Casa Malaparte Alexandria Brown

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Introduction:

Those who say fascism, say first of all beauty. - Benito Mussolini, Milan, 1923.

On the desolate island of Lipari, the Isle of Ischia by the Bay of Naples, and the secluded

Tuscan seaside of Ferte dei Marmi, one of the most controversial and influential writers of the

20th century endured a ten year relationship with the awful beauty of exile. Within the tradition

of a dictatorship established on the performative spectacle of symbol, myth, cult, and ritual, the

exiled Kurt Suckert turned inward and sketched the spectacle of his own symbolic image. Just as

Mussolini reclaimed the Latinized title of Il Duce, so too did Kurt Erich Suckert assume the

name Curzio Malaparte- the Italianized bad seed version of Napoleon. It was whilst imprisoned

on Lipari that Curzio conceived of an architecture befitting of his new identity, thus the dream of

a house in seclusion on the wild and rocky topography like that of his exile was born. 100 feet

above the emerald shores of the Gulf of Salerno, the house and its builder remain veiled in

memories of myth and mystery. In Michael McDonoughs 1999 book Malaparte: House Like

Me, the interpretations and meditations on 1943 Casa Malaparte connect the house to influence

from the ancient world, Surrealist technique, Dadaist absurdity, and Futurist inventiveness.

While the depths of these influences are undoubtedly present, a void remains in the houses

attachment to the development of the individual and architecture in the early modern world of

Curzios own Italy.

In the founding of early Renaissance cities, physical evidence of cardo decumanus was

prized as connection to noble Roman origin. Modeling the governance of their cities after

coveted Roman ancestry, the practice of exile saw its first resurgence since antiquity in medieval

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and Renaissance Italy. Reading the Greek classics while in fascist Terza Roman exile, Curzio

was essentially reliving the experience of the exiles of Petrarch, Dante, and Machiavelli who

read and found consolation in the words of Seneca and Ovid. Machiavelli expresses his refuge in

classical reading as a way to escape the turmoil of his own situation in a 1513 letter to Francesco

Vettori, When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off

my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear.

Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am

warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savor. I am not

ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer

me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid

of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them. With shifting relationships to

solitude, personal health, and the capacity of architecture to influence mind and body, the

influence of early modern Italy extends all the way to the cliffs of Curzios Punta Masullo. In

this paper, I will highlight four underlying influences of Renaissance culture embedded into Casa

Malaparte: Serlian vernacular, Palladian vista, Petrarchan consolatoria, and Cinquecento ars

memorativa.

Fashioning himself as the sculptor who would transform the new Italian man and beautiful

new Italy, the aestheticization of politics in Il Duces Italy regarded any public act as artistic and

therefore political. The reclamation of the Roman salute and Passo Romano in Italian military

procedure promoted fascist aesthetics of discipline and order. While the abolition of lei in

favor of a return to clear and direct Roman origins of tu and voi dictated even the

movements of the Italian tongue. Style became the formal, extrinsic presentation of fascisms

substance; the content was derived from the form.1 It was then, a direct challenge to

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to Mussolini- both in his abilities as a revolutionary leader and the questionable style of his poor

taste in neck ties- that landed the sharp-tongued journalist on the bad side of Il Duce. With

allegations that there were obvious transvestite elements and that Hitler was really a woman,

Suckerts 1933 expose Technique de la coups detats, German-Italian forces banished the

irreverent provocateur from publishing while imprisoned.

Much like the building of the 1489 Palazzo Strozzi in Florence became a testament to the

familys resiliency despite the imposition of scattered exile, the Casa Malaparte became for

Curzio an expression of himself, his experiences, and his ideals. Casa Como Me, ritratto di

pietra, as he called it- the building of this house truly became a portrait in stone, so much so

that when we speak about one we unavoidably speak about the other. The house on the

Tyrrhenian cliffs is above all, a mans deeply personal search for meaning in a time of

uncertainty, violence, and the beginnings of atomic warfare. By examining Renaissance culture

in a similar climate of Italian War unpredictability, the Casa Malaparte becomes embedded into a

Renaissance ethos of building- where architecture, as an extension of rhetoric, was a way to

create meaning.

Veneration of the Vernacular: Sebastiano Serlio and Modern Mediterraneit

For a thorough understanding of the Casa Malaparte, it is essential to consider Curzios

initial commission to the founder of the Italian Movement for Rational Architecture (M.I.A.R.)-

Adalberto Libera. While Liberas basic footprint and materiality of the house remain intact,

Curzios alleged boredom and distaste for his overall design led to a falling out in their

collaboration very early on. Until the 1980s, the house was misattributed to Libera and

understood as a rational work derived from mathematical reasoning, and representing rational

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architecture rooted in modernized classicism. Whereas Libera developed an architecture of

rational construction divorced from poetry and aesthetics, Curzio strove to make the house

different from ideologies surrounding Italian Rationalism. Curzios formal modifications to

Liberas basic plot were the addition of the wide triangular staircase and large roof terrace.

With his penchant for metaphor and exhaustive talent for storytelling, one wonders

whether Curzio chose to work with Libera with the prefigured intention of cutting him loose.

