The Italian Aristocrats

 

The Italian Aristocrats

"Reggenza Italiana del Carnaro (Italian Regency of Carnaro)" by Tosh Berman

Some actions take place that one can regret and move on, or let the fate of history handle it from now on. Gabriele D'Annunzio was a man who wouldn’t let fate decide his sense of order and passion. The city of Flume was part of the Austrian Littoral. Due to the Treaty of London (1915) was placed in the hands of the Croatian territories into the Kingdom of Serbs. D'Annunzio felt that Flume belonged to Italy. He and 2,600 troops, reportedly shell-shocked from the Battles of the Isonzo, marched into Flume and staged a seizure of the city.

Gabriele D'Annunzio was an Italian poet, essayist, playwright, and equally important, a soldier. Think of Yukio Mishima, but Italian. There is no doubt that d’Annunzio was a Fascist, but one who mapped out his world in such a fashion that relayed a perfect sense of space, and that landscape was Flume. In his own hands, and without the permission of Italy, he and his soldiers annexed the territory to the Kingdom of Italy. Italy, in return, put a blockade of Flume, demanding that d’Annunzio and others surrender.

What’s interesting to me is not the politics or even history, but the fact that a poet/writer led such a campaign. One can argue if d’Annunzio is a great poet/writer, but without a doubt, he was in the avant-garde of the literature of the time. In honesty, he’s more 19th-century than say someone like his peers at the time - specifically Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the Futurists. Marinetti called d’Annunzio and the leaders of the ‘Exploit’ “advance-guard deserters” So, The Futurists were very much supporters of Italy and its empire. The Italian government, in a compromise, offered Flume’s citizens a modus vivendi, which in Latin means ‘mode of living,’ to co-exist in peace. d’Annunzio was against the modus vivendi and put it to vote in the Italian National Council of Flume. They accepted the proposal from Italy, and then d’Annunzio insisted on being put to the vote with the citizens of Flume. They, too, voted for the modus vivendi.

D'Annunzio distrusted the Italian government that he decided to make the final decision. On September 8, 1920, D'Annunzio became the Comandante; in other words, the Dictator of the Italian Regency of Camaro. The only other country to recognize the Italian Regency of Camaro was the Soviet Union. The constitution, or known as ‘The Charter of Carnaro’, was a combination of Fascist, Democratic-Republican theories, and Anarchist touches. This vibrant cocktail that became a country had, for sure, the touches of a creative poet. The Charter made “Music” a religious and social institution. Besides setting up the standard platform for governance (law, defense, education, etc.), d’Annunzio also set up a platform to support the “superior individuals” such as poets, heroes, and supermen.

Benito Mussolini found d’Annunzio inspiring and loved his style of leadership. The truth is d’Annunzio invented Italian Fascism with his balcony speeches, the roman salute, and his charismatic relationship with the audience or crowds. He even had black-shirted followers. The whole fascistic aesthetic came from this poet.

So like Yukio Mishima, who had his well-dressed army, the influence of those on the right, and their sense of style, elegance, also matched with a great deal of brutality. In America, we are not attached to those who dressed-well. Most Americans find it suspicious and are looking for others who fit in their style or aesthetic.

 Like all things, it had to end. D’Annunzio declared war on Italy, and of course, even though well-dressed, lost that battle. Eventually, it became part of the Empire of Italy.

"Futurist Painting Sculpture (Plastic Dynamism)" by Umberto Boccioni

ISBN: 978-1-60606-475-7 Getty Publications

Oddly enough, I feel nostalgic for the Futurists.  Which is as a movement in the very early 20th century. One should not have those feelings.  As far as I know, these Italian poets/artists were the first militant arts movement in Europe.  Perhaps the little brother to the Cubists, but with a bigger mouth. Along with F.T. Marinetti, who was actually the main figurehead in the Italian Futurist movement, there was  also Umberto Boccioni, who wrote about the Futurist aesthetic, as well as making sculptures, wrote a collection of essays in 1914, "Futurist Painting Sculpture (Plastic Dynamism)" that along with Marinetti's writings, are very much the ground zero for Futurist thought and action.  

