Someone said that Donald Trump was and continues to be the biggest booster to the book industry in American history. Books about Trump are sold and eaten like colored donuts. The recent Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward (transl. it. Solferino) sold out the initial circulation of 750 copies in a few days. Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff (transl. it. Rizzoli), according to the declarshares of the publisher Simon & Schuster, exceeded two million copies sold in one year. Former FBI Director James Comey's book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership rocked it: in one week it sold 600 copies, a record for a civil servant that sounds like this to readers: "James, who?". Sales of Trump books are on par with novels by James Patterson or Stephen King.
Fiction has plummeted in the world's largest book market in recent years and non-fiction, largely thanks to Trump and his political themes, is experiencing a sort of Prague Spring. The president, with his inflammatory policies, has stimulated the best minds of the Intelligentsia from overseas to come out into the open and have their say on the issues brutally raised by the new occupant of the White House.
But there's more. Thanks to Trump, the Washington Post has risen from the ashes, CNN has emerged from the catatonic state it was in during the Obama era, and the Trump-paranoid New York Times has added nearly a million subscribers since the New York property developer sits in the Oval Office.
Where can one go to look for a similarly explosive publishing phenomenon in the history of publishing? You have to come to Italy and Trump's counterpart, without wanting to draw any parallelism between the two characters, is Benito Mussolini. The publishing phenomenon born around Mussolini is even bigger than that born around Trump. And since many Italians don't know it, but it is part of national history, we thought we'd retrace it in its essential manifestations.
However, there is a substantial difference between the Trump editorial phenomenon and that of Mussolini which reflects the profound difference between American democracy and fas Italythere is. While books about Trump fthey chastise the American president by puttingene highlighting the dystopian character of his adminitraction, the stories about Mussolini enhance the talents and mythologize the character in full light without leaving any space for the gray areas of his political career and as head of state. In this case the boundary between the hagiographer and the biography tends to vanish.
We have thus arrived at the sixth episode on the Italian bestsellers of the recent past talking about the over 100 biographies of Mussolini written during the period in which the son of the blacksmith from Predappio ruled Italy with the carrot and the stick. Have a nice trip to the past!
Se mezzo million di copy, vi they seem poche
If one wanted to know which was the most widely read book during fascism, the best seller of the best sellers of the period, one would receive this answer: it was Mussolini by Giorgio Pini.
The biography of the Duce who wrote Giorgio Pini in 1926, subsequently updated over the years, was the main best seller of the black twenty years, with over 400.000 copies sold up to 1943. At first, this could surprise us, given that in our times it is certainly not the biographies of politicians that attract the sympathy of readers. But if one thinks of the historical moment, of the popularity enjoyed for better or worse, democratically or not, by the head of the regime, and the fact that he had behind him an enormous propaganda apparatus, the so-called Duce's factory, which he faithfully and effectively carried out the task of making his figure as lovable and attractive as possible, it doesn't appear so strange after all. In fact, it would be the other way around.
The author, Giorgio Pini, was at the time a young 27-year-old journalist. He had participated in the last phases of the war, like one of the many boys of '99. Later he was a politician and a high-ranking journalist, among other things director of the "Resto del carlino", as well as other newspapers. Faithful to Mussolini to the end, in 1946 he was among the founders of the Movimento Sociale, as well as author, together with Duilio Sismel, of a monumental history of fascism in four volumes, Mussolini, the man and the work.
Margherita scarfacts, Mussolini e over
However, it was not only the biography of Giorgio Pini that met the favor of readers; there were others that were so successful that they reached the top of the editorial rankings of the twenty years. The first in this sense was DUX by Margherita Sarfatti, a character who had a lot to do with Mussolini. From a rich and prestigious Venetian family, Sarfatti was one of Mussolini's first collaborators right from his inception. Fervent socialist like him, she followed him in his exit from the PSI in 1914, she joined him in the foundation of the "Popolo d'Italia" and became its art and literature editor. She was the animator of one of the most coveted and exclusive salons in Milan in the XNUMXs, she was a journalist, a writer, a highly refined art critic, one of the founders of the "Novecento Italiano" movement.
For a long time she was his confidante, inspirer and friend until the early thirties, when political disagreements spread, while emotionally she was ousted by Claretta Petacci in her heart. She then moved away from Italy, in 1938 she emigrated to South America for her Jewish origins, always maintaining a strict confidentiality on the private and emotional events that had linked her to the Duce for twenty years: an attitude marked by intelligence and elegance, which well is summed up in the title of his memoirs Thing of the past, as if to sanction the futility of stirring up the past.
