The Language of Opposition in Early Twentieth-Century Italy: Rhetorical Continuities between Prewar Florentine Avant-gardism and Mussolini's Facism

‘The Crowd’ century: Reconciling practical success with theoretical failure

“…This is not an isolated example. Mussolini's rhetoric, borrowed from the Italian avant garde gathered around the paper I f Voce, is consistently organized around the theme of replacing an old with a new Italy (Adamson, 1992). However the two are not simply alternative versions of nationhood.…”

D'Annunzio’s Il piacere: A Generational Gaze on New Values

“…D’Annunzio becomes an –ism ( Dannunzianism ), and as such is able to achieve exactly what he sets out to, because of the validity of his new inscription. In a new Italy that was coming out of an older Italy, D’Annunzio’s writing, persona, and later military and political ventures fill the gap that Walter L. Adamson calls ‘the inchoateness of the emerging Second Italy ’ (1992: 29). Adamson believes—quoting Marinetti—that the ‘role of the “we,” the avant-garde of the “new” generation, is to “burn and to brighten”—to destroy the first Italy as it educates the second’ (1992: 29).…”

“…In a new Italy that was coming out of an older Italy, D’Annunzio’s writing, persona, and later military and political ventures fill the gap that Walter L. Adamson calls ‘the inchoateness of the emerging Second Italy ’ (1992: 29). Adamson believes—quoting Marinetti—that the ‘role of the “we,” the avant-garde of the “new” generation, is to “burn and to brighten”—to destroy the first Italy as it educates the second’ (1992: 29). Adamson continues to draw upon Marinetti’s rhetoric of the future ruling classes, saying that these Futuristi are those ‘who exalt danger, energy, speed, violence, machines, war, and the like, and who oppose what passatisti support’ (1992: 42).…”

“…Adamson believes—quoting Marinetti—that the ‘role of the “we,” the avant-garde of the “new” generation, is to “burn and to brighten”—to destroy the first Italy as it educates the second’ (1992: 29). Adamson continues to draw upon Marinetti’s rhetoric of the future ruling classes, saying that these Futuristi are those ‘who exalt danger, energy, speed, violence, machines, war, and the like, and who oppose what passatisti support’ (1992: 42). However, I am the one drawing a parallel between D’Annunzio and Marinetti, because the latter labels and condemns D’Annunzio as a passatista and not as I see him, a progressivista .…”

“…27 In Marinetti’s opinion, i passatisti support ‘bourgeois institutions like museums, libraries, and universities, but also manifestations of artistic “decadence” (as in “Dannunzianism”), including feminism—indeed women generally’. (Adamson, 1992: 42)…”