Abstract
This paper focuses on the vitality of the translation market in fascist Italy, despite the censorship affecting primarily Gramsci as a translator and theorist of translation, and, starting from the 1920 polemic between the idealist philosophers Croce and Gentile, it studies the theories emerging between the two world wars. The anti-fascist Croce denies the possibility of translating in the name of an aristocratic and romantic idea of art, and thus pushes critics in his camp, such as Debenedetti, to resort to different paths. Although Gentile claims to embody the fascist intellectual, his view on art is in contradiction with his view on power: subjective deconstruction and state authoritarianism, interpretive freedom and ideological violence coexist to the point where his reflections on translation get absurdly close to Benjamin’s.