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ABSTRACT
This article catalogues and contextualizes Antonio Gramsci’s pre-prison newspaper articles on Futurism, as well as each reference to Futurism in the Quaderni del carcere, to show that Gramsci is equally attentive to aesthetic and political concerns in his evaluation of the movement, and that they present an evolving but coherent view. This perspective is conditioned by awareness of Futurism’s interventions in the context of efforts at creating a ‘contemporary romanticism’, to use Gramsci’s term. Furthermore, this view is predicated on Gramsci’s insistence that Futurism fails in its aim to create a national(ist) art and culture because its leader, F.T. Marinetti, cannot overcome his attachment to the Italian high literary tradition, and the role of the artist within it.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The volumes are the following: Documenti 1. Appunti di glottologia 1912–1913, ed. by Giancarlo Schirru (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2016); Epistolario 1. Gennaio 1906–dicembre 1922, ed. by David Bidussa, Francesco Giasi, Gadi Luzzatto Voghera and Maria Luisa Righi (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2009); Epistolario 2. Gennaio-novembre 1923, ed. by David Bidussa, Francesco Giasi, and Maria Luisa Righi (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2011); Quaderni del carcere 1. Quaderni di traduzioni (1929–1932), ed. by Giuseppe Cospito and Gianni Francioni (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2007); and Scritti (1910–1927) 2. 1917, ed. by Leonardo Rapone (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2015). For more information on the Edizione Nazionale, see two special issues of the journals Studi storici and Laboratoire italien respectively: Studi storici, ed. by Leonardo Rapone 52.4 (2011); and Laboratoire italien, 18 (2016).
2 The scholars who have initiated this work include Joseph Buttigieg, Letterio Cassata, Marco Gatto, Renate Holub, Peter Ives, Marcia Landy, Giuseppe Petronio, and Nikša Stipčević.
3 ‘I futuristi’ signed ‘Alfa Gamma’ and published in the Corriere universitario in 1913; ‘Cavour e Marinetti’ unsigned and published in Il grido del popolo in 1918; ‘Marinetti rivoluzionario?’ published in L’Ordine Nuovo in 1921; and a letter from 1923 to Leon Trotsky which was published for the first time in the first edition of Literatura i revoljutsija the same year. The article’I futuristi’ has been republished in Antonio Gramsci, Cronache torinesi: 1913–1917, ed. by Sergio Caprioglio (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 6–9; ‘Cavour e Marinetti’ is included in the volume Sul fascismo, ed. by Enzo Santarelli (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1973), p. 10; ‘Marinetti rivoluzionario?’ has been published in Gramsci, Scritti politici, ed. by Paolo Spriano, 3 vols (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1973), II, pp. 108–09; and the letter to Trotsky is also in Gramsci’s Scritti politici, vol. 3, pp. 34–35. With the exception of ‘Cavour e Marinetti’, they all appear in translation in Selections from Cultural Writings, trans. by William Boelhower, and ed. by David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (London: Haymarket Books, 2012). To my knowledge, ‘Cavour e Marinetti’ has not been translated into English.
4 Marina Paladini Musitelli, ‘Futurismo’, in Dizionario gramsciano: 1926–1937, ed. by Guido Liguori and Pasquale Voza (Rome: Carocci, 2009), pp. 339–41. Musitelli divides Gramsci’s views on Futurism into three distinct stages: the 1913 phase linked to the article ‘I futuristi’; the writings from the interwar period (‘Marinetti rivoluzionario?’ and the ‘Lettera sul futurismo italiano’ to Leon Trotsky); and the notes in the Quaderni del carcere. Gramsci was initially interested in the Futurist efforts to destroy existing artistic, spiritual, and political hierarchies. He then attempted to explain the paradox between Futurism’s initial ability to attract and sustain workers’ participation, and its later alignment with fascism. According to Musitelli, these interests are related to Gramsci’s broader concerns about the paradigmatic separation between art and life, and its connection with the national-popular and the problem of consensus building.
