THE FUTURIST SCHOOL OF ITALIAN WRITERS
The Italians are a people of great emotional complexity, displaying a
strange mixture of idealism and realism. They are at present engaged in
constructing an edifice which shall be the admiration of the world for
all time, to wit, a third Italy. Naturally the designers, the
architects, the builders and the prospective inhabitants hope that it
will be more ideal, more commodious, more adapted to its purposes than
its predecessors. To the sympathetic observer, however, they appear to
limit themselves narrowly to old building material.
There is nothing which mirrors the individual and composite mind of a
country so illuminatingly as its literature. The man craving for power
prefers the allegiance of a country's song-writers to that of its
lawgivers. That a tremendous change has taken place to-day, not only in
the songs of Italy but in all her literature, must be admitted. This
change has been in process for a generation and is going on with
increasing rapidity.
Italian literature is now going through a phase quite as distinct as
that which characterized the romanticism initiated by Manzoni and which
ended with the advent of Carducci. It would be difficult to find a word
which would adequately express the spirit of it--perhaps the most
descriptive one is _protest_. The new writers protest against the
social, political, and religious acceptances of the past fifty years.
They object to the acceptance of alleged facts substantiated only by
tradition; they refuse adherence to teachings, doctrines, modes of
thought and expression merely because they are old; they reject dogma
originating in self-constituted authority, no matter how long or by whom
it has been sanctioned and privileged, no matter how securely rooted.
They will have none of the conventionalism which is out of harmony with
the present conditions of life and with the present yearning for
liberty. They stand against the teaching that the flesh must be punished
in order that the soul may be purified, as they do against all slavish
stereotypy, moss-covered convention, and archaic laws.
They claim instead that the best of life is to be found in purposeful
action; that life should be speeded up, and that every one should be
encouraged to live fully for the advantage that may come to himself, to
those to whom he is beholden, and to the world. They advocate the
strenuous life and invite the new and unforeseen, while urging
exploration of untrodden fields and especially determination of things
called inaccessible and unrealizable. They advocate equal life for men
and women, and seek to give to such words as "patriotism" and "idealism"
a fuller significance, so that the former shall not mean the heroic
idealization of commercial, industrial, and artistic solidarity of a
people but a love of liberty and a knowledge, recognition, and
appreciation of what other people and other countries are attempting and
accomplishing; and that the latter may be applied to the affairs of life
and not to the affairs of the imagination.
This movement, in Italy, was begun by a group of men who called
themselves Futurists and, if that name can be dissociated from the
connotation that is given to it when applied to art, I see no objection
to it. It has been influenced by the French Symbolists of the preceding
generation, Baudelaire, de Goncourt, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Mallarmé,
Verlaine, Huysmans, Rimbaud, whose work so profoundly influenced the
course of French literature. Like this school the self-styled futuristic
writers of Italy revolt against rhetoric and against tradition.
Therefore they reject equally the ardent classicism of Carducci and
D'Annunzio's decadent blend of idealism and realism, the crass, slavish
Gallicism of Brocchi, the Scandinavian genuflections of Bracco and the
Shavian imitations of Pirandello. In protest against all these they seek
the full liberty of the written word, as the evangel of socialism seeks
the liberty of the individual. Not from other writers but from reality
itself, or from the depths of their own imaginations, they have received
a vision and this vision they demand the right to evoke in others, by
what words or what images they will. The art of expression should be
speeded up, abbreviated, and epitomized, while the love of profound
essentials is cultivated. To borrow from England's singer of
materialistic grandeur and promise, they
" ... want the world much more the world;
Men to men and women to women--all
Adventure, courage, instinct, passion, power."
And in addition, as true Futurists, they want us to have constantly in
mind what happened to Lot's wife when she looked back to see how high
the flames rose over Sodom and Gomorrah.
The leaders of the Futuristic movement in Italy were Guillaume
Apollinaire, then editor of _Les Soirées de Paris_, and F. T. Marinetti
of Milan.
