Back to the Futurists:
Avant-gardes 1909-2009
2-4 July 2009
Queen Mary University of London, UK
Marja Härmänmaa, University of Helsinki, Finland
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Marinetti’s ontology based on fight
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Tools to win the battles:
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humans against nature
nations against nations
technology and language
Adorno & Horkheimer: instruments of power
(Dialectic of Enlightenment 1944)
Marinetti’s rhetoric and the art he did and
promoted are to be intended as propaganda of
the ideology of Futurism
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socially engaged art – “arte – vita”
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Marinetti in 5 wars (Libya, Balcan, WW1,
Ethiopia, WW2)
In the 1930s he was a propagandist of the State
in case of war
Fundamental theme in Marinetti’s works:
“destruction”, “fight” in pre-futurist works
 War in Mafarka il futurista (1909) – L’Aeropoema di
Cozzarini primo eroe repubblicano (1944)
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Nationalist dream to make Italy politically (and
culturally) important country
Scepticism towards the international situation
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Social-darwinist fight between the nations –
impossibility of the enduring peace
Glorification of war = propaganda in its favour
(De Maria: glorification of war for its own sake)
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Representation of the Italian soldier
Representation of an enemy
Representation of battle
Representation of the death
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Courageous and loyal
Willing to die for the Fatherland
Creative and elastic
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Generous and merciful towards the enemy
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“artisticamente improvvisando...”
For instance, he gives food to the prisoner both in
L’Alcova d’acciaio (1921) and in Il poema africano (1937)
No hate towards an enemy
Especially in Originalità russa di masse distanze radiocuori
(op. post., WW2)
 Maxim Gorgij: “Who cannot hate, cannot love either.”
 In the USSR: hating the enemy was citizen’s duty
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Marinetti was not racist nor xenophobic
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No systematic or rationally motivated
propaganda against an inimical nation:
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Carlo Carrà (1915) explains the reason to hate the
Germans: “Voi siete quasi sempre corpulenti come
buoi...” [Guerrapittura (1915), 13-14]
Seldom present
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(“Africanism”, for instance)
cruel and coward
On the representational level the true enemies:
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passéism and nature
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“Come potremmo, senza elasticità, schiacciare
il passatismo austro-ungarico, rinnovare
integralmente l’Italia dopo la vittoria?”
[L’Alcova d’acciaio (1921), 4]
“E se morisse [l’Italia] di chi la colpa / Colpa
della numismatica monarchia del passato e
della tradizione / Tradizione uguale
tradimento gloria quindi a Cozzarini eroe
dell’invenzione” [L’Aeropoema di Cozzarini
primo eroe repubblicano” (1944)]
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In Il Poema africano della divisione ‘28 ottobre’
(1935) the greatest enemies of the Italian soldier
in Africa:
Sun, the heath and thirst
 “C’è urgenza di bere necessità di bere fatalità di bere
per non morire.” [19]
 Antropomorphization of thirst: “figlia prodiga del
Sole col suo chilometrico corpo di zinco in forma di
forbici a lame aperte...” [135-136]
 See also Blum
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Nature as a vehicle in analogies
“Mentre ci vestiamo sentiamo crescere,
addensarsi e centuplicarsi i sibili delle granate
austriache che fanno, passando sui roccioni e
sul tetto di lamiera, l’illusione d’un’enorme
corrente d’acqua col loro rumore di seta
lacerata.” [L’Alcova d’acciaio (1921), 17]
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Existential battle between human beings and
nature
Cosmic battle between opposite forces
Good and Bad
 Futurism and passéism
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Existential battle of the human being against
himself (the “metallization of man”)
Case study: technological war in L’Alcova
d’acciaio (1921)
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“Marinetti’s modernolatry has its
psychothematic centre and its obsessive
technical space in the marvels of the industrial
war.” (Sanguineti, 1984)
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Romantic night “La rabbia delle cannonate in
rissa con tutti gli echi mugolanti accresce la
fantasia e il mistero di questa notte ultraromantica innamorata di morte e d’ilarità
crudele.” [L’Alcova d’acciaio (1921), 19]
Description focalized on the technological
weapon that becomes a woman: “La
leggendaria Dama al balcone”
The enemy soldiers transform into admirers
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“E la dama elegante in nero si curva giù sugli
abissi dove fervono le serenate austriache e
sputa, sputa i suoi innumerevoli fiori veementi
che uccidono i romantici e audaci suoi
serenatori.” [L’Alcova d’acciaio (1921), 19]
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The presence of gas transforms the trench into
“a chemical laboratory full of mad scientists”
[L’Alcova d’acciaio (1921), 24]
Soldiers with the gas mask are ”colle sue
tubature, dei profili originalissimi palombari
immersi in un mare di gas asfissianti e
lagrimogeni” [L’Alcova d’acciaio (1921), 24]
(diver = palombaro important motive in
Prampolini in 1930s)
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Transformation of the human into a “mechanical
superman” in the “laboratory” of the trench
L’Alcova d’acciao (1921), an autobiographical novel
about the WW1 has two themes: love and war
Marinetti goes to the war in order to “cure”
himself of love (towards women)
Love (towards women) substituted by a romantic
scene of a technological weapon
and by love towards Fatherland (transformed into
a woman) that Marinetti “loves” with his vehicle
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Marinetti: consciousness of the short life of
humans:
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“La durata attuale della nostra esistenza è
spaventosamente breve in confronto alle possibilità
intellettuali...” [“La simultaneità nella vita e nella
letteratura” (1930)]
Futurism: exorcization of (linear) time and
death
Velocity (Einstein’s theory of relativity)
 Simultaneity (of space and time)
 Utopia of the immortal multiplied man
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In the representation of war, soldiers are
constantly dying on the battlefields
Banalization with 2 types of representation:
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Short (and objective) description in order to make
death meaningless
With brutal analogies
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“Quando dopo il bombardamento di Tripoli
vicino a me un marinaio italiano cadde colpito
mortalmente nella spugna rossa della sua
povera faccia il suo compagno bersagliere lo
legò traverso sull’asino pungiglionando come
faccio io ogni cadavere del ricordo verso il
mare della speranza
Ed infatti l’appetito non manca fra noi a
colazione serviti da camerieri...” [Il Poema non
umano dei tecnicismi (1940), TIF 1176]
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“Nella camera nautica sfondata da una bomba
il piccolo timoniere decapitato è diventato un
tascapane pieno di fragole primaverili sospeso
ad un chiodo di osteria campestre” [Canto eroi e
macchine della guerra mussoliniana (1942), 57]
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Ideological roots in (or affinities with) Bergson,
Romanticism, Nietzsche...
Enlightenment in Marinetti
Glorification of science and technology as means of
power
 Substitution of the cyclical (romantic) time with linear
time (containing the idea of progress)
 Detachment from nature that becomes the Other to be
exploited (Il Poema non umano dei tecnicismi, 1940)
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Horkheimer & Adorno about the self-destruction
of Enlightenment: “blindly pragmatized thought
loses its transcending quality and its relationship
to Truth.”
In Marinetti the transcendence exists as salvation
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Heroism according to Marinetti: “il massimo
slancio spontaneo dell’umanità verso il
divino.” [Canto eroi e macchine della guerra
mussoliniana (1942), 24]
The importance of heroic death (Blum and
Baldissone)
The death heroes are taken to paradise
Similarities with Islam?
Thank you!