Equipped with a modernist villa representative of the founder and secretary of the M.I.A.R.,

Curzio could cut into and chisel away at the design of the man responsible for Mussolini's public

building and modernization program. Despite symbolic-ideological modifications to Liberas

original design, in pursuit the houses connection with Renaissance influence it is crucial to

examine the lingering hand of Libera in the Casa Malapartes use of the vernacular.

After Curzios early involvement with the beginning stages of fascism2, the Italian Futurist

idea of a transcendental-political art remained with him. Curzio was part of a movement that that

modern architecture should reflect utopian ideals, and viewed the architecture of his house as a

virtual text with all of the narrative power of literature. For this reason, he oversaw with

meticulous supervision the building of his design, with the local mason Adolfo Amitrano and his

son after the departure of Libera. This deliberate choice of a local builder and employment of

local materials of sea laden limestone, adobe, stone, wood, clay, and bamboo speak just as loudly

as his strategic selections of window frames, ornamental details, processional approaches, and

everything else.

While there was a belief in the transformative power of art as a political idea, there was

also, especially in the case of Casa Malaparte, a profound sense of disenchantment with the state

of things. The political context of intense revolutionary provocation replaced with enforced

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fascist silence, the Casa Malaparte embodied the ambiguities and confusion of the time with its

perilous mood, inverted expectations, and presence as disturbing and confrontational. The choice

of vernacular tradition in combination with the site of Capri reflects Curzios point of departure

and fundamental conflict with Mussolinis regime.

While Curzio shared the fascist sentiment against the modern barbarian world, he

distinguished his support for historical fascism (the revolutionary spirit of the provinces)

against the political fascism that which was being normalized in Rome. In his condemnation of

the Roman legal country of inane bourgeois politics, he emphasized the importance of Italian

provinces as the real country and the essence of the true Italian soul. Malapartes political

position was reflected in several coeval artistic and intellectual movements that were attempting

to redefine Italian modernity by emphasizing local traditions. These cultural currents affirmed

the importance of defining national character in opposition to the pursuit of universal values.

They praised the paramount role of countryside in this context. He auspicated a return to the

land, sentiment, and nature, and the embrace of tradition, hierarchical order and discipline.3

While the choice of siting Casa Malaparte on the island of Capri responded on the one hand to

Curzios attachment to his experience of exile, it was also a deeply political move harking back

to his support for the revolutionary spirit of the provinces.

Curzios reverence for the provincial echoes an earlier modernist architectural

appreciation for the primitive. As an embodiment of both a relic of the past and a catalyst for the

enduring spirit of architecture, Curzio shared in German architect Gottfried Sempers love for the

vernacular. As a fellow exile separated by almost 100 years, Semper found as the object of his

affection a Caribbean hut in the Great Exhibition of 1851 while exiled in London. In Kurt

Foresters The Extraordinary Role of Ordinary Things he explains Sempers fascination with

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the simplicity of the hut, In Sempers mind, the Caribbean hut embodied a scheme that cannot

be reduced any further without losing coherence. It stands not only for a single building but its

very species. Its elements are both independent of one another and yet united by a single

purpose.4 Curzios collaboration with the Amitrano family in building brick by brick the

vernacular foundations of the Casa Malaparte echoes Sempers own choice of rural Italian

architectural language in his Villa Garbald. In the villas allusions to Tuscan loft typologies and

Capriote pergolas and external stairs, Semper adheres to the trend of modernist fascination with

the simple buildings of Quattrocento and Cinquecento Italy. It is thus in Michelangelo Sabatinos

Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy that the

modernist return to the origins of building is explored, and the vernacular link between Casa

Malaparte and the Renaissance is unearthed.

Sabatino traces this veneration of the vernacular as far back as the treatises of Sebastiano

Serlio (1475-1554). Forester and Sabatino illuminate Serlios elevation of the primitive with that

of the evolved, demanding reconsideration of definitions of rural and urban. These redefinitions

of the rural and provincial resonate with the historical fascism ideologies of Curzio discussed

earlier. Whether or not he explicitly read Serlio or was versed the work of Semper, the

vernacularity of Casa Malaparte embed the building into a tradition of modernist foundations in

the Renaissance. Whereas Malaparte embraced the ultra-rationalist ideology of the right-wing

milieu of the journal Il Selvaggio, his architectural proclivities for bold volumes and sweeping

views of the surroundings were essentially modernist in opposition to the prescriptive attitudes

towards tradition and Italianita that prevailed under fascism.5

The use of local material in the expression of modern form is reflected in Libera and

Malapartes application of indigenous stone in the construction of houses flat roof that

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resembled contemporary construction aesthetics of reinforced concrete. In Sabatinos argument

that Liberas appropriations of the vernacular allowed his architecture to challenge notions of

classicism and Italian historicism, he considers for the first time why and how the vernacular

tradition influenced fascist art and architecture. The distinction that links Casa Malaparte to a

Renaissance tradition as opposed to the obvious relation to a classicist revival is rooted in

Sabatinos own definition, On the one hand, there was architecture realized for fascism which

symbolized the regime, on the other hand, there was architecture realized during fascism which

was critical of the regime and tried, unsuccessfully, to redirect its course.6

The very fact that Libera had to defend Casa Malapartes vernacular origins attests to the

fact that Curzios house belonged to an architecture in critique of the regime. The majority of

Italian politicians and critics regarded the Mediterraneita movement, (a fusion of both vernacular

and classical tropes of which Casa Malaparte was a part of) as a betrayal against fascisms

nationalist agenda. Progressive fascist rationalists like Libera, found themselves at odds with

the regimes growing insistence on prescriptive attitudes that banalized classicism in state-

sponsored buildings...they felt betrayed by a regime that gradually abandoned both futurism and

rationalism.7 Whether or not Liberas departure from the design was spurred by Curzios

distaste for his design or Liberas distancing himself from the controversial language of

vernacular, Curzios commitment to the controversy of the provincial aligned him with the

Serlian blurring of polite and primitive.