One thing can be said of Signor Marinetti, the pope of Futurism, which
no one, I fancy, will deny. He is the most amusing writer in Italy. His
idea of beauty is a massive building of concrete in course of
construction with the scaffoldings lovingly embracing it. His idea of
ugliness is a curve of any kind--save in the feminine body. "Parole in
libertà," words free from syntactical shackles are the words with which
we shall fight the battle of the future. They are the dynamite which
will blow asunder literary Monte Testaccio, in which are buried the
useless literary labors of his forebears but which shall also prepare
the soil for a fertility that it has never possessed. Dynamism is the
master-key. No artificer of the past or wizard of the future can
construct a lock that it will not readily open, and as for political
manacles they are as fragile as rubber bands when confronted with the
doctrines of his new book, "Democrazia Futurista."
Signor Marinetti has no delusions of grandeur; he only pretends that he
has. Nor is he the victim of a mental disorder which is characterized by
loss of insight and megalomania. It is gratifying to be able to make
this diagnosis of one of Italy's literary leaders. It offsets the
diagnosis of general paresis made of Woodrow Wilson by one of Mr.
Marinetti's fellow citizens and published with such elaborate attempts
of substantiation in the _Giornale di Italia_. He merely overestimates
his intellectual and emotional possessions, but he says many clever
things and makes some prophecies that are likely to come through. The
last European ruler who talked and acted as Signor Marinetti does got a
bad spill, as is now fairly widely known. In reality, Marinetti is a
Bolshevik who amuses himself behind a mask, but not all the principles
of Bolshevism are bad by any means, nor even are they new. The most
telling way of making a statement is to overstate it. The most
successful way of getting a bad smell out of a house is to burn the
house; then, if you have a good plan and plenty of time, money, and
building material, you can construct yourself a house free from bad
odors. However, there are other ways of making it a very livable and
beautiful house, but why one should object to Mr. Marinetti's building
his own house his own way is difficult to understand, unless in so doing
it he makes himself such a nuisance to his neighbors that they cannot
tolerate him. So far he has not done that, but when he joins force with
Signor Bruno Corra, as he has in "L'Isola dei Baci" ("The Island of
Kisses"), he comes perilously near it.
Apollinaire, a Pole whose real name was Kostrowitski, was born in Rome
and lived in Italy until late childhood, when he went to France, where
he remained until his death in 1919. He had a tremendous influence upon
many of the young symbolist writers of Italy, comparable to that
exercised by Stéphane Mallarmé on the young writers in the '80's and
'90's. One of them wrote at the time of his death: "Hero of thought and
of art, idealist, philosopher, genuine poet, prophetic theorist and
critic, sublime soul, comrade, joyous, generous, he was also in the last
years of his life a hero of humanity."
The most important figure of the school has been Giovanni Papini, who
has gathered about him in Florence a coterie which includes Ardengo
Soffici, the painter, critic, and novelist; Aldo Palazzeschi, poet;
Alberto Savinio, wanderer, musician, and litterateur; and a long list of
names more or less ancillary to Marinetti, some of which I shall mention
later.
Papini, who is considered at length in another chapter, does not admit
that he is a Futurist. As he puts it, he did not marry Futurism; it was
for him one of many intellectual adventures, a mistress that left an
indelible impression on him. He simply passed through Futurism's
influence and at the same time gave momentum to the best of that school,
to Palazzeschi, Govoni, Boccioni, Folgore. Then he proceeded alone,
after having become persuaded that it had become too popular and
consequently less refined and select, and after the hazardous and
aristocratic little group had become a species of low, bigoted democracy
into which any one could enter who dangled a rosary of incomprehensible
words. He left it in company with Soffici and Palazzeschi and soon Carrà
and others followed his example. Thus, on the death of Boccioni, the
first generation of Futuristic writers reformed or disappeared.
