{"id":18218,"date":"2010-11-02T08:30:12","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T12:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=18218"},"modified":"2010-11-02T08:30:12","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T12:30:12","slug":"more-on-mussolini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Mussolini"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Further to Michael’s earlier post<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Frye writing to Helen Kemp, 22 June 1935, from Chicago, where he had visited the World\u2019s Fair:<\/em><\/p>\n

I have seen some more of the Fair.\u00a0 The Italian exhibit is typical of a Fascist government.\u00a0 You go into a big round hall with nothing in it but posters around the walls, commemorating various aspects of modern Italian industrialism.\u00a0 One has a complete speech of Mussolini\u2019s disfiguring the slate\u2011blue background.\u00a0 Below the posters are some enormous snapshots of the Forum and similar views in Rome.\u00a0 Back of this hall is a novelty shop full of cheap jewelry and pestiferous salesmen.\u00a0 Some of the work\u2011\u2011mosaics and such\u2011\u2011is finely done, or appeared so before I retreated from importunate idiots behind the counters, but a trip through any of the big department stores in the Loop would be infinitely more rewarding.\u00a0 I am told they have a good scientific exhibit in the Hall of Science.\u00a0 But Italy!\u00a0 Roma Caput Mundi, as one of their own posters said!\u00a0 And cheap brooches!\u00a0 God!<\/p>\n

Then on 24 March 1937, Frye writes to Kemp:<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re leaving the Vatican until after Easter. I don\u2019t like Rome much\u2014everything is the biggest and loudest in the world, and the Mussolini mentality is stampeding everything. I \u00a0wish I hadn\u2019t come to Rome\u2014I\u2019d sooner have stayed in North Italy. Still, it\u2019s all very good for me. \u00a0Of course Mussolini came back from Libya the day we arrived and Rome was a riot of flags and soldiers, which may have prejudiced me [Mussolini had paid a twelve\u2011day visit in March 1937 to Libya, where he had opened a new coastal highway to the Egyptian frontier]. \u00a0Still, the same sort of mind put up the Colosseum and St. Peter\u2019s. \u00a0And even Rome wasn\u2019t as patriotic as Siena, which must have had at least a thousand pictures of his ugly mug on the walls.<\/p>\n

Then on 5 April 1937 he writes to Kemp:<\/em><\/p>\n

I forget exactly when or what I wrote last, but I was doubtless in Rome, registering dislike. Rome is horrible. I wasn\u2019t quite prepared for the national monument to Victor Emmanuel II, but after I\u2019d seen it it fitted in. Rome built that Colosseum barn, Rome built St. Peter\u2019s with its altar canopy a hundred feet high and its elephantine Cupids in the holy\u2011water basin, Rome built that ghastly abortion already referred to, Rome produced a long line of tough dictators and brutal army leaders and imbecile Caesars and Mussolini. What Prussia is to Germany, what Scotland is to Britain, that Rome is to Italy\u2014sterile as an egg and proud of it. Romans.\u00a0 Romans stare and peer at you hostilely and sulkily in the streets where north Italians are merely interested in you; Rome is full of Germans where Florence is full of English and Americans; Rome gave me a disease that felt like the seven\u2011year itch but is gradually wearing off; Rome stunk; Romans gyp you; Romans break out in a rash of flags the day you arrive and welcome the return of their prodigal son Mussolini.<\/p>\n

28 April 1937, from Florence:<\/em><\/p>\n

It was hard to get out of Florence, though not so hard after the stinkers arrived. I believe they refer to themselves as Alpini\u2014a regiment of Alpine soldiers, mostly war veterans, who came to Florence to get drunk. Still, they were harmless enough. We went out with a girl in our pensione who spoke English very well and met one of them in the Boboli Gardens. They sell these huge bronze plaques in Florentine art stores\u2014you can buy one of the Pope for 3 lire, one of Jesus Christ for 5 lire, and one of Mussolini for 10 lire. This man had one of Dante. She asked him if he liked Dante and he said no, he\u2019d never heard of Dante, but he had to have some souvenir to take back from Florence. . . . The rapprochement between Italy & Germany is being played up for all it\u2019s worth\u2014you see pictures of Hitler everywhere, Italian & German flags beside each other in posters, and anti\u2011Semitic books in bookstores. Of course the Italians made a great fuss over their Empire\u2014Mussolini\u2019s title is now \u201cFondatore dell\u2019Impero,\u201d the King is the King\u2011Emperor, and they\u2019re frantically jealous of countries with bigger empires. There\u2019s a comic newspaper that had a big front\u2011page cartoon showing a Union Jack over the Houses of Parliament with a big knot tied in one end. Now I\u2019ve run out of paper and am going to the back of page one\u2014the one that starts off with sweetheart\u2014A spectator says, \u201cWhat\u2019s the idea of the knot?\u201d and his friend says \u201cOh, that\u2019s just to remind her of her great colonial empire.\u201d Every cat in Italy is pregnant. Well, maybe every other cat\u2014there are an awful lot of cats. They\u2019re more loyal to Mussolini than the humans are\u2014Mussolini announced in one of his speeches that Italians should drink more wine because it stimulates the begetting of children. Wonder why, if he\u2019s always having parades, he doesn\u2019t have one of pregnant women? When I got back to France, where Mussolini was allowed to have a mistress, who shot somebody else for some reason, the mistress was said to have had three hundred pictures of Mussolini in her room. She not only loved Mussolini, she understood him. [The mistress was the French actress, Mlle. Fontanges, whose real name was Magda Coraboeuf. \u00a0After she revealed her affair with Mussolini to the press, he forbade her to come to Rome; she thereupon shot and wounded the French ambassador, whom she thought was somehow responsible for her predicament, and served a year in prison as a consequence.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Further to Michael’s earlier post. Frye writing to Helen Kemp, 22 June 1935, from Chicago, where he had visited the World\u2019s Fair: I have seen some more of the Fair.\u00a0 The Italian exhibit is typical of a Fascist government.\u00a0 You go into a big round hall with nothing in it but posters around the walls, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,26,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bob-denham","category-correspondence","category-memoir"],"yoast_head":"\nMore on Mussolini - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More on Mussolini - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Further to Michael’s earlier post. Frye writing to Helen Kemp, 22 June 1935, from Chicago, where he had visited the World\u2019s Fair: I have seen some more of the Fair.\u00a0 The Italian exhibit is typical of a Fascist government.\u00a0 You go into a big round hall with nothing in it but posters around the walls, […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-02T12:30:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2010\/11\/norriehelen.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"723\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"483\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Bob Denham\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bob Denham\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Bob Denham\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/#\/schema\/person\/f0d6833dfde3f2793ecbbc6aacd83812\"},\"headline\":\"More on Mussolini\",\"datePublished\":\"2010-11-02T12:30:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/\"},\"wordCount\":977,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2010\/11\/norriehelen.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Bob Denham\",\"Correspondence\",\"Memoir\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/02\/more-on-mussolini\/\",\"name\":\"More on Mussolini - 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