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Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Facism
They envisioned a brave new world, and what they got was fascism. As vibrant as its counterparts in Paris, Munich, and Milan, the avant-garde of Florence rose on a wave of artistic, political, and social idealism that swept the world with the arrival of the twentieth century. How the movement flourished in its first heady years, only to flounder in the bloody wake of World War I, is a fascinating story, told here for the first time. It is the history of a whole generation's extraordinary promise--and equally extraordinary failure.
The "decadentism" of D'Annunzio, the philosophical ideals of Croce and Gentile, the politics of Italian socialism: all these strains flowed together to buoy the emerging avant-garde in Florence. Walter Adamson shows us the young artists and writers caught up in the intellectual ferment of their time, among them the poet Giovanni Papini, the painter Ardengo Soffici, and the cultural critic Giuseppe Prezzolini. He depicts a generation rejecting provincialism, seeking spiritual freedom in Paris, and ultimately blending the modernist style found there with their own sense of "toscanita" or "being Tuscan."
In their journals--"Leonardo, La Voce, Lacerba, and l'Italia futurista"--and in their cafe life at the Giubbe Rosse, we see the avant-garde of Florence as citizens of an intellectual world peopled by the likes of Picasso, Bergson, Sorel, Unamuno, Pareto, Weininger, and William James. We witness their mounting commitment to the ideals of regenerative violence and watch their existence become increasingly frenzied as war approaches. Finally, Adamson shows us the ultimate betrayal of the movement's aspirations as its cultural politics help catapult Italy into war and prepare the way for Mussolini's rise to power.
The "decadentism" of D'Annunzio, the philosophical ideals of Croce and Gentile, the politics of Italian socialism: all these strains flowed together to buoy the emerging avant-garde in Florence. Walter Adamson shows us the young artists and writers caught up in the intellectual ferment of their time, among them the poet Giovanni Papini, the painter Ardengo Soffici, and the cultural critic Giuseppe Prezzolini. He depicts a generation rejecting provincialism, seeking spiritual freedom in Paris, and ultimately blending the modernist style found there with their own sense of "toscanita" or "being Tuscan."
In their journals--"Leonardo, La Voce, Lacerba, and l'Italia futurista"--and in their cafe life at the Giubbe Rosse, we see the avant-garde of Florence as citizens of an intellectual world peopled by the likes of Picasso, Bergson, Sorel, Unamuno, Pareto, Weininger, and William James. We witness their mounting commitment to the ideals of regenerative violence and watch their existence become increasingly frenzied as war approaches. Finally, Adamson shows us the ultimate betrayal of the movement's aspirations as its cultural politics help catapult Italy into war and prepare the way for Mussolini's rise to power.
- GenresEuropean HistoryItaly
352 pages, Hardcover
First published February 5, 1993
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October 22, 2014
Adamson has won several prizes for his scholarship in the field of avant-garde studies and interwar culture (and maybe also for his might mustache, I suspect) and I must concur. He isn’t exactly churning them out (four books since his first one in 1983) but boy, when he does get at it, it’s quite something: I’ve been on a bit of a Papini binge as of lately, but he wins the prize hands down.
Adamson, following his habit, starts with a solid grounding in the existing historiography (the book is from 93, which means he had little of the superabundent litterature on the fascist/modernist connection at his disposal) and follows with an introduction to Florence, situated in the larger context of Italy and its belated modernity. Cultural, political, economic and, importantly, social, conditions are brilliantly elucidated, with some unusual positions at time (the acerbic portrayal of Giolittian administration) which I am particularly grateful for. If anything one might have wished the author had put the same effort in depicting the precedents in art as he did in litterature, but then again politics might not have had the same bearing on them.
The case of Italy is an appealing one because the binary decadent/modernist is relatively clear, thanks in no small measure to those two larger-than-life characters, the Florentine Gabriele D’Annunzio and the Milanese Fillipo Marinetti. The one a libidinous crafter of treacly, refined odes and laments, the other, no less bumptious, a vehement agitator against peace, women and tradition. All they have in common (nationalism aside) is the barrenness of their scalp… Two cities, two movements, two generations. Unlike Paris, the break here between the XIXth and XXth centuriy seems fairly clean.