Then there are many young men carrying the banner of literature in Italy
to-day who do not call themselves Futurist, and whose writings contain
less of the grotesque, which has been made familiar to Italian readers
by Marinetti's "Zang Tumb Tumb." They are men of the stamp of Antonio
Beltramelli, Mario Mariani, Luigi Morselli, Gino Rocca, Salvator Gotta,
Lorenzo Montano, Vincenzo Cardarelli, Raffale Calzini, Enrico
Cavacchioli, Alfredo Grilli, and a score of others who not alone have
ideas but who keenly sense the composite world-thought, who believe that
the era of Big Business will reach its apogee when it weds Big Justice,
and who know how to express their ideas with explosive rhythmic
eloquence and with distinction of form.
It would be presumptuous on my part to attempt to select the winners
entered in the great sweepstakes of literary fame in Italy, with no
qualification for prophecy or judgment than a love of literature and a
lifelong ardent consumption of it. I shall, therefore, content myself
with brief discussion of the work of some of these younger writers with
the particular end in view of suggesting to others the pleasure and
profit that may result from more intimate acquaintance with them.
About ten years ago there began to appear in the Florentine publication,
_La Voce_, a series of articles critical and interpretative of French
art. It is difficult now to believe that Cézanne, Courbet, Renoir,
Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and the school of
impressionists and neo-impressionists was so little known in Italy as
they were at the time of the appearance of these articles from the pen
of Ardengo Soffici, a painter by training and profession enrolled in the
Futuristic movement. He was, in reality, the first to speak in Italy
with appreciation and intelligence of the tendencies in French art shown
in the last half-century which have to-day had such a stamp of profound
approval put upon them. These criticisms attracted much attention from
the first, and they have since been republished under the title of
"Scoperte e Massacri" ("Discoveries and Massacres"), and to-day they
constitute a trustworthy guide to the schools mentioned both in
presentation and in description.
They were quite unlike previous criticisms, more particularly in a note
of challenge, of insolence, and of prophecy. His judgments were stated
with a firmness and tranquillity that savored of the dogmatic, and,
although time has shown him to have been mistaken in his estimate of
some of the artists discussed--Gauguin, for instance--it has
corroborated most of them with remarkable accuracy. In a small way he
did for Italian readers what Mr. MacColl did for English readers in his
"Nineteenth Century Art," for, like that writer, he is an artist with a
fastidious temperament who knows how to write.
Since that time Signor Soffici has published nearly a score of
books--romances, criticisms, fragments which show him to be a clear
thinker with a pungent style, writing what he thinks and not what he
cribs from others, and not continually advertising himself as the last
cry of intelligence or the most perfect type of superman. His first book
was called "Ignoto Toscano" ("An Unknown Tuscan"), and appeared in 1909,
but it was not until the publication of "Lemmonio Boreo" two years later
that it was realized that there had appeared a writer with a definite
message: a protest against the utter triviality and purposelessness of
Italian middle-class life.
The hero, an artist, who would reform many customs of the land, went
about the countryside accompanied by two aids, one chosen for physical
strength, the other for his "promoter" type of mind. Their encounters
with the predatory innkeeper, with the peculating clerk, with the
industrious stone-breaker of the roads, with the pilferer of the farm or
the barn, and with the pulchritudinous peasant sitting picturesquely in
her cart or gossiping in the village constitute the substance of the
book. It was planned to have it run into several volumes, but it stopped
after the first one, without accomplishing any of the reforms that the
hero had essayed.
Then the writer reverted to art again and published a book on Cubism and
one on Cubism and Futurism. Soon he published Giornale di Bordo, a diary
of sentiment and philosophy--thoughts engendered by various
environments, by reading, and by reflection. In the most casual way the
author reveals his impressionable and poetic nature. They are not
profound or epoch-making thoughts. They are merely the thoughts of a
sane, healthy, artistic mind bathing and refreshing itself in the
beauties of nature and contrasting them with the ugliness of most of
man's handiwork.
Then came two books about the outgrowth of the military life. "Kubilek"
is named after a hill on the Bainsizza Tableland where the author fought
and was wounded. It gives a picture of the Italian as a soul which will
be recognized as true to life by every one who has had to do with him.