While Cubism is very much about how one looks at the world, the Futurists were focused on the motion, speed, and their passion to destroy the past, so that the young artist can live and work in a dynamic (Italian) culture.  To do so, they must eliminate images of the nude, feminism, portraits of flowers, and statues made of stone and bronze.  They prefer the plastic material which they see as something totally new and therefore, beautiful.   The interesting thing about The Futurists is that they had strong feelings about the nature of being Italian, as well as a need to shock the masses to embrace the new that's the 20th century.  Of course, this leads to Fascism in their country -if not directly, then spiritually.  A lot of the art movements of the time is basically about the eye confronts an object in front of them. Impressionists, Cubists and so forth were more in tuned to the nature of how one sees the landscape in front of them.   Futurists literally wanted to transform that landscape into a physical presence.   To pour cement over Venice was one of their aesthetic goals, which I'm sure would warm the heart of a real estate mogul.  

Still, and especially when I was young, I was intrigued by the Futurists, just due to the fact that I liked Marinetti's narratives and the stylistic poetic skills he brought to the paper.  They believed as men around 30, that by the time of 40, you're out of business in the art/writing world.  They worshiped the idea of youth doing art and making a society that benefits the beauty of the race car and everything that science can bring to that table - including war, which is nothing more than a cleansing of the world.   In a style, it reminds me of more of the militant aspects of the punk movement of the 1970s.  The ground zero is approached to make a new culture.  This, appeals to a man in his late teens to early 20s, but alas, as I got older, I went back to Cubist thought. On the other hand, we can't forget the shock of the new, and the need to flush out the old, to make space for a new idea.  Ironically sometimes the new idea is not that hot.

"Futurist Painting Sculpture" is a fascinating book on many levels.  Beautifully designed by the Getty Publications (would the Futurists appreciate being part of an institution like the Getty?) and wonderfully edited by Richard Shane Agin and Maria Elena Versari, this is an important document to have in one's collection.  Also one gets a lengthy introduction by Versari (almost 50 pages long) that is informative and places the Futurists in the context of the early century.   The book also includes manifestos written by various members of the Futurists as well.   Boccioni, like Marinetti, wrote to shock, and of course reading it now in 2016, it doesn't have that freshness.  But if one can imagine themselves back in time, and being introduced to something visually and aesthetically jarring - well, it would be very interesting.  

"Sam Dunn is Dead" by Bruno Corra (Atlas Press)

This totally obscure "Futurist Novel" by Bruno Corra, himself a very obscure Italian author, is a beautiful entrance from the 19th century sensibilities and into the 20th century wonder.   Written in 1914, and published by the Italian Futurist Filippo Marinetti, in 1915.  This brief 'novel' captures the moment where everything is possible, and the imagination is limitless.   There is a magnificent chapter "Paris Driven Crazy" where the beloved capital of taste, becomes a loony toon cartoon.   Objects rise up and march off in the streets, and things re-form into other forms.  Pre DADA, pre-Surrealist, and even more out there than Futurist text, Corra captures the essence of creation in a world that he knows.  Essential avant-garde literature of the 20th century.  A must for dandies and those who taste the fruits of nihilism.

I also want to add that this book, published by the excellent Atlas Press, is beautifully designed with original illustrations by Rosa Rosà, an artist who illustrated a lot of Futurist text in her time and age.  John Walker's (also the translator) introduction is informative, interesting, and well-documented.  Praise to those like Atlas, who continues to bring out European avant-greatness.

- Tosh Berman

December 22, 2014

December 22, 2014

The one clear enemy I do have is the past.  I just have to claim it, and then go forward.  To go backwards is against human nature.  Even if we were all machines, it is built for the purpose to go ahead, not backwards.  “The past is necessarily inferior to the future.  That is how we wish it to be.  How could we acknowledge any merit in our most dangerous enemy: the past, gloomy prevaricator, execrable tutor?” I wake up to the smell of mildew, which is the scent of the past trying to overcome the essence that is the present.  I just want to destroy the chains that’s holding me back, and culture as well.  Tradition is nothing more than a prison.  I wish to break free, and therefore we need to destroy what is keeping us entrapped in our culture.

“I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want.” For the upcoming new year, I plan to destroy my past, so I can truly live for the moment, and for the future.  If I can somehow leave my house on the 31st, by throwing a lighted match over my shoulder into the aging timber that makes my home…. Into ashes.    The bridge between me and the world seems to get longer and longer.  How I desire the train that will take me from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes.   The faster the speed, the more conscious I’m of my surroundings.   If I can take a dying shitty city like Venice (Italy and California) and pave it over with cement, I would be so much happy.  On the other hand happiness is such an illusion.  But then again that is the reason why I write: to make illusions for a world that is already a mere illusion.

