Dario Fo won this year’s Nobel Prize for literature. Who is Dario Fo? Don’t be embarrassed to ask. Fo himself was probably more surprised than anyone to win the prestigious award.
In Italy, Dario Fo is famous for his acting, directing, and theater performances rather than as a writer, author, or poet. His antics are more reminiscent of a Medieval minstrel than that of a serious dramaturge. And like the jesters of the Middle Ages who feigned folly as a means of criticizing the injustices of the court, Fo has used the stage as a platform to promote his antiestablishment agenda.
The Swedish Academy praised Fo for "scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden." However, they seemed to ignore that Fo applies a double standard to the authority he chooses to chastise and the downtrodden he opts to defend. The target of Dario Fo’s wrath and humor during the sixties and seventies were the enemies of the people: the rich, the proprietors, the police, the Church, and, of course, the Americans. During the heat of the seventies he made more than several allusions of sympathy toward the five-pointed star of the Red Brigades.
Notwithstanding Fo’s criticism of the existing institutions, he was fortunate enough to live in a society which accepted his dissent. Another colleague of the pen and of the prize, Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, did not share that same fortune. However, during the Cold War when the Russians were enjoying Fo’s performances, he was careful not make mention of the gulags or speak a word in defense of his fellow writers persecuted by the Communists.
International reaction to the prize has been divided. If France’s Le Monde and Libération paragoned Fo to their own Molière for his ability to use laughter as an arm against bigotry, Le Figaro criticized the Swedish Academy for awarding the man who brought Marxism to the commedia dell’arte. The German newspaper, Die Welt, defining Fo’s humor as poisonous, though never dull, questioned that he could really be considered a poet. And although Fo and his wife, Franca Rame, made a private visit to China during the Maoist era in 70’s, his opera is unknown there and the Chinese are now scrambling for some quick translations.
The response in Italy has been equally ambivalent. What is sad for Italians is that what could have been an opportunity for the celebration of an event that could boost national pride was instead yet another occasion for contention.
With curious irony the news reached the parliament building of Montecitorio just as it had become evident that the Refound Communist leader, Bertinotti, would no longer support Prodi’s center-left government. However, if the Italian left were unable to agree on a budget agenda, they were united in their joy concerning the Nobel.
The other side of the political spectrum was scandalized by the choice of the Swedes. National Alliance leader, Gianfranco Fini, found it "shameful," and members of his party sent a telegram to the Swedish ambassador stating that they considered it a "grave offense" to the Italian culture.
Opposition leader Berlusconi satirized about the prospect of Bertinotti and the center-left patching together another government (which indeed they have done). His caustic comment compared the center-left leaders to court jesters, betting that they might even succeed at the absurd, since jesters of late are so fortunate that they even manage to win Nobel prizes!
Rita Levi Montalcini, who won the Nobel for medicine in 1986, was caught totally off-guard. "I don’t know Dario Fo," she confessed. "I have no idea who he is. Is he Italian?"
The Italian academic community expressed bitter disappointed. They would have preferred a more traditional candidate like the Florentine poet, Mario Luzi. This is certainly not the first time that the judgment of the Swedish Academy has caused discussion among academics: Why did it take them so long to recognize Pasternak? Why Marquez and not Borges? Why didn’t they consider their own Strindberg? In jest some have even mused that the judges had perhaps been on a bash the night before indulging in their excellent Swedish vodka, Absolut. However, whereas in the past the controversy over the Nobel has been in terms of one writer having more merit than another, this time international academics are asking if the prize has become one of ideology rather than one of recognition for literary skills.
What's more, if the intention of the Swedish Academy was to make a statement regarding ideological righteousness, it is obviously unaware of an obscure chapter of Dario Fo’s past, when in his youth he played the role of oppressor from the other side of the barricades, so to speak.
When Mussolini fell, Fo joined the Duce’s forces in the Republic of Salò. His regiment participated in the famous Fascist rakings of the woods and hillsides in search of partisans, those same Communists who would become his future comrades.
Several years ago in an effort to deny his Fascist past, Dario Fo sued two journalists who had dared to write about this episode of his personal history. The court refused Fo’s plea stating that, given that Fo was indeed a member of a regiment which took part in such activities, it was only natural to assume that he had also been a participant.
If the Swedish Academy has decided to emphasize ideology as opposed to belletrism, it’s their prize; I suppose it’s their prerogative. However, they might be well-advised to scrutinize the integrity of their candidates by doing research into the more shadowy sides of their personal histories.
October 1997
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