Il Duce's Other Woman.

IL DUCE'S OTHER WOMAN

Philip V. Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan

William Morrow & Co., $25,685 pp.

Few women have been removed from history so deliberately or cunningly as was Margherita Sarfatti at the hands of her lover and Fascist political partner for more than twenty years, Benito Mussolini. With this book, it can now be said that few women have been written back into history with such care and skill.

During most of his adult life, Mussolini kept a diary in the vain hope of painting his own portrait for posterity. Saffatti was mentioned often in it and some pages appeared to be in her handwriting. Around 1937, however, according to a sister and her children familiar with the diary's contents, Mussolini erased, inked over, or tipped out all the entries about Saffatti, lest his liaison with her--a woman and a Jew--and the extent of her influence on him and on Fascist politics be a matter of record. What Mussolini did not realize was that Sarfatti guarded her own place in history and kept, as proof of it, some 1,200 of the letters she and Mussolini exchanged over a fifteen-year period. Without the letters, which Cannistraro and Sullivan tracked down, this chilling chronicle could not have been written.

Born into a wealthy, cultured Venetian family, Sarfatti (nee Grassini) inherited a spark of intellectual curiosity, fanned into flame by three expert private tutors-- one of whom directed the Venice Biennale art exhibit and all of whom eventually became members of parliament. Along with the classics and modern writers, she read Ruskin, Shaw, and Marx and developed a love for art and a keen interest in its potential to influence society. She embraced what the authors call "the aesthetic possibilities of socialism." Sarfatti jumped into politics while still in her teens, marrying Cesare Sarfatti, a criminal lawyer and soon-tobe Socialist, who became mayor of Milan, though he would remain otherwise politically unsuccessful. The marriage proved a disappointment to her father, a close friend of the anti-Socialist Giuseppe Cardinal Sarto, who would become Pope Pius X. Thus is introduced one of the many subplots in the book: the relationship between church and state in Italy.

By age twenty-three, La Sarfatti had a reputation as an art critic, and ten years later she ranked among Italy's most prominent critics, a unique position for a woman of her day. Sarfatti used her aristocratic connections to bestow legitimacy upon the artists who filled the Friday night salons she held at her home. Somewhat surprisingly, given her attachment to the Socialists who were pacifists at that time, Saffatti was drawn to the Italian futurist painters. Futurists believed that war would cleanse Italy of its stale past and make way for a dynamic future. The futurists appealed to Italian nationalism in terms of recreating "the new Rome," an idea Sarfatti eventually transformed into Fascist rhetoric and recast for the artists' movement she helped form, the Novecento.

Saffatti's intellect and energy, social stature, and blonde, buxom beauty attracted the ambitious young Mussolini, whom she met at the Socialist Party Congress in 1911. By 1913, they were lovers. Because Saffatti had no wish to embarrass her kind and congenial husband, and because even Mussolini was bound by certain social conventions, they remained discreet (though not secret) lovers for the next two decades. Cesare Sarfatti looked the other way; Rachele Mussolini, however, detested La Sarfatti but managed to capture the limelight as her husband's wife only in his final years.

As the Blackshirts attacked the Socialists, thus consolidating their power with virtually no government interference, Sarfatti and Mussolini co-edited several newspapers and magazines. Sullivan and Cannistrato argue that Sarfatti's influence extended to Mussolini's speeches, including his maiden speech before the Chamber of Deputies, in which he called for reconciliation with the church, quoted Terence, used ideas from the Manchester School of economists to defend capitalism, condemned anti-Semitism, and pointed out the inequity of the divorce laws. Sarfatti also collaborated on political strategies, most notably the plans for the March on Rome, which were perfected at her summer home; it was she who urged Mussolini to move quickly.

Sarfatti became the prime minister's publicist. She acted as liaison with foreign journalists, wrote Dux, the bestselling biography of Mussolini, and for six years contracted with the Hearst organization to ghostwrite articles under his name, earning for Mussolini an amount that more than doubled his salary and padded her already considerable income.

By the 1930s, though, Sarfatti began to fall from Mussolini's favor. He disdained her fading beauty, but there was more to it; he no longer saw a need to have a cultural mentor nor did he have any desire to share his power. Rachelle and Edda Mussolini, competitors among the Novecento, and, indirectly, the Nazis in whom Mussolini began to show increasing interest, nibbled away at Sarfatti's position. By 1936, she found herself cut off from Mussolini's company and unable to publish articles in Fascist papers. That year Italy invaded Ethiopia and turned pro-Germany; anti-Semitic laws followed. Until then, few saw any irony in Mussolini's intimacy with a Jewess, so different was Italian fascism from its German namesake. But by 1938, Sarfatti had fled to South America, alone. She died in 1961.

Restored to her rightful place in history, Sarfatti remains at best a tragic figure. She was impassioned about ideas, understood the genuine power of aft, exercised political savvy, and worked relentlessly. She spoke five languages, traveled the world, cultivated international friendships among an elite set of artists and journalists, wrote bestselling books, raised a family, and for a time, advised her country's leader. Yet the early dream she and Mussolini discussed, of building the Second Roman Empire upon the ashes of the Italy left from World War I, a dream that at first improved life for many impoverished Italians, turned into one continuous rationalization for using violence to crush opponents. Her "convictions," including feminism and socialism, proved ephemeral; she converted to Catholicism when anti-Semitism threatened her well-being in Italy. Ultimately, her love for Mussolini turned to loathing.

The authors convincingly argue that if Sarfatti had not been complicit in the Fascists' violent path to power, her own later suffering and exile could have elicited more sympathy.