5 Francesca Chiarotto and Gesualdo Maffia, ‘Sul futurismo. Appunti per una ricerca’, in Gramsci nel suo tempo, Volume primo, ed. by Francesco Giasi (Rome: Carocci, 2008), pp. 263–89.
6 Most notably, this occurs in the body of scholarship that addresses Futurism, Marinetti, and politics more broadly. See Günter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944 (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1996); Futurismo, cultura e politica ed. by Renzo De Felice (Turin: Fondazione G. Agnelli, 1988); Emilio Gentile, ‘La nostra sfida alle stelle’: futuristi in politica (Bari: Laterza, 2009); Ernest Ialongo, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: The Artist and His Politics (Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2015); and Claudia Salaris, Storia del futurismo: libri giornali manifesti (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1985).
7 See Domenico Mezzina, ‘Romanticismo italiano’, in Dizionario gramsciano: 1926–1937, ed. by Guido Liguori and Pasquale Voza (Rome: Carocci, 2009), pp. 732–34.
8 For more on Italian modernism as a critical category, see Luca Somigli and Mario Moroni, ‘Modernism in Italy: An Introduction’, in Italian Modernism: Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde (Toronto: Toronto UP, 2004), pp. 3–31.
9 The scholars who have examined this article include the following: Carlo Angelino, Gramsci al tempo de L’Ordine Nuovo (1919–1920): un intellettuale di vedute europee (Rome: Editori Internazionali Riuniti, 2014), p. 332; Giancarlo Bergami, ‘Gramsci, Trotsky e il futurismo’, Nuova Antologia, 2166.123 (April–June 1988), 318–30 (p. 319); Umberto Carpi, L’estrema avanguardia del Novecento (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1985), p. 31; Francesca Chiarotto, ‘Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: un geniale pagliaccio’, in Il nostro Gramsci: Antonio Gramsci a colloquio con i protagonisti della storia d’Italia, ed. by Angelo D’Orsi (Rome: Viella, 2011), pp. 323–29 (pp. 323–24); Angelo D’Orsi, Il futurismo tra cultura e politica: reazione o rivoluzione? (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2009), p. 21; Dino Mengozzi, Gramsci e il futurismo (1920–1922): Marinetti e una mostra all’Ordine Nuovo (Rome: Quaderni della FIAP, 1980), pp. 55–56 (p. 77); Leonardo Rapone, Cinque anni che paiono secoli: Antonio Gramsci dal socialismo al comunismo (1914–1919) (Rome: Carocci, 2011), p. 46; Claudia Salaris, Marinetti editore (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), p. 95; and Jean Thibaudeau, ‘Le futurisme dans les écrits de Gramsci’, in Marinetti et le futurisme: etudes, documents, iconographie réunis et présentés par Giovanni Lista, ed. by Giovanni Lista (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1977), pp. 115–21 (p. 115).
10 See Umberto Carpi, ‘Gramsci e le avanguardie intellettuali’, Studi Storici, 21.1 (1980), 19–29.
11 I will argue, following Carpi’s views, that the question of the role of the intellectual in society is, for Gramsci, what is at stake in Futurism. This is a theoretical as well as a practical question which, according to Gramsci, is operative in any and all ideological systems. This is why it is misleading to configure the terms of the debate along the familiar fault-lines of the standard political spectrum.
12 See Chiarotto and Maffia, ‘Sul futurismo’, for an analysis of Gramsci’s ‘Cavour e Marinetti’ as an anticipation of self-betraying liberalism. For an overview of scholarship on Gramsci’s interpretation of the Risorgimento, see Giuseppe Vacca, Gramsci interprete del Risorgimento: una presenza controversa (1949–1967) (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2011); and Alessandro Carlucci, ‘The Risorgimento and its Discontents: Gramsci’s Reflections on Conflict and Control in the Aftermath of Italian Unification’, in The Political Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B.R. Ambedkar: Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns, ed. by Cosimo Zene (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 129–41.
