Entre transgressão, delírio de grandeza e vazio: o fascismo em Um homem acabado e Gog de Giovanni Papini

Abstract

In this dissertation, we analyze the fascism present in the main novels of the Italian writer Giovanni Papini, namely: A finished man (1913) and Gog (1931). We comparatively study these two works, the numerous similarities between their characters, projects, failures and achievements. In A finished man, Papini transformed himself into a character and, through bookish projects, tried to make his name resonate in Italy. He walked between failures and achievements, delirium of power, emptiness and boredom, praising violence, assault, aggression and cynicism. As for the 1931 book, Papini wrote a novel in which violence, cruelty, mockery and sadism appear as constant forces, in which the character-narrator, to escape the existential void, sponsored perverse projects and collections. Based on the examination of these two writings and based on Papinian critical fortune, our aim is to argue that A finished man has a pre-fascist language or rhetoric, while in Gog there is a return to this rhetoric. With the analysis of these novels it is possible to argue that the writer, by returning to the language of the 1913 book in Gog, represents himself and the Italy of his time, returning to the ideas of the man of letters who indirectly placed himself as one of the intellectuals who paved the conceptual path of fascism, as he also points out for his position taken in the 1930s, regarding Italian politics in recent years. With this move, he points to the issue that a few years after the publication of the 1931 text, he finally broke the silence he had maintained between 1919-1930 in relation to contemporary Italian politics, approaching and supporting fascism in the 1930s-40s, whether in public, with the release of Italia mia, or in private, with the posthumous text, Diary. Finally, with this approach, Papini seems to point out the influence of the texts from 1913 and 1931 on the conceptual foundations of the regime, that is, he appears to indicate his indirect participation with fascism, a collaboration and adherence that is only openly given in his later texts.