As testament to the authenticity of the houses vernacular were the challenges that faced

the 1980s preservation and reconstruction of the house. The construction techniques were so

localized, (to the extent of horses carrying brick) that it was virtually impossible to recreate the

houses building with advanced efficient technologies. It was only when a helicopter brave

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enough for the task committed to carrying building materials to the houses rooftop. However,

the flight of the helicopter was delayed for several months, as the reconstruction had to wait for

permission from the governing Capriote winds.

Vistas, Temples, and Sweet Air: Designed Scenery and Healthy Villas

Just as the vernacular materiality and form of Casa Malaparte are linked to a Renaissance

tradition of Serlian praise for the provincial, the siting and commanding vistas of Capri are

linked to a Renaissance tradition of Palladian designed scenery. Serlios praise of primitive

materials and construction methods would have favored the Palladian simplicity of stuccoed

brickwork in evocation of the Roman villa. Palladios economic classicism in combination with

his talent for situating a villa in perfect harmony with its landscape gained him the favor of

powerful patrons throughout Vicenza. In the example of the Villa Rotonda specifically, the

importance of landscape as primary design motif resonates with Curzios siting of Casa

Malaparte on Punta Massullo. With four porticoes on all sides of the centralized plan, Palladio

essentially constructs the gaze of the viewer from any of the four commanding vistas of the

Vicenza countryside. While the Villa Rotonda offers the illusion of an effortless symmetry,

Palladios plan entails precise geometric measurements that strategically open each facade to

ideal views of the surrounding topography.

Reminiscent of this Palladian tradition of designed scenery, whether in the real

landscapes of Vicenza or the painted landscapes of Teatro Olimpico, a lyrical account of the

designed scenery of Casa Malaparte aligns Curzios design with this tradition. In an excerpt from

Curzios 1949 novel La Pelle, in an event that may or may not be fictional (as it is impossible to

differentiate between the two in the land of Malaparte) General Rommel stops by Casa

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Malaparte on his way to the African front and asks whether Curzio had bought a built house or

made it himself. Curzio responds, The severe cliffs of Matromania, the three giant rocks of

Faraglioni, Penisola Sorrentina, the Isola del Sirene, the blue of the far Amalfi beach, the shore

of Paestum shining behind it- all the scenes are what I designed.8 In this response we see the

Palladian ideology of inverting architecture to face its environment, with the enveloping horizon

as the object of the eyes desire. In Arata Isazakis Letter From Capri, he comments on the

miraculous access to all of Curzios above mentioned sights from the single location of the

rooftop terrace of Casa Malaparte, This is a terrace that stands amongst space as a stage. This is

nothing but a stage set for opera. Going up and down the steps, hanging around the terrace-

everywhere are Capris sun, air, and ocean. Nothing else was necessary. Such is the design. If so,

there is nothing else to say.9

In connecting Malaparte to this Palladian tradition of arresting vista, it is necessary to

also examine the cultural and political context that would have accompanied such an aesthetic.

The Pythagorean principles which guided the geometric harmonies of the Palladian villa as a

microcosm of the universe also prescribed to healthy virtues of living in accord with the four

elements. In Cavalo and Storeys Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy, the practices of early

modern preventative health are explored in an examination of how individuals pursued a long

and healthy life in the context of uncertainties and difficulties of daily living.10 In a chapter

titled, Worrying About the Air, there is a significant addition and emphasis in mid-16th

century health on the Hippocratean advice (pulled from his book Airs, Waters, Places) of long

term illness best cured through a change of location, and hence of air.11 With a marked

emphasis on place and its effects on health, a regionalism and localism emerged that was

accompanied with the rise of a new interest in the healing powers of the right winds and waters.

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With the anxiety of procuring the best winds for a healthy life, literature with advice on

where and how to situate and orient ones home took inspiration from the Renaissances revival

of a Vitruvian synthesis of architecture and medicine. With what was to be of paramount

influence on 16th century architecture, Vitruvius states that any decent architect, should know

the science of medicine, as this depends on those inclinations of the heavens which the Greeks

call climates, and know about airs, and about which places are healthful and which disease

ridden, and about the different applications of water, for without these studies no dwelling can

possibly be healthful.12 In Albertis De re aedificatoria, this Virtuvian remedy of sweet wind

and pure water is expanded in the dedication of his first five chapters to the selection of healthy

sites for living. Even in the work of Serlio, whose writing we have seen echoes of in the design

of Casa Malaparte, in the introduction to book VI of his 1537 treatise he confesses that there is

no need for him to address how to site and orient a house because Vitruvius and Alberti have

discussed this at such length that there is nothing to add.13

The pursuit of sweet air left the image of Rome a hopeless case for healthy living. In with

all the wrong sorts of winds- those damp southerly and westerly ones- Romes situation was

made even worse by the thick air rising from the Pontine Marshes. Between 1470-1600 over 30

villas were built around Rome and its nearby hills, with the years of 1540-1620 as the peak of

this villa revival. So important was the belief in the health benefits of the open air that frescoes

depicting rural landscapes were even painted onto palace walls as a way of channeling the effects

of gazing at the countryside. In the example of the Brescia Sala delle Dame in the Palazzo

