Kaputt also does something unique in the literature of war: it crosses the lines of battle. Malaparte's essentially treacherous (and also pan-European) mentality enabled him imaginatively, and at times even physically, to look at conflict simultaneously from the vantage points of opposing camps. Among other things, he found a lens that would focus on the butcher together with the victim, in itself an unusual achievement. There is no reason to doubt the genuineness of his aversion, expressed in other writings as well, to the brutalization of women in wartime, an uncommon theme in the forties. Though one wonders how war could possibly be waged without such mistreatment, he deserves credit for repeatedly yet often quite delicately confronting the issue in Kaputt. His treatment of the sex slaves of Soroca (probably fictional, or a blend of fact and fiction) and the slave laborers of Berlin (probably factual) is compelling.
By the time he became the Corriere's correspondent, Malaparte's sleazy fraternization with Fascist and Nazi elites reflected not political conviction but faulty guesswork, since he assumed that they would win. The upshot was a perfidious scrutinization of the many contemptible people with whom, as an unprincipled arriviste, he was obliged to spend time. When eventually they lost, he was free to pour out all the venom he had stored up in his years of observation. Consequently Kaputt offers a matchless inside look at the moral corruption and brutal frivolity of European reactionary cliques during World War II. Though some of this writing is fictional, it feels earned and experienced in the way that good fiction does. Here Malaparte knows what he is talking about.
Italian criticism has given short shrift to Malaparte—so short, in fact, that some literary histories omit him altogether, while others dismiss him as a trashy vulgarian. In his Letteratura e vita nazionale, Antonio Gramsci bluntly wrote that "to achieve success he was capable of any infamy." Others had a different impression. "He was an exquisite talker," Montale recalled, "and also a listener full of tact and—a rarer quality—real courtesy— Only later did I learn how many internal fractures were concealed by his apparent normality." Kaputt betrays this split-mindedness, being divided into insincere and artificial passages and others of authentic inspiration. Read with discrimination, it has much to say about the collapse of European civilization in the middle of the last century.
—DAN HOFSTADTER
Tenn—Pewter.
{2} 'Workers under the "speed-up" plan.
Korsu—A snow-buried shanty or dugout.
Lotta—A Finnish WAC [Women's Army Corps.]
Lottalas—The recreation halls of the lottas.
Sillampää—A Finnish writer.
Kanna—An isthmus.
Monstrance—A transparent vessel in which the Host is kept and shown to the congregation.
Kanna—An isthmus.
Pets de nonne—Nun's fritters or apple-fritters. [literally: "Nun's farts."]
Sonderführer—A civilian technician or advisor attached to the army.
{11} Feldwebel—A sergeant-major.
{12} Sonderführer – A civilian technician or advisor attached to the army.
Untergrundbahn—Subway.
Stuga—Swedish word for cottage.
Kaputt Page 48