Espartaco Boyano, Ravenna, March 10, 1978
Some young men stopped me as I left the hotel. It seemed they’d been there for some time, smoking cigarettes. The butts lay at their feet, making a sort of stain with vague borders. I didn’t know any of them, but they addressed me familiarly. “Did you see that clown Marinetti coming out of the hotel?” one of them asked. I nodded. “That insufferable fool makes a mockery of Italian literature,” added another. “Because of him, the younger generation doesn’t read our great writers, like Enrico Cavacchioli,” pointed out another. “Don’t forget Flavia Morlacchi,” chimed in another. “How could I? How could anyone forget the author of those immortal verses comparing the ruins of the Palatine with ‘blind eyes / shaded eyes / of the fierce and glorious Roman specter’?” “You aren’t a Marinetti supporter, are you?” interrupted the first young man, with a glare. Just then I noticed that he wore a patch over one eye. I can’t recall exactly what I thought at that moment, not even when I really try to, but I answered with the first thing that came into my head: “I deeply admire Mr. Marinetti and consider Futurism one of the most important artistic movements of our time.” For a moment, the four of us remained in silence, possibly surprised by my audacity, and I remember thinking I should cling to that moment because whatever happened next would be terrible. But just then one of them laughed and the man with the eye patch held out his hand. “My name is Romano Cataldi,” he said, “and we’re all Futurists here.”
Espartaco Boyano, Ravenna, March 10, 1978
For some time, the four of us—Tessore, Calosso, and Cataldi, who, because of his age and his experiences in Africa and other places, was our leader, and I—worked on sowing discontent in Italian literature. A point in our favor: unlike our opponents and rivals, we had the general press on our side, not just the literary reviews, and that gave us more power of persuasion. Of course, by then, the general press, particularly what had come to be called “the cultural press,” wasn’t what it is now: writing about literature so all those who don’t want to read but do want to have “opinions” can formulate one. Shortly after meeting and joining the group, I stopped working with Castellani, but first I handed in my interview with Marinetti along with his contribution. Not the one Marinetti wrote for me in the darkness of his hotel room, which was still illegible days later despite my best efforts, but rather the one Atilio Tessore, Oreste Calosso, Romano Cataldi, and I wrote one afternoon in a café, using sentences from Futurist manifestos and placing them randomly on the page, which gave us a good laugh. Of course, Lo Scarabeo d’Oro published our contribution by Marinetti in the next issue, which made us laugh even harder. The forgery only brought us closer together, although now I’m a bit ashamed to own up to it. The following year, in 1932, Marinetti published it in one of his books, I don’t know if that was because he didn’t remember what he had written up in his hotel room or if, despite remembering it, he had identified his tone and his word choice in our text and they’d seemed sufficient to make it a recognizable text “by” Marinetti. If I had to choose between those possibilities, I wouldn’t because, actually, there is another, third possibility: that Marinetti understood that, in the end, a writer’s work is everything published under his name, even if he hasn’t written it. I mean the work is the writer himself, and all the rest—by which I mean the literary texts—is barely an appendix and utterly unimportant. This last perspective seems very modern, I don’t know if Marinetti would sanction it. But I think it’s the vision of a great many writers and every editor who exists and has existed in recent years. It’s also the manifestation of a somewhat secret triumph for us, the Futurists: we wanted to give art back to life, and we did so to the point that they ended up conflating, so that the lives of writers are now all that seems to have any relevance in literature.
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
Atilio Tessore and I met Cataldi at a fascist meeting held near the university, in Perugia. Espartaco Boyano joined us later, as did Luca Borrello, eventually. We considered ourselves the fascist and Futurist literary vanguard of Umbria and maybe we were despite the obliviousness of the Umbrians. We made a real effort to believe that we were writers and part of a passably secret society that each day should come up with a plan and not carry it out. One of our many contradictions was that we repudiated art, or at least conventional art. In other words, anything written by someone who wasn’t us or the authors we admired, mostly Futurists. But we also repudiated life and often even repudiation itself. Someone would propose something like “Let’s break Abelardo Castellani’s teeth.” He was a Perugian writer whose work, luckily, has been lost to posterity. We would all vote and if the motion was approved—as was always the case—we would jot down the action in our minutes and not follow through with it. Among the actions we deliberately did not carry out: the aforementioned breaking of Abelardo Castellani’s teeth (he wasn’t even a fascist); visiting Venice, bursting into the house of Cosimo Zago, the lame poet, stealing his orthopedic leg, and then throwing it into the Grand Canal; sodomizing Flavia Morlacchi while a bunch of blind men bellow out her poems, particularly that one that compares the ruins of the Palatine with “blind eyes” and with “shaded eyes”; visiting all the bookstores in Perugia and, furtively, tearing out the last ten pages of every copy of every book by Enrico Cavacchioli; getting some famous musicologist to publicly discuss the work of “Giacomo Porcini,” mispronouncing the supposed last name so that he understands it as “Puccini” and then creating a scandal; stationing ourselves outside of a bookstore, stopping each shopper on their way out, inquiring about the book they’ve acquired, and telling them the ending, completely inventing it just so they won’t read it; using planes to skywrite Tessore’s mother’s risotto recipe, while explaining to viewers that there is much more literature in it than in many of the works marketed as such; etc.
