Page 39 - Studio International - April 1973

(Left)
Boccioni
Study for The City Rises 1910
Tempera on board
17.5 x 30.5 cm.
Coll. Mr and Mrs Eric
Estorick
(Below)
Carrà
Aeroplane reconnaissance-Sea-
Moon + 2 Machine guns +
North-East Wind 1914
Collage
27 x 37 cm.
Coll: Galleria Annunciata,
Milan

ideologies hitherto insufficiently widespread memory of Roman greatness be cancelled by an Italy. Anticlericalism and antisocialism. Cult of
among the masses. But the war was also an acid Italian greatness one hundred times greater.' progress and of speed, of sport, of physical force,
test for the reformist socialists who, though still None the less, the substance of both of fearless courage, of heroism and of danger,
in the Socialist Party, were in fact already D'Annunzio's and Marinetti's attitudes against the obsession with culture, classical
within the ideological sphere of the bourgeoisie. coincided as they did with those of Pascoli, education, the museum, the library, and antique
Many of them either willingly slid into direct Corradini and the anarchosyndicalist Labriola. remains . .' But with the war, Marinetti was
collaboration or into a sort of moral consent to Nationalism was the glue that stuck together able to reaffirm yet another of the futurist
the Giolitti government's decision to wage war. everything and everybody, futurists and theses, the positivist view of progress and the
But on this occasion even the revolutionary `nostalgicists' alike, over and above every future of a technological civilization. It was
syndicalism inspired by Sorel showed itself divergence, whether literary, political or indicative that Milan was the real capital of
threadbare; and Arturo Labriola, one of its philosophical. Futurism. The city was in those years the centre
most representative exponents, maintained that In October 1913 Marinetti repeated his of strong industrial growth, and hence the place
colonialism and syndicalism could perfectly theses in a Programma politico futurista, 'Foreign where the futurist praise of the machine, of
well go together. policy, cynical, astute and aggressive — Colonial modernism and of speed, made more sense than
In the literary campaign, D'Annunzio was in expansionism — Libertism — Irredentism (the elsewhere in the peninsula. But it is also clear
the front rank with his 'songs of overseas' calling reclaiming of the unredeemed Italian territories, that this eulogy would finish by identifying
into play a vast armament from Greco- Latin- notably Fiume. Tr.) — Panitalianism —Primacy of with the programme of the more active and
Italic mythology, with no lack of the 'martial unprejudiced bourgeoisie of Lombardy and the
eagle', 'mare nostrum', 'The Libyan Sibyl', North in general; these, for evident reasons, had
Goffredo di Buglione 'the palladin of the gun wanted the war in Africa and were ready to join
carriage' and other rubbish. 'Paradise is in the in the game for the First World War, unlike
shadow of the sword,' he sang in Dantesque the more uncertain, backward and fearful
triplets. With rather less tawdriness, Marinetti, landed-bourgeoisie, hesitant to take any risks,
on the other hand, in the manifesto launched unaware of the immediate benefits that interested
on the outbreak of hostilities, hailed the Libyan the industrialists of Northern Italy. The
war as a 'great futurist hour', proclaiming with optimism and positivism of Marinetti's
the aggressiveness that was to become Futurism had its roots here. This is why
increasingly a characteristic trait of his political Mafarka, as Marinetti said, gave birth alone to
manifestos : let there to the individual and the 'mechanical bird'. This is why out of
the people be conceded every liberty except that decadent symbolism came the machine with its
of being cowardly. Let it be proclaimed that the shining fascination, its cold and simultaneously
name Italy must dominate world liberty . . . thrusting ardent energy. Yet it is precisely this
Today Italy has for us the shape and power origin that preserved within futurist
of a beautiful dreadnought with its flotilla of technological pathos an irrational thrust.
torpedo-boat islands. Proud of feeling equal to If the futurists were at the head of the
the warlike fervour which animates the whole interventionist campaign, it remains a fact that
country, we urge that Italian government at last the wave of nationalism swamped social-
to become futurist, to enlarge all national reformists, idealists, Catholics and mystics alike,
ambitions, disdaining the stupid accusations of as it swept outwards from the war in Libya. It
piracy and proclaiming the birth of was not, however, a purely Italian phenomenon.
Panitalianism.' In this manifesto there had to be Nationalism among intellectuals was
an anti-D'Annunzio sally: 'Let the fastidious incandescent throughout Europe, not least in
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