Alessandro Sallusti and Antonio Scurati
Lite a Half past eight by Lilli Gruber, the tough fight between the director of Free Sallusti and the author Antonio Scurati. The analysis
A few days ago we witnessed “Half past eight“, from Lilli Gruberto a tough confrontation between Alessandro Sallustidirector of Libero, e Antonio Scurati author of a successful series of books on Benito Mussolini.
The discussion immediately turned to elections with an exchange that degenerates into a real quarrel.
Darkened he says that where the right governs civil rights are trampled on as in the Marches where the law is not applied abortion law. To which Sallusti talk about fake news e Darkened in return: “Fake news is his specialty”. “Lower your airs, you are obsessed with Mussolini”. Sallusti talk about the relationships of Giorgia Meloni with Viktor Orban: “It’s very easy to talk about Hungary instead of Italy, the coalition that according to the polls will lead the country has already done so on several occasions in the last 30 years ”. It’s still Sallusti: “It governs some of the most important regions of Italy, where it does not seem to me that civil rights are being trampled on”.
The news is not particularly relevant in itself, given the election period and the high tension reached by the debate but allows us to make some general considerations. Darkened has a philosophical training and it’s teacher of comparative literature at the IULM University of Milan. He won the Strega award in 2019 with “M the son of the century”- released the year before – which followed “M. the man of providence“In 2020 and”M. the last days of Europe“, Recently released. Another volume of the quadrilogy is expected.
We do not go into the technical merits of the form used by Scurati which is that of essay cleverly disguised as a historical novel, so you can ward off criticism of inaccuracies and, above all, the contained forcings. The historical novel indeed allows the author a great deal of freedom with little cost because he can always say precisely that “it is a novel” and therefore one does not have to strictly adhere to historical reality.
WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE CLASH
The fact is that we are talking about a period that has not been metabolized by critics at all in a definitive way, precisely by virtue of its temporal proximity. And here then is that it is easy to model events plastically to make them adhere to a Weltanschauung on their own wishes. Scurati is not only “obsessed with Mussolini” -As Sallusti rightly says- but he uses Mussolini to have worldwide successexcept then go around saying that he does not appreciate the Duce and his politics at all.
A bit like the atheists who make books on Christ. In addition, if the debate is projected from twenty years to the present day, Scurati attacks not only the right but the vision of the world of the current center – right, let’s say the founding values.
And then a question spontaneously arises: if Scurati does not share anything about Mussolini because then in his books he is fascinated by it and speaks well of it as well?
I don’t think this is just a simple commercial operation. It is known in fact that some historical figures, mainly Hitler and Mussolini, “sell” all the time, as if the world public opinion was somehow fascinated by them and perhaps Scurati is also fascinated by the Predappio blacksmith who for twenty years ruled the Italy and was a protagonist of international politics.
A similar case occurred in 2018 with the film “I’m back” from Luca Miniero in which the story of a Mussolini – superbly interpreted by Massimo Popolizio – who returns to Rome, in the present, was told. Needless to say, the film is a reworking of David Wnendt’s “He is Back”, a 2015 German film about Adolf Hitler’s return to present-day Germany. In both cases, directors and actors have declared themselves against Hitler and Mussolinibut they have wisely exploited its enormous popularity.
It is good to clarify that both Scurati’s book and the films do not speak badly of Mussolini and Hitler and this is already evident from the titles used.
Another similar case is that of Roberto Saviano who with “Gomorra” had a worldwide success but then the television series he collaborated on also attracted criticism from the magistrates themselves for the danger of emulation or what could be called the “Hell effect”.
In fact – as is well known – the part of the Divine Comedy that we read with the greatest interest is precisely Hell, Purgatory is barely tolerable, Paradise is boring.
In light of this, we would like to suggest the title of the next fourth book to Scurati: “S., the charm of M.”. We are sure it would be equally successful.
#SallustiScurati #clash #criticize #obsessed #Mussolini