13 ‘Camillo Cavour: Il “grande statista”’, in Il nostro Gramsci: Antonio Gramsci con i protagonisti della storia d’Italia, ed. by Angelo D’Orsi (Rome: Viella, 2011), pp. 123–28.
14 F.T. Marinetti: Teoria e invenzione futurista. Manifesti, scritti politici, romanzi, parole in libertà ed. by Luciano De Maria (Milan: Mondadori, 1968), pp. 130–35.
15 See Alessandro Carlucci, ‘Gramsci, Sardinia and the Early Italian Reception of Kipling’, in Chivalry, Academy, and Cultural Dialogues: The Italian Contribution to European Culture. Essays in Honour of Jane E. Everson., ed. by S. Jossa and G. Pieri (Oxford: Legenda, 2016), pp. 223–35.
16 For information about this exhibition, organized in Gramsci’s absence, see Dino Mengozzi, ‘Gramsci e il futurismo (1920–1922): Marinetti e una mostra all’Ordine Nuovo’, Quaderni della FIAP (1980).
17 For more information on Gramsci’s relation to Lunacharsky, see Carlo Angelino, Gramsci al tempo de L’Ordine Nuovo (1919–1920): un intellettuale di vedute europee (Rome: Editori Internazionali Riuniti, 2014); and Cesare G. De Michelis, Il futurismo italiano in Russia 1909–1929: temi e problemi (Bari: De Donato, 1973).
18 Despite the wide-ranging influence of Henri Bergson’s philosophy (particularly on Marinetti and Futurism), Gramsci’s materialist political convictions prevent him from being too taken with the French thinker. Bergson is discussed in various sections of the Quaderni del carcere; see especially pp. 85–86, p. 319, p. 330, p. 567, p. 661, and p. 1395 of the Gerratana four-volume edition. For a reading of Bergson’s influence on Gramsci see Giuseppe Guida, ‘La “religione della storia”. Aspetti della presenza di Bergson nel pensiero di Gramsci’, in Gramsci nel suo tempo, ed. by Francesco Giasi, 2 vols (Rome: Carocci, 2008), II, pp. 685–705.
19 Sascha Bru, ‘Morbid Symptoms: Gramsci and the Political Rhetoric of Futurism’, Variations: Literaturzeitschrift der Universität Zürich, 13 (2005), pp. 119–32 (p. 119); Chiarotto and Maffia, ‘Sul futurismo’, pp. 284–85; and Enrico Crispolti, Storia e critica del futurismo (Bari: Laterza, 1986), pp. 215–16. For a detailed historical reconstruction of the years 1920–1924, see Chapter IV, ‘Rapprochement with the Left, 1920–1924’ of Günter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944 (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996), pp. 172–217.
20 Chiarotto ‘Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: un geniale pagliaccio’, p. 324.
21 Bergami ‘Gramsci, Trotsky e il futurismo’ p. 321; and Carpi ‘Gramsci e le avanguardie’ p. 26.
22 See Alistair Davidson, ‘Gramsci and Lenin 1917–1922’, in Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, ed. by James Martin (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 172–95; and Cris Shore, Italian Communism: The Escape from Leninism (London: Pluto Press, 1990), for an in-depth consideration of the relation between Gramsci, Lenin, and the PCI.
23 ‘Gramsci, Trotsky e il futurismo’, Nuova Antologia, 2053.514 (January 1972), 75–77.
24 For more information on Gramsci and Trotsky, see Leonardo Rapone, Trotskij e il fascismo (Bari: Laterza, 1978), pp. 251–322; and Frank Rosengarten, ‘The Gramsci-Trotsky Question (1922–1932)’, in Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, pp. 320–53. It should be pointed out that, in the existing scholarship, there are two competing views of how Trotsky regarded Futurism (Italian as well as Russian). For Bergami, Trotsky is ultimately indifferent to literary questions (‘Gramsci, Trotsky e il futurismo’, pp. 325–27), while for Slavist and journalist Lia Wainstein, Trotsky’s belief in ‘una cultura del periodo di transizione’ directly required cultural education and impacted his views on both Italian Futurism and, especially, Mayakovsky (‘Trockij: Caro tovarisc mi parli di Marinetti: una lettera inedita a Gramsci: nelle fasi più calde della lotta il rivoluzionario continuava a interessarsi di cultura’, La Stampa, 13 December 1991, p. 17).