Martinengo, listening to music while looking at the painted rural landscape was thought to

benefit all the spirits. Alas, nothing could compete with the authentic air of the country villa- a

typology mastered by Palladio and carried on by Scamozzi. In the accompanying text to

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Scamozzis plan and elevation for his 1576 Villa Pisani, he emphasized that parallel windows

would purify the air and confer health on the body and mirth on the soul.14 The floor to

ceiling windows and Curzios testament to designed scenery situate Casa Malaparte in this

Renaissance tradition of a healthy architecture in pursuit of the sweetest winds and purest waters.

In Colin Rowes essay Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, he interprets Palladios villas as

adaptations of the ancient house. In an analysis of Palladios Malcontenta he points out, the

ambiguity, profound in both idea and form, in the equivocal conjunction of temple front and

domestic block; these are charged with meaning, both for what they are and what they signify;

and their impression is poignant. By such apparatus the ancient house is not recreated, but

something far more significant is achieved: a creative nostalgia evokes a manifestation of

mythical power in which the Roman and the ideal and equated.15 With exception to the temple

front, these words could be as readily applied to the Casa Malaparte as to the Malcontenta.

Just as Palladio intentionally designs the gaze of the Villa Rotonda, so too does he design

the approach to the villa. The northwest angle from which one is made to approach the Villa

Rotonda is designed with the desired of effect of feeling as though one is ascending from a less

noble place to an exalted ancient temple. With the rooftop of Casa Malaparte interpreted as a

reference to a Greek outdoor sacrificial altar, the house on Capri continues this notion of a

creative nostalgia rooted in ancient myth. However, his choice of monumental stair in place of a

temple front signals yet another design decision placing Casa Malaparte in conversation with the

nostalgic practices of the Renaissance.

Ars Memorativa: The Theatre of the Stairway, the Window, and the Fireplace

Can it be that the memory is not present to itself in its own right but only by means of an image of itself? Augustine, Confessions, 10.15

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In the building of his portrait in stone, Curzio builds physical manifestations of memories

of exile into the defining feature of the monumental staircase, the chestnut mantle fireplace, and

the barred windows of the lower level. This architectural commemoration of his time in Lipari,

Ischia, and Ferte dei Marmi speak to the writers conflicted relationship with imprisonment and

exile. In a larger examination of the houses relationship to Renaissance precedence, Casa

Malapartes reenactment of exile relate to the art of memory developed from ancient Greece by

the Italian humanists. It is in the reification of Curzios memory that Casa Malaparte practices a

Renaissance revival of the Greek and Roman practice of the ars memorativa.

With origins debated between Simonides, Pythagoras and Metrodorus, the art of memory

was expounded in a seminal Roman text on rhetorical devices, known as Ad Herennium.

Capitalizing on sight as the strongest of all senses, the text offers methodologies for improving

what is known as artificial memory. In contrast with natural memory, born organically with

thought, artificial memory could be conditioned through training. Through the pairing of locus,

(a place easily grasped by the memory such as a house, a colonnade, an arch, etc.,) with the

image of the memory one wishes to record internally, the art of memory becomes an inner

writing. It was not until the Renaissance however, that we would witness the shift from internal

to external mnemonics. In Giulio Camillos 1550 LIdea del Theatro, the concept of a wooden

theatron translated the mental map of Ad Herennium into an actual architectural typology of a

theater. According to Erasmus "the architecture is of wood, marked with many images and full of

little boxes... he calls this theatre of his by many names saying that it is a built or constructed

mind and soul."16 While Camillos theater was never built to full scale, what is significant is the

transformation of a mental practice of memory to a built enactment of the theater of memory- of

which Casa Malaparte can be seen as a theater of memory in and of itself.

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One other connection that must be pointed out is the question of whether or not Curzio

was aware of this art of memory. His reference to himself as a bird who had swallowed its

cage, affirms his total embodiment of the experience of his imprisonment- the staircase and

barred windows testament to this connection. I find it interesting then, that one of the main

symbols of mnemonic systems in both ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy is that of the caged

bird, or the aviary. In Plato's Theatetus, an inquiry on the nature of knowledge, Socrates

compares memory to an aviary: "Let us make in each soul a sort of aviary of all kinds of birds. . .

When anyone takes possession of a piece of knowledge [a bird] and shuts it up in the pen, we

should say that he has learned or has found . . . knowledge; and knowing, we should say, is

this."17 Thus in Curzios positioning of himself as the bird (the learned symbol of knowledge)

swallowing its own cage (the container of memory), the bird takes the form of its structure of

memory, and thus the Casa Malaparte takes the form of the stairs of Lipari.