His biography, DUX, which came out in 1926, the same year as that of Pini (but in reality it had come out the year before in England under the title The life of Benito Mussolini, with great success and over 150 reviews) was sold until 1943 in over 2000.000 copies, ranking among the very first best sellers of the twenty years.
Translated into 18 languages, it was the best known and most appreciated "international" biography of Mussolini, contributing in a very significant way to building his world myth. In Japan, for example, 300.000 copies were sold, more than in Italy. Scarfatti's book contributed greatly to Mussolini's notoriety and was a formidable propaganda tool for the fascist "consensus" factory
Over 100 Biography
But, it was said, many other biographies came out: hagiographic, certainly, however, how then can one expect the historian's objectivity? Altogether there were over one hundred, distributed irregularly over the twenty years. Not to mention those books that saw Mussolini as the protagonist, even though they are not biographies in the strict sense, such as the famous Talks with Mussolini, by Emil Ludwig from 1932, which achieved a resounding success abroad more than in Italy.
After all, Mussolini himself had written his autobiography in 1928 for the American public, at the invitation of the former American ambassador to Italy, Richard Washburn Child. His brother Arnaldo Mussolini composed a first draft, which Benito then corrected and arranged. It came out My life, first published in the American newspaper "Saturday Evening Post" with great success, then in volume in England and in other parts of the world.
Among the other numerous biographies we remember that of Antonio Beltramelli of 1923, L'new man, one of the first, composed by a particularly inspired author, and at the time very famous for his novels. Or that of Paolo Orano, Mussolini up close, released in 1928, and printed in over 10 editions until 1943, which also met with great success. The author, initially a socialist, then merged like many others into fascism, deputy and senator of the kingdom, university professor and rector, journalist, essayist and writer was one of the ideologues and inspirers of the anti-Semitic campaign in Italy.
This flourishing of writings about his life took place despite the fact that back in 1914 Mussolini had replied to a journalist friend, Torquato Nanni, in charge of drafting his biography: “Biographies from alive never. When I am dead I will suffer the outrage because I will not be able to prevent it”. And shortly after: “I'll beg you again to pass my biography to the trash. It's in bad taste to make biographies, like monuments to the living, there's already too much clamor around me”. He was referring, at that time, to the clamor for his exit from the PSI for the transition to the interventionist front. That biography eventually came out in 1915 for "La Voce", and was the first of the future Duce. The words that Mussolini penned in the preface to DUX are of the same tenor:
“I detest those who take me as the subject of their writings and speeches. Good or bad whether they treat me, it doesn't matter. I hate them anyway…
La mythization of life di Mussolini
Despite these and his other statements of the same tenor, no other public figure in Italy has been put under the magnifying glass like him. In these biographies Mussolini is examined, always from an angle, it was said, hagiographic, from every point of view: as a politician, journalist, statesman, economist, financier, but also an aviator, sportsman, violinist, writer, simple husband, father of the family. Compared with the most varied and unexpected historical characters, from Napoleon to St. Francis, from Julius Caesar to Crispi, from Sixtus V to Pius IX. Studied in its domestic, foreign, social, religious, diplomatic, economic and financial policy. Followed in any event, from his countless visits to cities and towns, to his tastes at the table; from family affairs, to state meetings. Studied since the distant origins of his family …
Going back a little far we discover that the Mussolini family had notoriety in the 1270th century in the city of Bologna. In 1800 Giovanni Mussolini was at the head of that aggressive and warlike city… In XNUMX there is a good Mussolini musician in London…
Professor Dall'Osso, a distinguished Romanist, discovers after in-depth studies and scrupulous research that the Duce's family was already known in republican Rome, 200 years BC.
Around his birth, prodigious signs are sought that can anticipate and confirm his predestination. Kemeckj, a Hungarian journalist, writes that at the same time Mussolini was born, an eagle was struck to death by lightning in Schönbrunn, the residence of the Habsburgs, almost as if heaven itself wanted to warn that that child would cause thirty years later, with his interventionist campaign, the collapse of the Austrian empire. True or false, the only certain and documentable fact that can be linked to Mussolini's birth is the Casamicciola earthquake, which occurred on July 28, 1883, the day before his birth. But no biographer noticed or wanted to talk about this.
