The dark side of futurism: Marinetti and war

1. The dark side of futurism:Marinetti and war Back to the Futurists: Avant-gardes 1909-2009 2-4 July 2009 Queen Mary University of London, UK Marja Härmänmaa, University of Helsinki, Finland

2. It is all about power... • Marinetti’s ontology based on fight • humans against nature • nations against nations • Tools to win the battles: • 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 • socially engaged art – “arte – vita”

3. Marinetti’s wars • 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)

4. Socio-political motivations of war • Nationalist dream to make Italy politically (and culturally) important country • Scepticism towards the international situation • 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)

5. The representation of war • Representation of the Italian soldier • Representation of an enemy • Representation of battle • Representation of the death

6. Portrait of the Italian (futuristic) hero • Courageous and loyal • Willing to die for the Fatherland • Creative and elastic • “artisticamente improvvisando...” • Generous and merciful towards the enemy • 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

7. The image of an enemy • Marinetti was not racist nor xenophobic • (“Africanism”, for instance) • No systematic or rationally motivated propaganda against an inimical nation: • Carlo Carrà (1915) explains the reason to hate the Germans: “Voi siete quasi sempre corpulenti come buoi...” [Guerrapittura (1915), 13-14] • Seldom present • cruel and coward • On the representational level the true enemies: • passéism and nature

8. True enemy: passéism • “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)]

9. True enemy: nature (as a topic) • 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

10. Grenades like a river • 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]

11. War on the representational level • Existential battle between human beings and nature • Cosmic battle between opposite forces • Good and Bad • Futurism and passéism • Existential battle of the human being against himself (the “metallization of man”) • Case study: technological war in L’Alcova d’acciaio (1921)

12. The technological war as the core of the modernolatry • “Marinetti’s modernolatry has its psychothematic centre and its obsessive technical space in the marvels of the industrial war.” (Sanguineti, 1984)

13. Technological battle subsitutes love • Romantic night “La rabbia delle cannonate in rissa con tutti gli echi mugolanti accresce la fantasia e il mistero di questa notte ultra-romantica 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

14. The elegant (but deadly) lady • “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]

15. The science fictional trench • 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)

16. Divinization with technology • Transformation of the human into a “mechanical superman” in the “laboratory” of the trench • L’Alcovad’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

17. Fear of death • Marinetti: consciousness of the short life of humans: • “La durataattualedella nostra esistenza è spaventosamentebreve in confrontoallepossibilitàintellettuali...” [“La simultaneitànella vita e nellaletteratura” (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

18. Banalyzing Death • In the representation of war, soldiers are constantly dying on the battlefields • Banalization with 2 types of representation: • Short (and objective) description in order to make death meaningless • With brutal analogies

19. Interruption of a breakfast • “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]

20. A haversack with strawberries • “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]

21. Marinetti and Enlightenment • 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 umanodeitecnicismi, 1940) • 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

22. Towards immortality • 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?

23. Thank you!