No one can read it without feeling an admiration and an affection for
that extraordinarily loyal being the Italian soldier who tolerates
hardship with equanimity and without complaint and who is so
appreciative of anything done for his comfort or welfare. "La Ritirata
del Friuli" ("The Retreat from Friuli") is not up to the author's
standard.
The next book, a very small one, "La Giostra dei Sensi" ("The Joust of
the Senses"), is a portrayal of the capacity shown by a "lost soul" for
radiating unselfish love upon an individual who comes to her for
meretricious contact but who stays to add to his spiritual stature. The
scene is laid in Naples and the author utilizes the sheer beauty of the
place and picturesqueness of the people to give an artistic setting for
the description of the jousts. It could not possibly be published in
England unless the publisher aspired to "languish" in prison.
Of the many questions I have asked in Italy none has been so
unsatisfactorily answered as "Do you let your young folk read that book
and what effect does it have?" No one could think of calling Soffici a
pornographic writer. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that he is one
of the most respected and admired of all the young school of Italian
writers, and yet there are passages in the book now under discussion
coarser and more vulgar than any in the "Satyricon." Despite this it is
not a circumstance to the recent book of a seventeen-year-old girl of
Rome, Margherita Emplosi Gherardi, entitled "Il Nudo nelle Anime." It is
dedicated to all those who deny that the youthful mind has not the
capacity, discernment, liberty, and daring to envisage and interpret the
painful mysteries of the human soul. There are few things more
disgusting in literature, "Gamiana" excluded, than the sketch entitled
"The Impure Hour," for women only.
His remaining books, "Statue e Fantocci" ("Statues and Dolls"), are made
up chiefly of critical reviews, many of which have appeared in journals.
They show that the writer has a mastery of literary technic and an
understanding of modern art and literature creditable to himself and to
his country. He can be satirical, caustic, sarcastic, but he is never
brutal. He can be an ardent admirer, a valorous champion, a sympathetic
interpreter, a critical friend, and a prejudiced judge, but he is never
an implacable, insensate enemy, nor a literary fiend. Moreover, one does
not gather from his writings that he is what is called the "whole thing"
from the literary standpoint.
Signor Soffici has got some bad habits from Papini. Among these are:
saying old things as if they never had been said before; taking on an
air of complacency after the delivery of a sentiment or a conviction in
no wise epoch-making; believing that all his geese are swans and the
geese of others decoys; that his every thought is a jewel which people
are frenzied to possess unless they are too stupid; and saying trivial
things with the subtly conveyed insinuation that the reader should, if
he is perspicacious and cultured, find a deep significance in them.
He is yet a long way from his full stature, but he is growing.
Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-) is one of the youngest of the Futuristic group
who has gained enduring fame as a poet. His first volume of verses,
"Cavalli Bianchi" ("White Horses"), which was published when he was
twenty years old, showed him to be a youth of sensibility and
originality, with capacity for tuneful verse and for dainty sentiment
daintily expressed. The publication of a second volume, entitled
"Lanterna" ("The Lantern"), two years later, fully justified the
expectations of those who were attracted by the little gems of his early
verse. But it was not until 1909, on the publication of a volume
entitled "The Poems of Aldo Palazzeschi," that it was realized that
there had come upon the scene a poet who might quite easily get a fame
equal to that of Carducci or Pascoli.
His poems not only showed the influence of Apollinaire and Marinetti,
but also of Whitman, of Mallarmé, of Rimbaud, of Laforgue, and of other
French writers. The dyed-in-the-wool critics saw in much of his work
clownishness and infantilism, especially in such productions as "E
lasciatemi divertire." They thought it should be construed: "And let me
divert myself with insane-asylum poetry." They were quite right from
their standpoint, but a fellow poet whose emotional mechanism is not so
equilibrated as that of the sort of man called normal, would be likely
to see in it something of beauty and of merit which the latter could not
see, and ask: "Why should not the poet divert himself?" It is to him
what exercise is to the average man, and he speaks of it, in fact is
proud of it, just as the average man is proud of his golf score when he
gets it in that Elysian field, "under ninety."