A notorious event, and unanimously reported by all biographers, that the future duke was born in Predappio, in the province of Forlì, in 1883, the natural son of a blacksmith, who was also an innkeeper, and an elementary school teacher. He goes to study and also becomes an elementary school teacher, not without however arousing the interest of the great poet Giosuè Carducci, on a visit to the normal school of Forlimpopoli, directed by the poet's brother, where the young Benito studied.
After graduation he began his political activity, marked by his father's wish:
Go there my son, this is not your place (he had been refused the position of clerk in the town of Predappio), go around the world. In any case, with Predappio or without Predappio you will be the Crispi of tomorrow.
To avoid military service, Mussolini emigrated to Switzerland, where he worked as a bricklayer and other menial jobs, and where he came into contact with European revolutionary groups, within which he also met Lenin. In Switzerland he ends up in prison for his frenetic anti-system political activity. Expelled he returns to Italy, he starts teaching French after a brilliant exam during which, however, the professors were about to fail him for having presented himself with a cigar in his mouth. Cigar that he must have been familiar to him if he had made acquaintance with it when he was only 4 years old: "As a child of just 4 years old, a shoemaker had already given smoke half a Tuscan cigar…"
His political career within the PSI is undoubtedly rapid; not yet thirty years old, on December 10, 1912, he became director of "Avanti", with enormous success if commensurate with the circulation of the newspaper, which went from 34.000 to 100.000 copies a day in a few months, while in exchange the new director "first of all demanded a decrease in salary."
Much attention is given by biographers, obviously, to his campaign for Italy's entry into the war, which led to his expulsion from the socialist party and the foundation in just one week of the newspaper "Il popolo d'Italia". The war wound, caused by the explosion of a mortar during an exercise, also causes a huge stir. "He had more than forty degrees of fever and yet they had to chisel his tibia and extract the splinters from the 42 wounds from which he was riddled" Pini writes. Sarfatti is more detailed, who notes in his DUX: she had “42 wounds, for more than 80 cm overall, the body all wounded and burned, a multitude of splinters stuck in the flesh, like the arrows of a Saint Sebastian; two hours of painful dressing every day, gashes large enough to be punched in, infectious complications, threat of gangrene, suppuration, fever, suffering and delirium….He is dying. they immediately said to Milan. "Maybe he's already dead by now."
The other stages of its history gradually follow, up to the march on Rome and the summons by the king to form a new government, at the news of which the stock market also has a beneficial jolt, while the exchange rate with the dollar drops from 27 to 24, 12% in a single day, and the pound from 118 to 112. And then the subsequent events of his history and of Italy, now merged inseparably, unfold in succession one after the other: the Concordat, the foundation of the empire, the alliance with Hitler and so on.
The biographies generally conclude with the outlines of his personality, represented as that of a titan: “Nothing petty thrives in him… Brooding and impulsive; realist and idealist; frantic and sagacious; romantic in aspirations and classically concrete in practical achievements… he Loves danger. He has a physical intolerance of cowardice… Very sparing and sober… Mussolini doesn't smoke (by now the story of the cigar has already been forgotten by readers), he doesn't play, he's not a gourmet or a pleasure-seeker. He doesn't drink liquor or wine." And so on.
Un phenomenon unique of Story publishing
The abundance and fortune of these biographies, it was said, remains a unique and atypical phenomenon in the history of our country. An explanation of their success obviously cannot ignore the pounding action of the mass media, used massively and efficiently to produce consensus around the regime. Moreover, the "tissues", ie the orders that were given to the press, so that the people had the best possible view of what was happening in the country, have been known for some time. Readers thus found in those biographies the world, the values, the characteristics to which they had been accustomed, trained, shaped. They found there motifs and affirmations that they used to read, see, hear repeated continuously and from everywhere: practically irreplaceable life models, to which it was only very difficult to argue, as has always happened in all dictatorships, and in any case in a price such that only men of an uncommon moral and cultural temper were able and willing to pay. One of these would become president of the Republic half a century later.
But the extraordinary success of these biographies can only be explained as the result of an incessant and obligatory propaganda for everyone, or was there also a genuine and sincere attraction towards the character, in his vices and virtues, in his strengths and defects, and which would have exploded even without the hammering action of the regime's propaganda?
The question is legitimate and we obviously leave it to the historians to enlighten us. We can only contribute to making known the phenomenon of the extraordinary flowering of Mussolini's biographies, not known by everyone, so that everyone can get an idea based on his historical and political sensitivity.