“Why, Italian Futurists, have you slavishly reproduced only what is commonplace and boring in the bustle of our daily lives.” I crave the sounds from my inner rhythm.   To be restricted by a form that has been in place for centuries is truly a human-made nightmare.  I can’t stand the silence, because the world is naturally noisy - “music is organized sound. ”  

As a poet I even feel constricted by just using only paper and pen.  I’m also concerned what is outside the paper, notebook or book.  Why shouldn’t the table that I write on, not become my work as well?   The world that all of you gave me is either left or right, wrong or right, this and that, him or her, or her and her, or him and him - and so forth.  What I crave is to jump out of the jail cell you made for me, and totally express myself using every essence of science, thought, and body.   You pretend to show me love, but in fact you’re my rival.  “I embrace my rival, but only to strangle him.”

The greatest invention is the machine.  It has allowed us to focus our attentions, and even more important, our time on things we desire.  Anything that wipes out the current world is all right with me.  We all have a need to clean ourselves, and what better way than a bath that is a mixture of war, mayhem, desire, and fresh clean water.  “Time and space died yesterday.  We already live in the absolute, because we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.” “Let’s murder the moonlight, ” and embrace the essence of our passion, which is the beauty and purity of speed, for the purpose of movement, change, and the love of neon.

February 20, 2014

February 20, 2014

People think I am a great reader, but I am actually one of those people who pick up a book and then leave it by the bathtub (I do a lot of reading while taking a bath), especially if its a collection of essays or short stories.  Those books take me the longest to finish, due that each piece in the book is sort of complete narrative or thought.  Right now I am reading Maurice Blanchot’s “Desperate Clarity” which is a collection of literary reviews he did during the Nazi occupation of France.  The most fascinating aspect of the book (so far) is what is not being said, and that silence is so powerful and depressing at the same time.  It got me thinking what is not being said, because we are so used to writing that deals directly with an issue, but now and even then, writing is sometimes about everything except that issue.

Another reason why I just have to stop reading this book is because I dropped it in the bathtub.  When I go get a bath, I use Japanese bath power which gives the water a nice green visual as well as a smell that conveys the forest of one’s imagination.   So as I let that book dry, and myself as well, I go back to bed in the morning to read “The Futurist Manifesto” by F. T. Marinetti, written in 1909 and published in French in the newspaper Le Figaro.  My first thought was ‘how crazy that a newspaper would publish something so uncommon as this manifesto. ' Personally, I’m a huge fan of art related manifestos.  One of my favorite all-time books (and yes, I haven’t finished that one as well) is “Manifesto: A Century of Isms,” edited by Mary Ann Caws, where one can find “The Futurist Manifesto” in its complete romantic glory.

Marinetti strikes me as a man who is in love with the ideal of man-made world where machinery becomes sort of a God, or maybe not an actual ‘figure’ but the imagination of man (and I am using that gender specifically, because the Italian Futurists were not that hot on Feminism) is alone on a spiritual plane.  Some of their basic political ideals are dodgy at best, but one can admire their paintings, poetry, photographs, and I think especially music or sound making.  The whole ‘Art of Noise’ aesthetic is something that is still with us, and whenever there is sound, I think that concept is the foundation of our desire to make some music AKA noise.  John Cage, was too influenced by The Futurists’ approach to sounds, but he is more of a natural process or liking silence as a form of sound as well.  The beautiful photography by Ansel Adams is totally the opposite of Marinetti’s stance against nature, yet it takes a machine, the camera, to photograph what is the ‘ideal’ of nature at its most stunning.

For me personally, the sound of Poison Ivy’s guitar (The Cramps) is the most beautiful sound on the planet.  It has roots in “The Art of Noise” but a much warmer sense of chaos and there is a beauty in her performance that is touching as well as sexual and obsessive.  The obsession to capture either silence, pure noise, or even structured noise (music) is very appealing to me, in fact I also admire the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu for being on the tightrope between chaos and beautiful order.  Marinetti, I think is essentially looking for order within the spirit of the machine age and politics.  A zen liked peace in a horror landscape.  With that in thought I go back to the bathtub, with a fresh supply of Japanese bath scent of the forest, and continue reading Blanchot’s “Desperate Clarity. ”