915–68

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2014

MARCO MONDINI
MARCO MONDINI*
Affiliation:
Istituto Storico Italo Germanico, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Via Santa Croce, 77 I-38122, Trento, Italy; [email protected]
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Abstract

In Italy from the 1920s to the post-1945 period, soldiers’ autobiographical writings represented the ‘theatre of memory’ to the new generations: they handed down the meaning of intervention, mobilisation and sacrifice. They are characterised by two shared elements. The first one is the recurring theme of self-sacrifice. At the core of all war stories there is the experience of fighting and death; this is a liminal experience that fixes one's relation to war. The second one is the author's profile. The narrator of the ‘warrior phenomenon’ is almost invariably a young reserve officer, which means, in the majority of cases, a twenty-year old middle-class man, often a high-school graduate or a university student. The most powerful leitmotiv running through the mixed array of texts and genres that make up the ‘narrative field’ of the Great War is the metaphor of the military community as a ‘family’. Young officers, typically former students from a city background and interventionists at heart, consistently referred to their admission to the ‘family’ of soldiers at war as a life-changing transition: they had left behind their ordinary bourgeois existence, comfortable and safe (and therefore ‘unmanly’), to step into a new world, a dimension of death and suffering, but also comradeship and solidarity. Pure and unshakeable, genuine and disinterested, brotherhood in arms is so deeply felt that it borders on the intensity of a homoerotic relationship, although the latter is rarely made explicit.

La construction d’un idéal masculin du guerrier dans les narratifs italiens de la première guerre mondiale, 1915–68

En Italie, des années vingt à la période de l’après-1945, les écrits autobiographiques des soldats représentaient pour la nouvelle génération le ‘théâtre de la mémoire’: ils transmettaient le sens de l’intervention, de la mobilisation et du sacrifice. Ces récits se caractérisent par deux éléments communs. Le premier est le thème du sacrifice de soi: au cœur de tous les récits de guerre, il y a l’expérience du combat et de la mort; il s’agit là d’une expérience liminale qui établit le rapport à la guerre. Le second est le profil de l’auteur: le narrateur du phénomène du guerrier est presque exclusivement un jeune officier de réserve, ce qui signifie dans la majorité des cas un homme issu de la classe moyenne, âgé d’une vingtaine d’années, souvent bachelier ou étudiant. Le leitmotiv le plus puissant qui relie le mélange hétéroclite de textes et de genres constituant le ‘champ narratif’ de la Grande Guerre est la métaphore de la communauté militaire en tant que ‘famille’. Les jeunes officiers, généralement d’anciens étudiants issus d’un milieu urbain et fondamentalement interventionnistes, présentaient tous leur accueil au sein de la ‘famille’ des soldats en guerre comme une transition transformatrice: ils avaient laissé derrière eux leur existence bourgeoise ordinaire, confortable et sûre (et donc ‘peu masculine’) pour pénétrer dans un monde nouveau, une dimension de mort et de souffrance, mais aussi de camaraderie et de solidarité. Pure et inébranlable, authentique et désintéressée, la fraternité des armes est si profondément ressentie qu’elle approche en intensité des relations homoérotiques, bien que cela ne soit que rarement explicitement reconnu.

Die konstruktion des ideals vom männlichen soldaten in italienischen schilderungen des ersten weltkriegs, 1915–68

Seit den zwanziger Jahren bis nach 1945 verfasste autobiografische Schriften italienischer Soldaten veranschaulichten den nachwachsenden Generationen das „Theater der Erinnerung“: Sie sorgten für die Überlieferung ihres Konzepts von Intervention, Mobilisierung und Aufopferung. Zwei Elemente sind ihnen allen gemein: Erstens zieht sich das Thema Selbstaufopferung wie ein roter Faden durch die Kriegserinnerungen. Im Mittelpunkt jeder Schilderung steht das Kampf- und Todeserlebnis. Es ist eine Schwellenerfahrung, die das Verhältnis des Soldaten zum Krieg prägt. Die zweite Gemeinsamkeit ist das Profil des Verfassers: Das Soldatenideal wird fast ausnahmslos von jungen Reserveoffizieren geschildert. In den meisten Fällen handelt es sich um Männer aus der Mittelschicht im Alter von rund zwanzig Jahren, häufig um Abiturienten oder Studenten. Das eindrucksvollste Leitmotiv in dem heterogenen Spektrum von Texten und Genres, aus denen das ‘narrative Feld’ des Ersten Weltkriegs besteht, ist die Metapher der ‘Familie’ für die Soldatengemeinschaft. Junge Offiziere – im Allgemeinen ehemalige Studenten städtischer Herkunft und mit interventionistischer Grundhaltung – beschreiben ihre Aufnahme in die ‘Soldatenfamilie’ durchweg als lebensveränderten Moment des Übergangs: Sie hatten ihre bequeme und sichere bürgerliche (und daher ‘unmännliche’) Existenz hinter sich gelassen und eine neue Welt beschritten: eine von Tod und Leiden, aber auch von Kameraderie und Solidarität geprägte neue Dimension. Waffenbrüderschaft wird als rein und unerschütterlich, authentisch und uneigennützig dargestellt. Sie ist eine tiefempfundene Erfahrung, die an die Intensität einer homoerotischen Beziehung grenzt, obwohl dies selten ausdrücklich so formuliert wird.

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Articles
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Contemporary European History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , August 2014 , pp. 307 - 327
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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