Atilio Tessore, Florence, March 11, 1978
There was one action we did carry out, among all the others we didn’t: we stationed ourselves near bookstores and places where some sort of literary event was taking place and pretended to be arguing; when someone who seemed like a good target passed by, we would ask their opinion on the subject, generally Futurism, skywriting, or the new trends, which we would pretend to be opposed to. That was how we met Oreste Calosso, once when our action didn’t go over well, although generally they did; I mean, generally they went well. When we had the person embroiled in our conversation—usually an older man we’d chosen for his conservative appearance—and it seemed we were all in agreement, we would start shouting out “Long live Futurism” and “Long live Marinetti” and, on an order—usually from Cataldi—we would beat our victim unconscious and then run off. Although Perugia is a small city, and on one or two occasions we met up with our victims again on its streets, none of them ever reported us, perhaps out of fear of having to admit to the police that they’d lost one or two teeth in a literary dispute with some young men. And this, I believe, I understood later: at the time we thought we had performed a transubstantiation on them, a transformation of some sort, and that now they were Futurists like us although reluctant to make public their conversion. At least once, and to encourage him, as Futurism was primarily an attitude and not merely an aesthetic ideal—although it was that too—we addressed one of those men with shouted slogans in favor of Futurism and Il Duce. The man was so terrified that he was speechless for a moment, and then he timidly raised his arm in a poor imitation of the fascist salute and shouted the slogans with us, weakly. Then we made him lend us some money to have coffee at a nearby bar we preferred he didn’t accompany us to. We never paid him back, actually, so—I now think—perhaps that loan should be called by a different name; but, as you know, we Futurists generally supported each other and weren’t particularly scrupulous about money. Those who crossed our path at least learned that about Marinetti’s great movement.
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
By the way, one of those plans wa
s to create a “bad” art museum; in other words, a museum where the pieces were chosen not for their artistic quality but rather for their absolute lack of it, for the clumsiness of their execution, for their adherence to ideas we considered “bad”—we particularly disliked Mary’s “immaculate conception,” but there were other bad ideas, like perspective, solemnity, the appearance of angels, landscapes, and still lifes—and for other completely mysterious reasons that the visitor would have to discover for himself; the list of works and artists for the museum was extensive, although I can only recall Rosso Fiorentino, the unsettling painter of religious eroticism whose work is filled with erections, masturbation, and fainting.
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
Then, after lunch, we went back to the Town Hall and discussed whether art should create or imitate. I don’t remember our conclusion, but I do remember that we were all firmly opposed to Soviet art and that at one point we grew silent when we heard a bomber squadron passing over our heads: it came from the other side of the mountains, possibly from France, and was headed to bomb some city in the north of Italy, perhaps Milan. In the silence that followed I could hear, for the first time, Luca Borrello’s coughing as he stood at the back of the room. Some feigned indignation and others, disquiet at the bombers’ passing overhead, but I’m convinced that the only thing we all truly felt was relief at not being the target of the air raid. Someone talked about American jazz, which we firmly rejected, and then someone alluded to the tarantella, which we also, mistakenly, in our nervous state, repudiated as well.
