Curzio Malaparte
Maledetti toscani

'If it is difficult to be Italian, it is extremely difficult to be Tuscan […]. And not because we Tuscans are better or worse than others, but because, thank God, we are different from every other nation: for something that is in us, in our deep nature, something different from what others have inside.'

Or maybe because, when it comes to being better or worse than others, it is enough for us not to be like the others, knowing well how easy and without glory it is to be better or worse than another'.

An original definition of the Tuscans by the writer from Prato Curzio Malaparte in a sort of essay in defense of the people of his region, published a year before his death (which occurred in 1957), in the context of post-war Italy, vile and bigoted, with the connivance of the power of Christian Democracy and the Church – and the communists in political and cultural opposition in the country.

The author of 'The Skin' and 'Kaputt' begins his discussion by defining the Tuscan as the most intelligent, the most courageous, and the freest among all the peoples in Italy, who feel uncomfortable in front of this.

A people having a sense of measure and balance, in small (visible in the sizes of streets and houses, monuments and also in the subjects of Sienese and Florentine painting), straightforward in speech and doing 'all their things in prose, with great simplicity, without unnecessary words' and endowed with a particular intelligence for which they look deeply into every earthly thing, capable of deriving works such as poetry, sculptures, principles, etc.

But cold in violence and in death they scream and curse or laugh in a terrible manner, and in the name of their superiority, they look at a person to judge them, even while knowing in their head that they are flawed, and their lack of compassion.

A people tied to the land that reveals its characteristics, one only, that of being rational; and from the relationship with religion of essential but sincere devotion and the preference for saints and not saintesses, because they died in trials and sufferings (and the miracles performed by the saints of the region having nothing complex nor majestic, Tuscans not loving complex things). And, in contrast with all other peoples in Italy, their preference for hell, where they come and go at their pleasure and where the customs are similar to those of Tuscans (this love explains their hatred for priests, who do not know that true Christians are also men who aspire to a life not only of faith but also of freedom).

In many areas of popular culture and of the region, the author compares the people and their cities to ancient Greece because the way of behaving, expressing themselves, and acting of the Tuscans 'agrees with the architecture of the houses, palaces, churches, with the face and gestures of the statues of Donatello, Pisano, and Jacopo della Quercia'.

Moving to particular, the author's eye is directed to some realities, starting from that of Prato where 'all the history of Italy (and of Europe) goes all in rags', indicating in the main economic activity of the city, the collection of discarded clothing and fabrics from all over Italy and the world, both the simple, humble, rational, enterprising, and proud character of the people of Prato and the futility of all human glory, of which they are well aware in contact with the activity itself; the physical and cultural commonality of the people of Campi Bisenzio (near Florence, ndr/reviewer's note) with that of Maremma; the most authentic popular Livorno that the author identifies in the Venice district, with its canals, where fishermen live (in another chapter, praise is given to the beauty and centrality of women in the life and nature of the city); the kindness and falsity in the speech and manners of the Sienese (a reality, theirs, completely different from the rest of the region) and the desire of the Florentines in summer to fight for fun.

And seeing all these qualities in the people of his region, the author invites Italians to be dignified, free, and courageous like the Tuscans.