Parigi 1935. Il dibattito sulla letteratura al Primo Congresso Internazionale degli Scrittori per la Difesa della Cultura

The First International Writers’ Congress for the Defense of Culture (Paris, 1935) has been an international historic and cultural event regarding the incidence of writer and literature in the fight against the advance of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. In the attempt to outline the potential of literary works in terms of a renewed relationship with the audience, writers from all over the world gathered at the Palais de la Mutualité, and sought to define themselves and their art in view of the serious problems of their time. In this work the author analyzes, for the first time, the literary debate at the Congress, from reflection on the impact of writing in defense of culture and civilization faced with the advance of totalitarian regimes, to the definition of the role of the artist at that time, from theoretical discussions about new literary production, to concrete proposals in order to achieve these aims. In this paper, the Parisian talks are also critically located in comparison to the theoretical and literary debates gained in those years by scholars who, sometimes for unclear reasons, did not participate at this event.