Espartaco Boyano, Ravenna, March 10, 1978
Luca Borrello was scarcely a teenager when he read about the latest Futurist scandal in a newspaper and felt drawn to it. For a time he even tried to impress other inhabitants in his town by saying that he too was a Futurist. But he didn’t actually know anything about the Futurists, except that they provoked scandals and were in favor of a new art. To one living in Sansepolcro (which owes its fame to Perugino and Santi di Tito, but above all to Piero della Francesca, who was born in Sansepolcro and also died there, if I recall correctly), that must have seemed strange, yet also essential. Perhaps Borrello didn’t need to know what a Futurist was in order to be one, as the things that interest us are always those we know the least about and there is some triumph, but also some forfeiture, or at least a forfeiture of interest, when the actual knowledge is acquired. What I mean is that if Borrello’s interest didn’t fade, it’s because there in Sansepolcro he had no way of knowing what a Futurist was, although he would soon find out.
Atilio Tessore, Florence, March 11, 1978
I remember the story well, although I should say that I only have Borrello’s version of it, which he told us a few years after we met him, as if he hadn’t dared to tell us before or as if he’d invented it, to explain something to us. Borrello told us that one evening a Futurist gathering was held at the restaurant La Taverna Toscana in Sansepolcro, headed up by the Florentine poet Aldo Palazzeschi. Borrello attended, and what he saw, in some sense, cannot be told, or at least cannot be told without taking into account the emotions it inspired in Borrello, and those were lost along with him. What did he see? Alternating provocation and indulgence, seriousness and humor—don’t forget that Futurism was the only artistic movement with a clown among its ranks—and proselytism and the senseless defiance common to Futurist gatherings, but all degraded, somehow, as if it were a facsimile of a Futurist evening rather than a true one. Years later, when he told us, Borrello admitted that at the time he was unable to say what it was he was seeing and in what sense Palazzeschi’s performance was a degradation or an unfortunately incomplete or mutilated echo of something, but the intuition of that other thing, and what there was of it in Palazzeschi’s gathering, interested him deeply. At least its ending was exactly the same as those of other Futurist evenings: since it culminated with the poet being pelted with eggs and tomatoes, which, being Sansepolcro, were all of the finest quality, as I’m sure you know. Borrello—obviously—wasn’t among the attackers: as soon as they’d calmed down, he slipped into the restaurant’s kitchen and found the poet smoking in silence, seated beside an enormous pot of boiling spinach. Palazzeschi asked him: “Have you also come to slap the new art in the face?” Borrello shook his head, but didn’t know what to say. Finally he asked what hotel he was staying at. “None,” replied Palazzeschi. “The owner of the hotel I was at was in the audience and told me he no longer wants me in his establishment; he sent someone to fetch my things.” Borrello and Palazzeschi remained in silence for a moment, looking at the pot of spinach. “Are you a Futurist?” the Florentine poet finally asked. Borrello nodded and said to follow him, he knew a place where he could stay.
Atilio Tessore, Florence, March 11, 1978
Palazzeschi lived in Borrello’s parents’ house for several weeks, in the attic. Borrello’s father, a doctor, had begrudgingly consented to the arrangement. Borrello told us his father never really liked Palazzeschi, although it’s possible his dislike lessened, at least slightly, when Palazzeschi demonstrated an unnervingly deep knowledge of brick arches and, with his own hands, repaired the partially collapsed one at the house’s entrance. He and Borrello would take long walks through the outskirts of Sansepolcro avoiding all contact with the paintings of Piero della Francesca and the visitors who flocked to town to admire them, whom they considered strident imbeciles. Borrello never told us what they talked about, except for the following story, which he mentioned in another context when referencing another matter altogether. According to him, Palazzeschi met Marinetti once when Palazzeschi asked him to sign a manifesto against Filippo Gentilli’s publication of some apocryphal letters by Alessandro Manzoni. Marinetti analyzed the style of the letters and proved that they weren’t written by Manzoni and, what’s more, that they weren’t written by Gentilli either, who must have assigned the writing to a third party. Marinetti showed Palazzeschi the originals the signatures had been traced from, then handed over this vitally important evidence to a Venetian businessman in exchange for a sum of money that wasn’t entirely negligible. Later, however, Palazzeschi discovered who had sold naïve Gentilli the letters in the first place: it was Marinetti himself, who’d convinced him to publish them only to denounce them immediately, thus earning some money and the moral satisfaction of having publicly opposed a forgery that would have damaged Italian literature and one of its greatest figures, the immortal author of The Betrothed. Gentilli never spoke to him again, Palazzeschi told Borrello, which was a third source of satisfaction for Marinetti, no less important than the previous ones.
Don't Shed Your Tears for Anyone Who Lives on These Streets Page 9