In and out of prison and exile 7-8 times over a span of 10 years, the experience left a deep

impact on Curzio, but not in the way one would imagine. Forbidden to publish, Curzio turned

inward to his diaries where his verses of self-dramatization romanticized his experience of

prison,

Too much sea, too much sky, for such a small island, and for such a restless soul. The horizon is too broad. I drown in it. I am a photo-

graph, a painting too small for such a big frame. The fault lies in the closeness of the island, the lack of a harmonious relationship between the immense space that surrounds the island and the small machinery

of the human organism.

A simple glance at the pictures of Curzio while in exile offer an interpretation of exile that

doesnt seem all that bad; Well dressed in clean white clothes, hair sleeked to the side, walks

along the shore with his beloved dog never far behind, one can only guess why he wanted to

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recreate this environment into a retreat for writing upon release. But while the exile may not

have seemed as physically taxing as one might imagine exile to be, a close look at the

development of his writing while in exile reflects an internal state that questions the state of the

humanity.

A common side effect of exile, Curzio was experiencing the sentiment shared by

Ulysses, Dante, and Machiavelli of the realization that the world continued on without his

presence. It was in exile that Malaparte felt for the first time the reality of the crushing power of

German-Italian regime. The former unabashed journalist with no fear as to what he published

was silenced, the man whose presence commanded attention simply by being in a room was

robbed of his audience. Malaparte, in exile, was performing on an empty stage. Deepening his

disenchantment, upon release from exile he was called to service to report as a war

correspondent for WWII. The horror of these observations, detailed in his books published while

living at Casa Malaparte, account for Curzios belief that man was to be free not in freedom but

within a perpetual prison. His war memoirs of Kaputt (1944), which present a point of view from

those doomed to lose the war, and also La Pelle (1949), an account of war-time Italy serve as

lyrical recantations of his previous involvement with fascism, his writing blending grotesque

hallucinogenic surrealism, ironic humility, and profound tragedy. In this context, we can revisit

his memories of his days on the island of Lipari; walks along the shore and visits to the local

church of the Annunziata hold a higher understanding and sympathy for nostalgia.

It would not be until the completion of the house and move to Capri that the memory of

exile becomes Curzios eternal Objet petit a. In his only short essay on the house called Portrait

in Stone, Curzio openly shares his folding of memory into the forms of the house:

Today more than ever I feel that cell no. 461, 4th wing of Regina Coeli, has remained inside me, becoming the secret form of my soul.

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Today I live on an island, in a harsh, melancholy and severe house which I have built alone, lonesome on a cliff hanging over the sea: a house

which is the ghost, the secret image of the jail. The image of my nostalgia. Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in

freedom, but to be free inside a prison.

The monumental and trapezoidal exterior stairway that dominates the mental image of the

house is a direct reference to the staircase of La Chiesa della Annunziata, the church on the

island where he was exiled in Lipari. When the Casa Malaparte is thought of as a theater for

memory and the monumental stair takes us back to the scene of exile, the performative action of

climbing the stairs should be considered. What are the implications for climbing this imposing

stairway, with no church for respite? One almost can imagine the effect by comparing it to the

ascent of the Scala Santa in Rome- only to discover after climbing the 28 white marble steps on

bended knee that the Holy of Holies is no longer there. The absence of Sancta Sanctoru.

The barred windows of the lower levels small cell-like spaces have alluded to elements

of a medieval prison, and I suspect they resemble the barred windows of Machiavellis own

country residence of SantAndrea in Percussina where he spent his exile. As a victim of the

regime change from Soderini to Medici, Machiavellis extensive connections in Florentine

politics landed him in exile in the Tuscan countryside. Whats curious about the case of

Machiavelli is that after finally being released from bouts of torture and imprisonment, he

himself chose to return to Sant Andrea and not back to Florence. As a native Tuscan of Prato,

Curzio would have been familiar with this small estate and perhaps the barred windows made an

impression on him only to be referenced after his voluntary exile needed precedence.

The third object of memory is that of the fireplace. Representing not an explicit memory,

but the sentiments of restlessness and wandering that accompany one rooted in exile. With its

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tiny glazed transparent opening, Curzio created an illusion of the waves of the ocean dancing in

the flames. In this miniature frame, the Casa Malaparte cuts out the very threshold of its hearth,

the defining symbol of the comforts of home. From this frame, the Casa Malaparte embodies

Miguel de Beisteguis concept of architecture that is at once hestial and hermetic.

Simultaneously symbolizing home and placelessness, private and public, both grounded and

wandering. This architectural detail situates Casa Malaparte in one of many sets of binaries and

contradictions that give the house its enigmatic and magnetic aura. With forms that are at once

strange and familiar, the house stands in a timeless landscape where memories of the past

collapse with consolatory voices of exile.

Classical Consolatia

In its tireless pull between infatuation and restlessness in the architectural image of exile,

Casa Malaparte is a tectonic expression of ancient consolatia developed further in the

Renaissance as consolatoria- a poetic literary response to the experience of exile.

