Page 40 - Studio International - April 1973

Futurist volunteers at the Front 1915
(L to R): Marinetti, Sant' Elia, unknown, Russolo,
Boccioni, Sironi

Germany. The futurists demonstrated with
vitalistic demands for Italy to enter the war,
a crude translation into action of Bergson's
élan vital, while, for his part, Bergson had
become the most authoritative guide to the
French warrior soul. The futurists took part in
the campaign, making it the essential reason for
their very existence: a provocative activism,
demonstrations in the streets, a violent and
tireless physical presence with manifestations,
often transformed into street battles and
physical assault. It was a foretaste of what the
fascists' squads were to be.
In September 1914, Marinetti and his friends
organized the first Milanese interventionist
manifestations at the Teatro del Verme and in
the Galleria, ending with a brief stay in the
San Vittore prison. Meanwhile Mussolini had
relinquished the editorship of Avanti! and a
determined opposition to the war for the of some twenty thousand, four fifths of whom nothing to them.' The last number of Lacerba,
editorship of the Popolo d'Italia, which he had were workers. During the manifestations of May 1915, summarizes the situation with
founded, and a determined policy of futurist art in the theatres of the large Italian extreme frankness, 'From this moment we are
intervention. At a third manifestation in Rome, cities, it used to be that the workers defended one thing only, Italians'. D'Annunzio
11 April 1915, Mussolini was arrested along the futurists from the assaults of the half- considered the war 'a lyric event', the futurists
with Marinetti. But by then Italy was on the aristocratic and half-bourgeois bands of `a mathematical and aesthetic intoxication'.
verge of declaring war against Austria. The youths'. Gramsci also related the episode of And even this was but a romantic-decadent
futurist poet Libero Altomare, recalling a Marinetti accepting an invitation to visit an cover to hide a tragic and in no wise poetic
meeting with Boccioni in 1909, recounts a exhibition of paintings by workers, and reality.
significant confession of his, 'that he admired expressing the opinion that 'the workers are With the entry of Italy into the war,
the leader of the futurists, and that in art he more sensitive to Futurism than are the Marinetti, who had had an operation for hernia,
sympathized with the programme he had bourgeoisie'. left with the futurists in the Volunteer Cyclists'
devised, although he reserved politics for his All this adds to the internal contradictions of Battalion, then transferred to the Alpine
own marxist convictions'. At that time the futurist movement, to that crude mixture of regiment, along with Boccioni, Sant'Elia,
Boccioni was a frequent visitor to the Camera tendencies in which, as we have seen, the most Russolo, Erba, Funi and Sironi, and took part
del Lavoro (Trades Union Centre), and had also different men could be accommodated. But in the assault of Dosso Casina. Rising through
done a drawing for the cover of the Sunday the pressure and drive of interventionism the ranks to become a battery commander,
supplement of Avanti! These same convictions cancelled out the differences and potential wounded, he was visited in hospital by the
were expressed in his work two years later, a contradictions that might have shifted the soldier hero, D'Annunzio, bearing him a
great canvas, Città che sale (The City rises). The debate, at least for the more thoughtful like bouquet of red carnations. In the meantime
subject of this work is, in fact, still that of a Boccioni, on to different ground. Where, for Mussolini made speeches. The war had become
socially committed art: workers, cabmen with example, did Carrà's anarchist faith end up, the stage for them to act out the roles they had
their horses, bricklayers and their hods; its within the interventionist hysteria ? It is enough selected for themselves, celebrated by the
inspiration was the construction of the future, to thumb through the little book with the nationalist press. Only Boccioni, after an initial
and its original title was precisely Il Lavoro significant title, Guerra pittura (War painting), period of excitement, suddenly wrote a letter
(Work).3 In a parallel manner, Carrà brought to realize the sad truth : 'Today the bourgeois revealing his disenchantment and the end of his
about in his work a fusion of his anarchism and favourable to the war is certainly more bellicose vehemence: 'From this existence I will
his futurist aesthetics, as in I funerali revolutionary than the so-called revolutionary go out with a disdain for everything but art . . .
dell' anarchico Galli (The funeral of the with his neutralism. The former takes risks and Art alone exists.' He had turned to art in his
anarchist Galli). Galli had been killed by the acts; therefore he is a revolutionary, while the consternation and crisis as the only credible
carabinieri in the course of a manifestation in other, the so-called anarchist, is harmful to life truth. A few days later, after a fall from a horse,
1906, and when his funeral procession, in which and progress because, in reality, he sacrifices he died.
Card took part, reached the Porta Volta in With the war's end the equivocation and
Milan, the cavalry charged. confusion began all over again, da capo, with
When writing an essay on Russian an ever more frenetic crescendo. Differences
Futurism in 1922, Trotsky asked Gramsci (one and quarrels, changes of orientation and
of the founders of the Italian Communist judgment, appeared, often with some heat,
Party and its most important theoretician to while Marinetti continued to represent, along
date. Tr.) for some information on Italian with old and new futurists close to him, the
Futurism, the latter replied: 'Before the war the political direction as a whole. The plan to found
futurists enjoyed a certain popularity among the a futurist party, actually carried out in 1918
workers. The review, Lacerba, had a circulation before the war had ended, was the first decisive
act in that direction. The manifesto took up and
From left to right: Boccioni, Sironi, Marinetti developed several of the points hastily set down
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