A Culture of Cruelty: Malaparte’s “Psychological” Portrait of the Writer Agustín de Foxá

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the psychological and ideological profile of the Spanish falangist intellectual Agustín De Foxá depicted by his friend Curzio Malaparte. This research draws upon mostly in Kaputt (1944), the novel of the famous Italian journalist, writer and diplomatic. This portrayal is essential, we think, to understand the main characteristics of Malaparte’s thought and work, specially: 1) the scope and meaning of key concepts of his work such as the dichotomy “cruelty-compassion”; 2) the central role of “rhetorical” and dogmatic Catholicism in the representation of Foxa’s attitude before human suffering; 3) the characterization of Malaparte’s “anarchic” Christianism vs. De Foxá’s theological Catholicism. Finally, the paper suggests that the Foxá’s traits emphasized by Malaparte are the ones that characterize, according to his own perspective, a “cultura di crudeltà” inherent to European modernity, a culture that embodies an “abstract and metaphysical” anthropological conception.