Mary Ann Frese Witt. The Search for Modern Tragedy: Aesthetic Fascism in Italy and France.(Book Review)

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 259. $45.00.

The dust jacket informs us that in this study, Mary Ann Frese Witt "explores the work of a group of European writers and artists who came to fascism by way of aesthetics." That is a fair description, but it might be said of this group that their art was as regrettable as their political destination. Today, who has patience for the work of Gabriele D'Annunzio and his fanatic followers, or Thierry Maulnier, Robert Brasillach, Drieu La Rochelle, and Henry de Montherlant in France? Of course, Witt does, but then she is a very patient critic. Some of her readings, perhaps, are longer than might be warranted by the plays. However, her meticulous and valuable intellectual history of Italy and France between the wars amply justifies this effort. For readers who may not be familiar with the writings of the fascist literati, this is an important study. At least two of the playwrights covered--Luigi Pirandello and Jean Anouilh--have claims on our attention, and Witt provides shrewd insights into their work by reconstituting the political and aesthetic debates out of which their art emerged.

Witt uses the term "aesthetic fascism" to delineate the nexus of ideas that shaped the dramaturgy of these figures--a term more nuanced than "fascist aesthetics," which carries the implication of party propaganda. The playwrights under consideration varied in their political commitments, but all were drawn to a movement in the arts inspired by reactionary thinkers, among them the early interpreters of Nietzsche. A key figure in this study is Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938), who hailed the rise of Mussolini but drew mainly on his reading of Nietzsche for his dramatic credo. (That he misread Nietzsche is an important point not treated by Witt.) D'Annunzio was deaf to Nietzsche's irony, and turning his subtle aphorisms into briefs for fascist drama, he glorified the will to power (as domination), the superman (as a political type), irrationality (as a critique of modernity), Dionysian spectacle (as a means to sway the masses), transcendence of good and evil (as a platform for self-aggrandizement), and nostalgia for the classical world (as a call to arms for the new Rome). It is little wonder that D'Annunzio's plays resemble second-rate Italian opera scaled for grand outdoor productions. Indeed, such productions occurred, and Mussolini admired them. Today these inflated plays (at least in English translation) are barely readable; they are stilted, bombastic, narcissistic, and declamatory. Witt labors to bring six of them to life through detailed examination: The Dead City, Fedra, Iorio's Daughter, The Ship, Glory, and Beyond Love. But the work resists reanimation, even at the hands of a skilled critic.

Witt makes a case for D'Annunzio as "the primary figure responsible for attempting to apply Nietzsche's ideas in The Birth of Tragedy to the actual creation of modern tragedy" (33). But a stronger case can be made, I think, for Eugene O'Neill, who read Nietzsche with better understanding and with better result. (In the 1920s O'Neill modeled his most successful plays on The Birth of Tragedy.) According to Nietzsche, the tragic hero embodies the collective identity of the community, symbolized by the god Dionysus, but distorts that identity, impelled by the principle of individuation, symbolized by the god Apollo. The hero who has violated unity by self-assertion must pay a penalty, and the tragic conflict is resolved only when his mask of individuation is destroyed. To serve its political aims, the dogma of aesthetic fascism turned Nietzsche inside out. D'Annunzio romanticizes the hero's individuation, invests him with power to bend the community to his will, and, in the event of his failure, finds the community unworthy of his sacrifice. That may have been Mussolini's understanding of the tragic, but it was not Nietzsche's.

Pirandello set a different course in drama, yet he joined the Fascist Party in Italy--a step D'Annunzio never took. According to the author, his ...