Le parole di Mussolini

Among the publications surrounding the centenary of the March on Rome, collections of writings and speeches by Benito Mussolini deserve special attention. Starting with these volumes, the review aims to question the way historiography has dealt with the words of the “Duce”. During the years of the dictatorship, those words were regarded as a celebratory monument, and later historians have been reluctant to consider them as relevant sources. Instead, it may be useful to examine Mussolini’s writings and speeches, reading them not individually as autonomous fragments, but as part of a series to be followed in its evolution. In this way, those texts may turn out to be the reservoir of a language, a thought and an autobiography.