In Randolph Starns, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and

Renaissance Italy, he conjures Matteo Bandellos image of an Atlantis of exiles: where an entire

city is filled with exiles of the past- especially those of Tuscany, where the figure of the outcast,

Starn remarks, was notoriously familiar. The earliest Latin definitions of exile deal with location,

defined positions in space, and origins. Translated as outside the soil, he who is outside his

own ground, or one who had exited outside, exile becomes inseparable from the image of

ones home, and the exile experience of the shifting and blurring of boundaries.

The landscape of exile then becomes a series of contrasts between the encircling gates of

ones hometown and the unknown beyond. As a fortress against external and internal enemies,

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the city walls were closely patrolled, curfew enforced, and movement in and out heavily

scrutinized. City walls were in fact more than material boundary; they were effigies and altars

where spiritual powers of relics of the citys patron saint were left at gates to ward off intruders.

Starn describes then the movement from center to margin, in that, landscapes of the mind and

imagination become an important part in the ecology of exile.

The voices of exile that were passed down to the Renaissance arrived in two main

sources, that of Ovid and that of Seneca the Younger. While Ovids verse was one of the

disconsolate exile that insisted on elaborate miseries of his sorrow, the verse of Seneca was

consolatory and triumphant- seeing in exile as no more than a change of place, where reason is

able to overturn order. As all exiles had to face the experience of repudiation, homelessness, and

estrangement, the responses both internally and on paper, as evidenced here could be very

different. For centuries after the ancient world, the dialogue of exile was not clearly resumed.

Here and there images and metaphors of exile surfaced, but it was only in Medieval and

Renaissance Italy that the facts and rules of exile become real again.

It was in the shifting territories and geopolitics of Medieval Italy that Dante was

sentenced to 20 years of exile in 1302 from Florence to the dreaded hills of Pistoia for his

involvement with the Black Guelph allies and resistance to Pope Boniface VIII. When the rules

of exclusion of his sentence ran out in 1315, Dantes refusal of amnesty made the law question

itself and realize the limits of its power. Dantes judges fell silent, their original sentences lost,

but Dante still spoke- commanding voice in a chorus of exiles who would have filled some circle

of his Divine Comedy. This ability to speak after the silence of conflict is something inherent in

both Dantes literature and Curzios Casa Malaparte. Petrarch also revolutionizes the expression

of exile, as exile itself becomes a topic of study, and the art of consolatory letter writing is

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begun. In Petrarchs consolatoria of exile, the disconsolate and consolate classical voices of Ovid

and Seneca are combined in the form of dialogue, another revolution in the expression of exile.

The voices of Ratio (triumphant and optimistic air of Seneca) conversed and bargained with

Dolor (the sulking voice of Ovid). Here Petrarch turns the exile in on himself, and for the first

time there is modern air of acceptance of resignation of the human condition of exile. This is also

seen in Filelfos 1430s continuation of the art of the consolation dialogue, De Exilio.

After the mid 14th century, the facts and rules of exile experienced profound changes

with an emerging order of Renaissance states. In Burckhardts inclusion of exiles in his

Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, he states that the exiles found it increasingly difficult to

resort to forms of collective violence and corporate organization of Italian Middle Ages. This

combative view of overcoming exile through rebellion and violence ended at the Battle of

Anghiari in 1440. The Florentine and Papal army defeated the Milanese and anti-Mediciean

exiles leaving their cause hopeless. Resistance wore out easily in such a world, and exiles often

submitted to withdrawal and retreat. This was seen in Alamanno Rinuccinis character in his

1479 dialogue, De Libertate, where Eleutherus chooses voluntary exile from Florence to his

country house where he says, I turn myself into myself in solitude and speak freely with my

books.

The foreign invasions of 1494 magnified the need for language to act as a surrogate

country for the voices of exile. It is in the figures of the exiled Alberti family that we witness the

final evolution of Renaissance exile that is embedded within the Casa Malaparte. In Leon

Battista Albertis dialogues, On the Family, the members of the exiled Alberti clan voice their

opinions on exile. Giannozzo characters political life as a source of frustrations which the exile

ought to be glad to do without, and his remedy for Lorenzos exiled induced sadness is that of

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virtue, scholarship, and self-expression, the wise man should rule himself with virtue, with

study, and with every art. This faith in art and virtue, while evident in the Casa Malaparte and

its ideals of architecture as a transformative vessel of personal metaphor, it still doesnt quite

capture the haunting quality of the houses melancholic side.

In Starns concluding remarks on exile in the Renaissance, he comments on the

underlying forms of all Renaissance responses to exile as ultimately and fundamentally, self

aware of their unresolved anxieties. Despite their practiced words of consolation, Petrarch and

his successors recognize as an unrelieved kind of exile the nagging sense of dissatisfaction that

individuals bear within themselves. For that affliction Ratio has no real remedies.18 In both

Terza Roma and Renaissance Italy, the experience of exile becomes a transformation of the inner

self. While on the one hand the experience opened up the individual to the wider world outside

the gates of the city walls, it also exposed the individual to the wild space of the inner mind. The

Renaissance transformed exile from poetic classicist expression to the literary style of an inner

dialogue- a working out of what the experience meant. Combining both elements of classic

expressions of exile, ratio and dolor, the Renaissance exile shifted from reveries of the return

home, to preferring the experience outside of home. This appetite for exile, came also with

profound sense of irreconciliation and blurred relationships to boundaries of home and

placelessness, all of which is laden in the architecture and its details of Casa Malaparte.

