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History 513, European Cultural History 1880-1920 - Summary
Lecture #29 - December 10, 1979 - 49:23 min (mp3)
(Save As or file will load and play in the page, load time depends on connection speed)As Mosse made clear in the last lecture, the difference between the relative openness of Italy and the closed mind of Germany was a result of the density of tradition. Racism directed Nazis back into the past and into myth. In Italy, nationalism was of a different kind: Italian nationalism had “a human face” due to the tradition of stronger Italian regionalism. Though there was at first some openness in Germany, and even a mutual affinity between National Socialism and Expressionism (Expressionism needed direction), it was soon curbed by the Nazi’s emphasis on order against the dynamic. Mussolini, too, had a series of maneuvers that channeled enthusiasm, like the Ethiopian war and the racial laws, but the avant-garde in Italy was never suppressed. One cultural phenomenon stands out, though: modern music- though not Jewish modern music-stood outside of Fascist control. The reasons for this are hypothetical. Perhaps, modern music was left alone because it was so elitist that nobody bothered with it. Another reason may be that it incorporated folk music (Orff, Respighi) “for chic.” And, some among the composer elite, (similar to the poet Pound in America) longed for order.
These people had a certain “freedom of fools.” Some writers sympathized with Italy because of its greater openness, and because Italy was less provincial than Germany. Bauhaus did not stand alone in Italy: apart from the futurist painters, Kandinsky praised Fascism’s defense of abstract art. Fascism’s use of technology mirrored its use of modern art. In 1936, though, Italian Fascism’s historical roots assert themselves in a turn to the classics. Mussolini’s Jewish mistress, Margherita Sarfatti, guided the foundation of a radical group, Novo Cento, which encouraged a Roman revival as a link to the Roman Empire. Its chief writers termed themselves “Romantic Realists”, like the German Nazi writers. Also in painting (in Germany and Italy, but identical with Soviet Realism), we find a continuation of sentimental Romanticism. It is clear therefore that Fascism in Italy came to be ambivalent.
There was also a “Voelkisch” movement in Italy, but it was not as important as the classical revival. Mussolini wanted to be the successor of Urban VIII, which climaxed with the building of the “Forum Mussolini.” The notion that the classical stereotype was the “ideal type” for nationalism was common to Germany and Italy alike. As the regime consolidated power, the linking of Fascism and the avant-garde was pushed to the side in Italy. Yet the Futurist always attacked the Nazis, and condemned the racist laws in Italy because this was part of the conservative tradition. Despite the eclecticism that by 1942 dominated in Italy, the avant-garde was not completely mute. Very clearly, the attraction of the avant-garde to Italian Fascism was a search for clarity and for the artist’s place in society and politics. All intellectuals want to join a mass movement and have a place in politics: according to Mosse this accounts for the Kennedy-myth-he gave the intellectuals a place. The American poet Ezra Pound suddenly had a place in Italy, and Fascism itself offered clarity and dynamism. In contract to Hitler, who was “quite provincial”, Mussolini wanted to be a modern man, a man of the world. That is why they hated each other. Mussolini had known Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin. The anti-bourgeois bourgeois revolution from which modern art derived was accepted by the Nazis in technology, not in culture. In contrast to Germany’s cultural retrogression, there was no retrogression in modernizing and improving working conditions (very much of which still survives in Germany). In Italy, Fascism was different: it transmitted avant-garde ideas and even added to them.
In France, where Fascism was only an intellectual coterie, (they became Fascists because it was fun), Fascist writers have lasted. Racism can never make an alliance with the avant-garde; nationalism can. It was a way to be a Nietzschean, and part of the anti-bourgeois bourgeois revolution, which was a European phenomenon. Fascism always wants both law and order and dynamic. It gave its supporters a feeling of participation and importance through mass politics, a “fully furnished house.” Socialism could not do that. Finally, Fascism bestows a sense of being extraordinary upon its members, though it is the climax of normalcy in our time, of middle-class morals and manners, which it protects. The clean-cut is the ideal type in fascism. The strength of Fascism was that it activated tradition and was built upon stereotypes. In Germany, the suspicion against the new competed with a desire for excitement. “What Star Trek is to you, Fascism was to millions.” It appealed to a certain rhythm in human nature. Mosse claims that wherever Socialism was realized in Europe, it has culturally gone the Fascist way. “History never repeats itself, but there are bits and pieces which are taken and put together.” The cultural bits and pieces are the easiest. The culture of Fascism is alive today in Eastern Europe because Communism has to justify itself though nationalism. In his conclusion of the lecture, Mosse quotes Huey Long: “When Fascism comes to America, it will come under the guise of anti-Fascism.”
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