Those who do not see in Palazzeschi's poetry an adhesion to a certain
school of philosophy, an advocacy of certain ethical systems, a
restatement of others' thoughts and teachings, miss the very essence of
his contribution. This is his capacity to present the world around us in
colors which, if not new, at least have been recognized only since the
advent of the impressionistic painter. So illuminated, it presents
facets of beauty that make appeal to that which within us mediates and
interprets pleasure.
In addition to this, he has an extraordinary sense of the fantastic, the
grotesque, the panoplied. His eye is microscopic and his mind is
telescopic, and his soul waves tend to a rhythm which is akin to that of
genius when he reveals them and describes them to others, as he does,
for instance, in the "Villa Celeste" ("The Celestial House"); the
average man (who is attuned to interpret some poetic waves) realizes
that the soul of this young man is the generating station of genuine
poetical energy. He puts a reflector before his soul and it reflects the
waves in our direction.
"Io metto una lente
dinanzi al mio cuore,
per farlo vedere alla gente."
Among the youngest of the Italian litterateurs who are giving great
promise is Alberto Savinio, who is not only an interesting writer but an
accomplished musician, composer, and performer. Of Sicilian origin, he
was born in Tuscany and has lived in various parts of central Europe. He
first came to conspicuous notice through his articles in _Les Soirées de
Paris_. To the average reader he is known as a traveller and a narrator
of his observations and experiences in the form of comments and short
stories. Latterly, however, he has published a queer book entitled
"Hermaphrodito," which is difficult briefly to characterize without
doing it injustice. It is a book that a clever man might write in the
early stages of delirium tremens, providing he returned to it after
recovery and added the chapters "Isabella Hasson" and "La Partenza dell'
Argonauti." In the latter especially he shows himself capable of writing
temperate, vivacious, robust prose, of making inviting descriptions of
places, and of revealing man's conduct and his motives.
When the war broke out he returned to Italy and his contributions soon
began to appear in different journals, more particularly in the _Voce_
of Florence and the _Brigati_ of Bologna. Since then he has received
even greater praise than was meted out to him in Paris, and he gives
promise, should his development continue, of getting a place amongst the
modern writers.
Another young writer of the same kidney, though by no means of such
promise, is Mario Venditti. He is a type of juvenile writer in Italy who
excites a curiosity to know how he succeeds in getting some of his
writings published. He appears to have a writing formula: take of
substantives whose meaning is known to few save dictionary experts,
archaic or uncommon adjectives, adverbs, or adverbial phrases taken from
other languages, excerpts from scientific writings, especially
philosophy and medicine, and string them together so that when they are
read aloud there will be a certain sonorous, musical effect, and at the
same time suggest a color accompaniment. He reminds of a properly
brought-up and well-educated boy who, when he reaches the age of
puberty, insists upon wearing what are called "outlandish" clothes, a
combination of the apparel of the clown and that of the fashion-plate,
to which he attaches ornate trimmings and incongruous decoration. In
such costume he struts about with a nonchalance and swagger of
self-appreciation which is more irritating even than his sartorial
affectations. Many modern literary youths seem to have to go through a
period of this kind, just as the children of "First Families,"
unfortunately, must have mumps and measles. Like the victims of those
diseases the majority of them go through unscathed, but every now and
then one of them is intellectually enfeebled and genetically sterilized.
Signor Venditti has not assured us by the publication of "Il Burattino e
la Pialla" that he is not a victim.
When is a Futurist not a Futurist? A very difficult question that, for
readers answer it one way and writers another. Some writers are
Futuristic on alternate days, or every seventh day. One of these is
Enrico Cavacchioli, a Sicilian living in Milan, the dramatic critic of
the _Secolo_ and the director of _Il Mondo_ and of the publishing-house
of Vitagliano. His reputation as a man of letters stands in no relation
to his futurist poems. It does, however, to his compositions for the
theatre, and especially to his great success, "Uccello del Paradiso"
("Bird of Paradise"). His last contribution, "Quella che t'assomiglia"
("That Which Resembles You"), which he calls a vision in three acts, is
a satire on the present-day interest in the occult and supernatural.