Enters Giovanni Papini, a headful of curly hair, a single crease on the forehead like the mark of the beast, and the fearless gaze of the myopic nerd. I wont go into details on this colourful character, if you want some, you should turn to my review of “Un Homme Fini” or the Lovreglio biography. And behind him, Adamson ushers the rest of the florentine avant-garde.
I might be a bit unfair to Adamson actually: I am slightly obsessed with Papini himself, but the present book promise us “a group portrait” of the Florentine avant-garde, and that’s just what he does: along with the polemist Papini we meet the more moderate Prezzolini, and shortly, the painter and poet Ardengo Soffici. We follow them through their various ventures, publications mainly, such as the early philosophy journal Leonardo, that will elicit the enthusiasm of Bergson and William James, to La Voce, where Prezzolini’s Crocean sympathies will bring about a lasting rift between him and his best friend Papini, or the later’s Lacerba, apex of incendiary rhetoric that will for a time, allign itself to Marinetti’s movement.
Where the book is unbeatable is first of all, in the author’s disciplined study of those and lesser magazines, but also in his interest in more discreet figures nesting around that trinity. Isolated (to me at least!) figures of the Italian litterary world, like Sibilla Aleramo, Palazeschi, Amendola or Slataper come into focus, revealing how small a world cultural activism at the time must have been, since the same group of friends could house future fascists, and future victims of the regime.
Adamson seems to understand modernism primarily as an ideology: a demand for “a fresh start” which would allow intellectuals rather than sclerotic aristocracies or mindless masses to take the role that rightfully belongs to them, namely that of theoreticians and designers of world institutions. Demands for tabula rasa necessarily implies wholesale condemnation of the statu quo and a pronounced pessimism, something of which Leonardo or Lacerba where never short of.
Until that Kingdom Come, the social goal, or at least the purpose, of the Italian avant-garde seems to be “to create a greater sense of public space in the Giolittian era” (33), that was sorely lacking or monopolised by a corrupt leisure-class.
Among the traits which depart from the expected fascoid rhetoric, and give this scene its particular flavour, is regionalist federalism, quite distant from the later mussolinian statism, which seems in good part rooted in Papini’s pet-hate, monism, and his answer of radical, pragmatic pluralism. How did he, or his colleagues, managed to reconcile those laudable notions with the state policies some eventually came to support, remain a mystery outside of the scope of the present work. Yet let me add that Papini’s own “magical” (understand: “egotic”) pragmatism, might help us understand Mussolini’s puzzling claims to pragmatism.
Another trait Adamson is careful to highlight is the obsession with political religion: the need, for the new era to come, to be cimented by a secular religion likely to give society the cohesion and the movement that in liberal democracies they found lacking. They for the most part welcomed and even demanded the Great War, agitating relentlessly for Italy to side with France. Albeit most agreed the conflict had fail to coalesce Italian society around a singular ideal, they had varied reactions to it, from Papini’s conversion to catholicism, to Amendola socialist martyrdom.
The story ends with the rise of fascism proper, which seem to the reader so close to what those men demanded, and to them so far from what they hoped. Adamson goes on to venture what exactly fascist rhetoric (or ideology imho) might have herited from those “experiments”. You might be aware of the unending debates on proto-fascism, the sources of fascism, whether Action Francaise was fascist and so. Those sometimes feel like coué rehashing or like academic feuds. Here instead we have a commited work of focused case study which in my eyes, do more to elucidate the relationship between fascism and fin-de-sciècle culture than most of Sternhell’s indictements.
Adamson, following his habit, starts with a solid grounding in the existing historiography (the book is from 93, which means he had little of the superabundent litterature on the fascist/modernist connection at his disposal) and follows with an introduction to Florence, situated in the larger context of Italy and its belated modernity. Cultural, political, economic and, importantly, social, conditions are brilliantly elucidated, with some unusual positions at time (the acerbic portrayal of Giolittian administration) which I am particularly grateful for. If anything one might have wished the author had put the same effort in depicting the precedents in art as he did in litterature, but then again politics might not have had the same bearing on them.