25 Umberto Carpi, Bolscevico immaginista: comunismo e avanguardie artistiche nell’Italia degli anni venti (Naples: Liguori, 1981).
26 It should be noted that Ialongo in his book, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: The Artist and His Politics, disagrees with Gramsci: ‘Gramsci clearly overstated Futurism’s loss of character after the war. In fact, its political character was fully developed between 1918 and 1920, and then bifurcated thereafter into left and right wings’ (Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2015: p. 148 n. 27). My interest in this article is in recuperating and interpreting Gramsci’s views on Futurism as they change over time, and in this respect the historical accuracy of Gramsci’s assertion is less important than the reasoning and motivation behind it.
27 While at the time Mayakovsky’s association with (progressive) revolution was definitive, after his death in 1930, Joseph Stalin canonized the poet, leading to a more complicated reception history and relation with politics. See Clare Cavanaugh’s review of the English translation of Bert Jangfeldt’s Mayakovsky: A Biography, ‘Mayakovsky: Model Poet’, The Times Literary Supplement, 5862 (5 August 2015), 10–11. While Mayakovsky’s suicide has most often been attributed to his turbulent personal life, evidence exists that it was at least in part motivated by political disillusionment. Thus, ‘la svolta majakovskiana’ is already rather complex, without taking into account the way it has been interpreted by Italian writers, both at the time and up to the present.
28 Between 1919 and 1924, the now-Croatian city Rijeka and surrounding territory was an independent state known as the Free State of Fiume. From September 1919, for fifteen months, it was governed by D’Annunzio and a group of his followers. There was, in fact, participation by multiple Futurists, but not in an organized way; see Claudia Salaris’s book Alla festa della rivoluzione. Artisti e libertari con D’Annunzio a Fiume (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002). For critical interpretations of Gramsci and D’Annunzio see: Umberto Carpi, L’estrema avanguardia del Novecento (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1985), in particular the chapter ‘ “Loto rosso” nella Fiume di D’Annunzio’, pp. 55–82; and Mario Isnenghi, Il mito della Grande Guerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989), in particular, ‘Premessa. L’attesa’, pp. 11–76.
29 The entries that address Futurism are the following: Quaderno 1 §43 (pp. 35–36) and §124 (p. 115); Quaderno 5 §42 (p. 573); Quaderno 6 §73 (pp. 739–40); Quaderno 8 §1 (p. 935), Quaderno 9 §134 (pp. 1195–97); Quaderno 12 §1 (p. 1538); Quaderno 14 §14 (pp. 1669–70), §15 (p. 1673), and §72 (p. 1739); Quaderno 15 §58 (pp. 1820–22); Quaderno 17 §16 (pp. 1920) and §44 (pp. 1944–45); Quaderno 19 §26 (pp. 2037–38); Quaderno 21 §1 (pp. 2109–10). All references are to the four-volume Quaderni del carcere. Edizione critica dell’Istituto Gramsci, ed. by Valentino Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi, 2007). The first edition of the work was published in 1975.
30 Quaderni 4, 3198.
31 For the most part, the scholarship on Gramsci and Futurism does not address the Quaderni; the exceptions are the work of Bergami, Bru, Chiarotto, Chiarotto and Maffia, and Thibaudeau. Each of these scholars briefly mentions that Futurism appears repeatedly in the Quaderni, but none delve into the topic further: in each case, it is stated that an analysis in conjunction with the pre-prison writings would be beneficial, but such an analysis is not provided.
