Scan barcode
A review by screen_memory
The Kremlin Ball by Curzio Malaparte
5.0
I am often sympathetic to those who find themselves on the wrong side of history. Political affiliation means so extraordinarily little to me. My allegiance belongs neither to politics nor to ideology, but to literature above all. I identify not with the mob in their outrage and calls for erasure or censorship, but with Malaparte the ex-fascist, with Hamsun the apologetic advocate of Hitler, and with Ernst Junger and Yukio Mishima despite their nationalism. Renunciation or otherwise is of far less importance to me than to perhaps most others. Again, I am loyal to the republic of letters above all.
Malaparte has become a recent favorite of mine since reading his Kaputt last November, and The Skin a few months ago. His approach to writing could be described as historical, but his style, often bordering on the surreal or the farcical (an obvious influence on Kundera; there are undeniable echoes, for example, of Malaparte in the scenes involving Stalin in Kundera's Festival of Insignificance), renders fact and fiction indistinguishable.
One of so many brilliants writers born from the second world war, Malaparte troubles himself with the failures of fascism and communism with a formidable sense of humor - "You'll learn to perform miracles," a Soviet policeman says while arresting a doctor found guilty of performing a lifesaving operation.
The Kremlin Ball is the much lighter thematic work compared to Kaputt and The Skin which are quite heavy-handed, although given Malaparte's comic treatment, in the bleakness and devastation left in the wake of the war. The Kremlin Ball was born out of an outtake of The Skin, but is a work all its own, dealing primarily with the Soviet Union around the time of Stalin's Five-Year Plan, and detailing his view of the *ancien regime* of Communist society; the new aristocracy interested not in classlessness but luxuries of European import.
Malaparte writes: " “I came to Moscow convinced that it was an anti-Europe, or even just an alternative Europe, but had the painful realization that the whole Soviet nobility nurtured for Europe . . . an unconditional admiration.”
Malaparte has become a recent favorite of mine since reading his Kaputt last November, and The Skin a few months ago. His approach to writing could be described as historical, but his style, often bordering on the surreal or the farcical (an obvious influence on Kundera; there are undeniable echoes, for example, of Malaparte in the scenes involving Stalin in Kundera's Festival of Insignificance), renders fact and fiction indistinguishable.
One of so many brilliants writers born from the second world war, Malaparte troubles himself with the failures of fascism and communism with a formidable sense of humor - "You'll learn to perform miracles," a Soviet policeman says while arresting a doctor found guilty of performing a lifesaving operation.
The Kremlin Ball is the much lighter thematic work compared to Kaputt and The Skin which are quite heavy-handed, although given Malaparte's comic treatment, in the bleakness and devastation left in the wake of the war. The Kremlin Ball was born out of an outtake of The Skin, but is a work all its own, dealing primarily with the Soviet Union around the time of Stalin's Five-Year Plan, and detailing his view of the *ancien regime* of Communist society; the new aristocracy interested not in classlessness but luxuries of European import.
Malaparte writes: " “I came to Moscow convinced that it was an anti-Europe, or even just an alternative Europe, but had the painful realization that the whole Soviet nobility nurtured for Europe . . . an unconditional admiration.”