Conclusion

In an examination of the Casa Malapartes relationship to local material, the surrounding

landscape, the practice of memory, and the consolation of exile, we have seen a distinct

connection to the early modern world of Renaissance Italy. Viewed in its entirety, the Casa

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Malaparte occupies a unique tension between hope and disenchantment. In its Palladian and

Serlian qualities of natural splendor and provincial regality, the house exudes a mythic spirit of

unyielding invincibility. However, in Casa Malapartes welcomed hauntings of the memories of

exile, some quality of the house will forever be freely imprisoned. In John Hejduks Cable

From Milan, he speaks of the sorcery of the house and its mysteries set amongst the chill of the

Aegean. In his account of the inaccessibility horizon line, we see it, we yearn for it, but we

cannot touch it.. it awaits, the sentiment of unrequited histories fill the space of the house.

Hejduks interpretation of the house as a stationary ship stuck in a silent presence of waiting,

shares in the irresolute sentiment of most interpretations of the house.

However, in returning to the example of the Palazzo Strozzi, I would argue that the

simple act of building, completing, and living in the Casa Malaparte can be viewed as a

triumphant act and testament to the transformative powers of architecture. Subjected to an exile

that intentionally scattered the Strozzi in as disparate regions as possible by the hand of the

Medici in hopes that this would keep them from uniting and reclaiming power, the Strozzi

adapted to their conditions of exile in an impressive fashion. Rather than lose their identity as

disjointed Strozzi, the family viewed exile as an opportunity to repackage their image. The

scatter policy of exclusion allowed the Strozzi to establish positions in such influential courts as

Ferrara and Mantua, and the distance between family members only forged a sentimental tie to

home that didnt require a physical tie to place. In F.W. Kents examination of the building of the

Palazzo Strozzi and the various correspondences that surround its organization, he interprets this

act of building as a sign of the lasting sense of family unity and blood ties.

While Curzio was never married and never had a family of his own to secure his ties to,

his cause was that of art in the broadest sense. While he was a writer above all else, he was also

22

(as we have seen) an architect, a filmmaker, a photographer, a playwright, and frequent

collaborator with artists. We have seen his deep beliefs in the transformative qualities of art and

its expression in a time of uncertainty, and I would argue that the act alone of building this house

and everything that he achieved while living in it is testimony to its success. Curzio reclined to

his designed scenery first in 1943, the very year that Mussolini fell from power. It was here that

he wrote his most influential books of The Volga Rises in Europe, Kaputt, La Pelle, Du cote de

chez Proust, and Maledetti Toscani, and Benedetti. While the Palazzo Strozzi symbolized the

triumphant union of family collaboration, the Casa Malaparte hosted an artistic collaboration of

its own that would be the first of its kind in Malapartes publication of Prospettive. After

October 1939 the journal developed a different focus and Malaparte cast his eye exclusively on

progressive developments in the arts and culture. The format grew smaller and the graphic layout

became more stylish and more pointedly avant-garde. After Malaparte redefined the journal, he

lost state sponsorship and circulation fell from 100,000 to around 3,000. It was in the new

Prospettive that Malaparte explored themes like surrealism, existentialism, and architecture.19 It

was thus in the spirit of the individualized Italian Renaissance that Curzio departed from politics

of legal country Terza Roma in favor of the open air of Casa Malaparte; An air that inspires

wonder, discussion, collaboration, reflection, and interpretations for the future. 1McDonough, M., 1951- 1999, Malaparte : a house like me, 1st edn, Clarkson Potter, New York, 46. 2 A new generation emerged post WWI, Curzio among them- primarily soldiers who had fought and survived who were anxious to catalyze change in Italian society and military based on corruption and mismanagement they witnessed first-hand. This reformist mentality, the urge to rid the world of all the horrors they encountered in the First World War, was to be the early stages of Italian fascism. Il Duces fascism of the 1920s had evolved into something much different than Curzio and his generation had been fighting for. 3 Ibid., 44. 4 Sabatino, M., 1969- 2010, Pride in modesty : modernist architecture and the vernacular tradition in Italy, University of Toronto Press, Toronto., preface xv. 5 Ibid., 13. 6 Ibid., 15. 7 Ibid., 97.

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8 McDonough, M., 1951- 1999, Malaparte : a house like me, 1st edn, Clarkson Potter, New York, 126. 9 Ibid., 126. 10 Cavallo, S., author. & Storey, T., author. 2013, Healthy living in late Renaissance Italy, First edition. edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 69. 11 Ibid., 79. 12 Ibid., 81. 13 Ibid., 82. 14 Ibid., 86. 15 Rowe, C. 1976, The mathematics of the ideal villa, and other essays, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 15. 16 Yates, F.A. 1999, The art of memory, Routledge, London ;New York, 256. 17 (Plato, Theatetus, 197d. Marsilio Ficino's translation of this work was included in his Commentary on Plato's Convivium . . . de amore (I.V. #221). 18 Starn, R. 1982, Contrary commonwealth : the theme of exile in medieval and Renaissance Italy, University of California Press, Berkeley, 67. 19 Mical, T., 1965- 2005, Surrealism and architecture, Routledge, London ;New York., 172.