32 Pirandello is viewed more favourably than the Futurists by Gramsci, because of his plays’ ability to present new ways of thinking–either philosophically, linguistically, or socially – to a broad set of audiences (Quaderno 9 §134, Quaderno 14 §15). Gramsci, in general, looks more favourably on Pirandello’s theatre than his novels or prose fiction. For an introduction to Gramsci’s Pirandello, see Jole Silvia Imbornone, ‘Luigi Pirandello: Un “ardito del teatro”’, in Il nostro Gramsci: Antonio Gramsci a colloquio con i protagonisti della storia d’Italia, ed. by Angelo D’Orsi (Rome: Viella, 2011), pp. 271–82.
33 Quaderni 1: 30–40. Quaderno 19 §26 (dated 1934–1935), under the heading ‘Il rapporto città-campagna nel Risorgimento e nella struttura nazionale italiana’, takes up the same concerns and sketches them in very similar fashion. It should be noted that the mention of Futurism that appears there is an almost word-for-word repetition of the mention in the first notebook. For this reason, I will not go through it in detail. That it appears years later, however, indicates that the subject matter remained relevant and of importance to Gramsci.
34 Quaderno 1 is dated 8 February 8 1929 (Quaderni 1, p. 5).
35 It is worth noting that Gramsci writes that an essential component of such an autobiography would include a description of ‘Come uno supera il suo ambiente, attraverso quali impulsi esterni e quali crisi di pensiero e di sentimento’ (Quaderni 1, p. 32). This mirrors Gramsci’s own autobiography and struggle to leave Sardinia for Turin and thrive once there, as illustrated in his early letters.
36 Here one thinks of Gramsci’s repetition, in the Quaderni, of the image of Italy as ‘un carciofo, le cui foglie si mangiano ad una ad una’ (see Quaderno §127, Quaderni 1, 392; and Quaderno 19 §47, Quaderni 3, 2068). The image is attributed to none other than Vittorio Emanuele II.
37 ‘In senso largo’ is an important Gramscian expression that generally denotes Gramsci’s introduction of a broader category.
38 The overlap with the famous essay ‘Alcuni temi sulla quistione meridionale’ is clear; many of the ideas regarding the industrialized North (as exemplified by Crispi) and the agrarian, rural South are repeated and elaborated in more detail there. This is unsurprising, given Gramsci’s chronology (the essay was left unfinished at the time of his 1926 arrest, while the notebook is dated 1929). For more information on the essay, see Pasquale Verdicchio’s introduction to his translation, Antonio Gramsci: The Southern Question (West Lafayette, IN: Bordighera, 1995), pp. 1–13.
39 From Quaderno 21 §1: ‘9) non esistenza di una letteratura popolare in senso stretto (romanzi d’appendice, d’avventure, scientifici, polizieschi ecc.) e “popolarità” persistente di questo tipo di romanzo tradotto da lingue straniere, specialmente dal francese; non esistenza di una letteratura per l’infanzia. In Italia il romanzo popolare di produzione nazionale è quello anticlericale oppure le biografie di briganti. Si ha però un primato italiano nel melodramma, che in un certo senso è il romanzo popolare musicato’ (Quaderni 3, p. 2108).
40 Ungaretti is discussed as representative of this tendency against Futurism in Quaderno 14 §72 and in Quaderno 17 §44. Gramsci notes that, despite the difference in rhetorical style, both encounter the same problem with Italian cosmopolitan intellectualism: ‘L’Ungaretti ha scritto che le sue poesie piacevano ai suoi compagni di trincea “del popolo”, e può esser vero: piacere di carattere particolare legato al sentimento che la poesia “difficile” (incomprensibile) deve esser bella e l’autore un grande uomo appunto perché staccato dal popolo e incomprensibile: ciò avvenne anche per il futurismo ed è un aspetto del culto popolare per gli intellettuali (che in verità sono ammirati e disprezzati nello stesso tempo)’ (Quaderno 17 §44, Quaderni 3, 1944–45).
41 The censors are one reason for the use of the famous term ‘philosophy of praxis’, although it takes on a specific meaning throughout the Quaderni.