When the promising and brilliant young writer of the Florentine group,
Renato Serra, was killed in the war, Italy lost one of its most gifted
critics since De Sanctis. Despite his youth he had, when he was called
to the colors, already won a conspicuous position as a man of letters.
Alfredo Panzini dedicated his "Madonna di Mamà" to him, and made
touching allusions to his qualities of soul and potential greatness. In
1914 he published a survey of contemporary Italian literature ("Le
Lettere"), and the five years which have elapsed since then have shown
that his estimates and judgments were unusually sound. His was neither
the academic idealistic criticism of the old school nor the historic
philosophic criticism of Croce. He attempted to interpret writers,
plans, and performances and to contrast them with ideals he had himself
conceived or worked out from study of the masters. His last work,
"Scritti Critici" ("Critical Writings"), was published in 1919. They
show a subtle and profound analysis, an original point of view, and
equilibrium in expression and in form. His style is simple, his
statements clear, his presentations convincing.
Another young writer of this group, a man of great promise, was Scipio
Slattaper. He gave his life for his country in the early days of the
war.
Corrado Govoni has, for the past decade, been considered by some to be
Italy's most promising poet. There is definite infantilism in his work,
a distractibility, a discursiveness, that has stood in the way of
meriting such estimate. Although still a young man (thirty-five), he has
eight volumes of poetry that bear his name. Papini was his impresario
but he no longer treats him as one of his favored family. His first
volume was called "Le fiale" ("The Honeycomb"), the next "Armonia in
Grigio ed in Silenzio" ("Harmony in Gray and in Silence"). They were
truly juvenile. The third volume, "Fuochi d'Artifizio" ("Fireworks"),
showed the influence of Rodenbach, of James, and of the modern French
school.
In 1907 he published "Aborti," which showed his mental growth and which
is one of his best even to the present time.
In 1911 he issued a volume entitled "Electric Poetry" ("Poesie
elettriche"), whose futurist cover was the only futuristic feature it
had. There is no humming, puffing, whirring to convey that
steam-and-gasoline-engine modernity which it should have in order to
justify the name. Its lines are too refined, too pussy-foot, too
pathetic, too tender-minded for that. Were it not for the perfect
equality of the sexes to-day we would be tempted to say they had a
feminine quality. Daintiness does not express it; neither does unvirile.
There is none of this quality in his next production--the "Hymn on the
Death of Sergio." "Neve" ("The Snow") appeared in 1914; "Rarefazione"
("Rarefactions") in 1915. The latter is a weird collection of childish
figures designed by the poet and commented upon by him to such effect as
to demonstrate a state of latent infantilism. In the same year he
published a volume entitled "The Inauguration of the Spring"
("L'Inaugurazione della Primavera"), which contains most of Govoni's
best work in poems. His last book, a series of short stories, "La Santa
Verde" ("The Ardent Saint"), adds nothing to his fame. Most of them are
insignificant, colorless, reliefless, purposeless.
An attempt has been made by champions of Corrado Govoni to show that
"Base rivals, who true wit and merit hate" are forming a cabal to
prevent his getting his deserts. Fiumi, his last champion, does not
materially advance his claim.
Such, in all their diversity, are the Futurists. There is no common
formula which describes them. They have a programme which, like that of
the Socialists, must from its very nature lack specificity. They are not
very definitely organized and many who enrolled under their banner in
the enthusiasm of youth soon deserted the cause. But meanwhile they got
sufficient inspiration and impetus to throw off the shackles of
tradition and to taste the pleasure of exploration. More often they get
purged of a kind of literary preciosity which makes for their well-being
and usefulness. The programme of the Futurist is of little importance in
itself, but it is of great importance as a symptom of tendencies now
agitating the minds of the younger generation in Italy. It may be that
their efforts will constitute the small end of the wedge by which
Romanticism and Verism shall be burst asunder like the Dragon of Bel's
Temple.