The case of Italy is an appealing one because the binary decadent/modernist is relatively clear, thanks in no small measure to those two larger-than-life characters, the Florentine Gabriele D’Annunzio and the Milanese Fillipo Marinetti. The one a libidinous crafter of treacly, refined odes and laments, the other, no less bumptious, a vehement agitator against peace, women and tradition. All they have in common (nationalism aside) is the barrenness of their scalp… Two cities, two movements, two generations. Unlike Paris, the break here between the XIXth and XXth centuriy seems fairly clean.
Enters Giovanni Papini, a headful of curly hair, a single crease on the forehead like the mark of the beast, and the fearless gaze of the myopic nerd. I wont go into details on this colourful character, if you want some, you should turn to my review of “Un Homme Fini” or the Lovreglio biography. And behind him, Adamson ushers the rest of the florentine avant-garde.
I might be a bit unfair to Adamson actually: I am slightly obsessed with Papini himself, but the present book promise us “a group portrait” of the Florentine avant-garde, and that’s just what he does: along with the polemist Papini we meet the more moderate Prezzolini, and shortly, the painter and poet Ardengo Soffici. We follow them through their various ventures, publications mainly, such as the early philosophy journal Leonardo, that will elicit the enthusiasm of Bergson and William James, to La Voce, where Prezzolini’s Crocean sympathies will bring about a lasting rift between him and his best friend Papini, or the later’s Lacerba, apex of incendiary rhetoric that will for a time, allign itself to Marinetti’s movement.
Where the book is unbeatable is first of all, in the author’s disciplined study of those and lesser magazines, but also in his interest in more discreet figures nesting around that trinity. Isolated (to me at least!) figures of the Italian litterary world, like Sibilla Aleramo, Palazeschi, Amendola or Slataper come into focus, revealing how small a world cultural activism at the time must have been, since the same group of friends could house future fascists, and future victims of the regime.
Adamson seems to understand modernism primarily as an ideology: a demand for “a fresh start” which would allow intellectuals rather than sclerotic aristocracies or mindless masses to take the role that rightfully belongs to them, namely that of theoreticians and designers of world institutions. Demands for tabula rasa necessarily implies wholesale condemnation of the statu quo and a pronounced pessimism, something of which Leonardo or Lacerba where never short of.
Until that Kingdom Come, the social goal, or at least the purpose, of the Italian avant-garde seems to be “to create a greater sense of public space in the Giolittian era” (33), that was sorely lacking or monopolised by a corrupt leisure-class.
Among the traits which depart from the expected fascoid rhetoric, and give this scene its particular flavour, is regionalist federalism, quite distant from the later mussolinian statism, which seems in good part rooted in Papini’s pet-hate, monism, and his answer of radical, pragmatic pluralism. How did he, or his colleagues, managed to reconcile those laudable notions with the state policies some eventually came to support, remain a mystery outside of the scope of the present work. Yet let me add that Papini’s own “magical” (understand: “egotic”) pragmatism, might help us understand Mussolini’s puzzling claims to pragmatism.
Another trait Adamson is careful to highlight is the obsession with political religion: the need, for the new era to come, to be cimented by a secular religion likely to give society the cohesion and the movement that in liberal democracies they found lacking. They for the most part welcomed and even demanded the Great War, agitating relentlessly for Italy to side with France. Albeit most agreed the conflict had fail to coalesce Italian society around a singular ideal, they had varied reactions to it, from Papini’s conversion to catholicism, to Amendola socialist martyrdom.
The story ends with the rise of fascism proper, which seem to the reader so close to what those men demanded, and to them so far from what they hoped. Adamson goes on to venture what exactly fascist rhetoric (or ideology imho) might have herited from those “experiments”. You might be aware of the unending debates on proto-fascism, the sources of fascism, whether Action Francaise was fascist and so. Those sometimes feel like coué rehashing or like academic feuds. Here instead we have a commited work of focused case study which in my eyes, do more to elucidate the relationship between fascism and fin-de-sciècle culture than most of Sternhell’s indictements.
June 11, 2010
A somewhat dense, but important study of the movement that produced men like Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini -- this complements the brief essays (which are superb) in Robert Wohl's The Generation of 1914. This was the ethos and the aesthetic that could suggest a name like 'Furioso' to serve as the title of a poetry journal -- a journal with which Pound was once associated. Who founded this journal?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews