They will withdraw Pirandello's Nobel Prize in the name of anti-fascism and freedom of expression? N.d.r.
Of Davide Turrini are The Daily Fact, 19 September 2017
In the newspaper La Sicilia the professor Piero Mieli traces and publishes an autographed writing and an interview of the Sicilian playwright granted to the newspaper L'Impero. “Mussolini finds no comparison in history”. And again: “If you want to do something, we need to start purging and that's a means, This, which is needed in all fields of human activity”.
“Mussolini finds no comparison in history, There has never been a leader who was able to give his people such a vivid imprint of his personality.". Word of Luigi Pirandello. A, always one, not a hundred thousand. The famous Sicilian playwright's convinced adhesion to fascism comes directly from the front page of the twenty-year-old newspaper L'Impero. To publish the content of a long interview the author of Fu Mattia Pascal was the professor Piero Mieli on the pages of the paper edition of Sicily. Pirandello's prestigious speech was published on The Empire the 12 March 1927 complete with an autograph sheet of the playwright printed in the middle of the first page.
“How many have died who still believe they are alive! And how many living people are today overwhelmed by the thought of the dead! How willingly, my friends, I would start working as an undertaker to rid Italy of all the corpses that plague it! L'Impero newspaper of young people alive, you should give me a hand", Pirandello writes in his elegant calligraphy, signing at the bottom. “A militant fanatic who does not hesitate to bring out his innate squad determination against the dead democratic and liberal ideologies to the point of even wanting to become the gravedigger of the many normalizers who infest the nation”, Professor Mieli comments on La Sicilia.
The actual interview is published on page three of L'Impero a firma Umberto Gentili and it is entitled "A conversation with Pirandello”. The Sicilian playwright was interviewed behind the scenes of Argentina Theater in Rome during the rehearsals of “Diana and la Tuda”. And despite Pirandello being concentrated on the preparations for the work, the interview becomes a detailed and clear praise of fascism and the Duce. “I am a standing man who will die standing. How many think they are still alive and are not, and they should be swept, should be cleared out", Pirandello begins. “The camarille, small personal conspiracies, they fail to pave any road, they clutter, they jam, it is necessary to get rid of it, absolutely, fascistically".
Then again the tragic concept of 'purge' resurfaces: “If you want to do something, we need to start purging and that's a means, This, of which the need is felt in all fields of human activity". But it is when the interviewer asks what fascism has done for art that Pirandello responds as an avid fan of Mussolini: “Very much: there is now an unprecedented fervor for works. After all, everything in Italy has been renewed; five years of fascist life have rejuvenated and transformed every energy. Mussolini finds no comparison in history; There has never been a leader who was able to give his people such a vivid imprint of his personality.". Not that the closeness between Pirandello and fascism was ever a mystery, especially in the terrible years between 1924 and 1925 when he joined the Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals with the echoes of the Matteotti crime and the Duce's totalitarian turn still alive, but according to different historians, including the biographer Gaspare Giudice, the playwright's sympathy would have weakened already since 1926. L'Impero was a newspaper of the twenty years founded by Mario Carli and Emilio Settimelli, both futurists, close to Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Fiume company. Between the 1913 and the 1921 Settimelli together with Tommaso Marinetti created the concept of 'futurist theatre'.
Source: https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/09/19/luigi-pirandello-fascista-convinto-ritrovata-unintervista-del-1927-mussolini-non-trova-paragoni-nella-storia/3865805/