Works Cited

Beistegui, M.d., 1966- 2003, Thinking with Heidegger : displacements, Indiana University Press,

Bloomington.

Cavallo, S., author. & Storey, T., author. 2013, Healthy living in late Renaissance Italy, First edition. edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2013.

Chabod, F. 1958, Machiavelli and the Renaissance, Harper & Row, New York.

Ciappelli, G. & Rubin, P.L., 1951- 2000, Art, memory, and family in Renaissance Florence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK ;New York, NY, USA.

Connell, W.J. 2002, Society and individual in Renaissance Florence, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Filelfo, F., 1398-1481., De Keyser, J., Blanchard, W.S., Filelfo, Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.Latin.2013., Filelfo, Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.English.2013., Keyser, J.d., editor., Blanchard, W.S., Filelfo, Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio., Filelfo, Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.English., Filelfo, Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.Latin (Keyser), Filelfo, Francesco,1398-1481.Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.English (Blanchard) & Keyser, J.d. 2013, On exile, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Giamatti, A.B. 1984, Exile and change in Renaissance literature, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Lagerfeld, K., Pfrunder, E. & Steidl, G. 1998, Casa Malaparte, Steidl, Gttingen.

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Lejeune, J. & Sabatino, M. 2010, Modern architecture and the Mediterranean : vernacular

dialogues and contested identities, Routledge, London ;New York.

McDonough, M., 1951- 1999, Malaparte : a house like me, 1st edn, Clarkson Potter, New York.

Mical, T., 1965- 2005, Surrealism and architecture, Routledge, London ;New York.

Murch, W. & Weschler, L. 2013, The bird that swallowed Its cage : selected works of Curzio Malaparte, Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA.

Oppenheimer, P. 2011, Machiavelli : a life beyond ideology, Continuum, London.

Petrarca, F., 1304-1374. 1924, The life of solitude, Hyperion reprint edn, Hyperion Press, Westport, Conn.

Ricciardelli, F. 2007, The politics of exclusion in early Renaissance Florence, Brepols ;, Turnhout.

Rowe, C. 1976, The mathematics of the ideal villa, and other essays, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Sabatino, M., 1969- 2010, Pride in modesty : modernist architecture and the vernacular tradition in Italy, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

Shaw, C.(.R.h. 2000, The politics of exile in Renaissance Italy, New York :Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ;.

Starn, R. 1982, Contrary commonwealth : the theme of exile in medieval and Renaissance Italy, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Talamona, M. 1992, Casa Malaparte, Princeton Architectural Press, New York.

Yates, F.A. 1999, The art of memory, Routledge, London ;New York.

Punta Massullo, Capri

Monumental living M in honor of Mussolinis visit at Verres, May 1939

Angelo Burattini, The Inconsolable, 1938

Palazzo Strozzi, Giuliano da Sangallo, Florence, 1489

Original design of Adalberto Libera

Bedroom and Study of Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Villa La Rotonda, Andrea Palladio, Vicenza, 1592

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Mimmo Jodice, Casa Malaparte

Staircase of Casa Malaparte

Punta Masullo of Casa Malaparte

View from the piano noble of Casa Malaparte

View from the basement of Casa Malaparte

View from the piano noble of Casa Malaparte

Sale delle Dame, Palazzo Brescia

Sale delle Dame, Palazzo Brescia

Vincenzo Scamozzi. LIdea della architettura universale di Vincenzo Scamozzi (Venice, 1615), part 1, book 3, ch. XIII, p. 273Copyright: RIBA Library Photographs Collection

Diagram of the human mind, from Robert Fludd (1574-1637) Based on the Greek practices of classical memory. Utriusque cosmic maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica (Oppenhemii: re Jo-han-Theodori de Bry, typis Hieronymi Galleri, 1617-21).

Source: Collection Centre Canadien dArchitecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal

LIdea del Theatro, Giulio Camillo, 1530s

Malaparte en route to exile on Lipari

La Chiesa di Annunziata, Lipari

Malaparte in Lipari, 1934

Malaparte in exile on Lipari

Malaparte in exile on Lipari

Staircase of Casa Malaparte

Staircase of Casa Malaparte

Staircase of Casa Malaparte

Barred windows on bottom floor of Casa Malaparte

Barred windows of Machiavellis countryside home in SantAndrea Percussina

Fireplace of Casa Malaparte

Malaparte in his study at Casa Malaparte

Reconstruction of Casa Malaparte. Major problem of landing hudreds of kilos of materials of cement, plaster, etc. The first day saw some problems. The air, disturbed by the helicopters rotor

blades and high winds, bounced back off the rocky surfaces up behind the house with such force that the flights were interrupted. The helicopter, buffeted by the winds, could not remain properly

aligned over the landing area. The helicopter pilot, his craft bouncing excessively, could not get his assistant on board, and, after a brief initial trip, he disappeared on the horizon.

Prospettive, international journal of culture and the arts, 1938-1952

Prospettive, international journal of culture and the arts, 1938-1952

Prospettive, international journal of culture and the arts, 1938-1952

Contributors to Prospettive

Malaparte on roof of Casa Malaparte