The most important figure of the school has been Giovanni Papini, who has gathered about him in Florence a coterie which includes Ardengo Soffici, the painter, critic, and novelist; Aldo Palazzeschi, poet; Alberto Savinio, wanderer, musician, and litterateur; and a long list of names more or less ancillary to Marinetti, some of which I shall mention later.
Papini, who is considered at length in another chapter, does not admit that he is a Futurist. As he puts it, he did not marry Futurism; it was for him one of many intellectual adventures, a mistress that left an indelible impression on him. He simply passed through Futurism's influence and at the same time gave momentum to the best of that school, to Palazzeschi, Govoni, Boccioni, Folgore. Then he proceeded alone, after having become persuaded that it had become too popular and consequently less refined and select, and after the hazardous and aristocratic little group had become a species of low, bigoted democracy into which any one could enter who dangled a rosary of incomprehensible words. He left it in company with Soffici and Palazzeschi and soon Carrà and others followed his example. Thus, on the death of Boccioni, the first generation of Futuristic writers reformed or disappeared.
Then there are many young men carrying the banner of literature in Italy to-day who do not call themselves Futurist, and whose writings contain less of the grotesque, which has been made familiar to Italian readers by Marinetti's "Zang Tumb Tumb." They are men of the stamp of Antonio Beltramelli, Mario Mariani, Luigi Morselli, Gino Rocca, Salvator Gotta, Lorenzo Montano, Vincenzo Cardarelli, Raffale Calzini, Enrico Cavacchioli, Alfredo Grilli, and a score of others who not alone have ideas but who keenly sense the composite world-thought, who believe that the era of Big Business will reach its apogee when it weds Big Justice, and who know how to express their ideas with explosive rhythmic eloquence and with distinction of form.
It would be presumptuous on my part to attempt to select the winners entered in the great sweepstakes of literary fame in Italy, with no qualification for prophecy or judgment than a love of literature and a lifelong ardent consumption of it. I shall, therefore, content myself with brief discussion of the work of some of these younger writers with the particular end in view of suggesting to others the pleasure and profit that may result from more intimate acquaintance with them.
About ten years ago there began to appear in the Florentine publication, La Voce, a series of articles critical and interpretative of French art. It is difficult now to believe that Cézanne, Courbet, Renoir, Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and the school of impressionists and neo-impressionists was so little known in Italy as they were at the time of the appearance of these articles from the pen of Ardengo Soffici, a painter by training and profession enrolled in the Futuristic movement. He was, in reality, the first to speak in Italy with appreciation and intelligence of the tendencies in French art shown in the last half-century which have to-day had such a stamp of profound approval put upon them. These criticisms attracted much attention from the first, and they have since been republished under the title of "Scoperte e Massacri" ("Discoveries and Massacres"), and to-day they constitute a trustworthy guide to the schools mentioned both in presentation and in description.
They were quite unlike previous criticisms, more particularly in a note of challenge, of insolence, and of prophecy. His judgments were stated with a firmness and tranquillity that savored of the dogmatic, and, although time has shown him to have been mistaken in his estimate of some of the artists discussed—Gauguin, for instance—it has corroborated most of them with remarkable accuracy. In a small way he did for Italian readers what Mr. MacColl did for English readers in his "Nineteenth Century Art," for, like that writer, he is an artist with a fastidious temperament who knows how to write.
Since that time Signor Soffici has published nearly a score of books—romances, criticisms, fragments which show him to be a clear thinker with a pungent style, writing what he thinks and not what he cribs from others, and not continually advertising himself as the last cry of intelligence or the most perfect type of superman. His first book was called "Ignoto Toscano" ("An Unknown Tuscan"), and appeared in 1909, but it was not until the publication of "Lemmonio Boreo" two years later that it was realized that there had appeared a writer with a definite message: a protest against the utter triviality and purposelessness of Italian middle-class life.
The hero, an artist, who would reform many customs of the land, went about the countryside accompanied by two aids, one chosen for physical strength, the other for his "promoter" type of mind. Their encounters with the predatory innkeeper, with the peculating clerk, with the industrious stone-breaker of the roads, with the pilferer of the farm or the barn, and with the pulchritudinous peasant sitting picturesquely in her cart or gossiping in the village constitute the substance of the book. It was planned to have it run into several volumes, but it stopped after the first one, without accomplishing any of the reforms that the hero had essayed.
Then the writer reverted to art again and published a book on Cubism and one on Cubism and Futurism. Soon he published Giornale di Bordo, a diary of sentiment and philosophy—thoughts engendered by various environments, by reading, and by reflection. In the most casual way the author reveals his impressionable and poetic nature. They are not profound or epoch-making thoughts. They are merely the thoughts of a sane, healthy, artistic mind bathing and refreshing itself in the beauties of nature and contrasting them with the ugliness of most of man's handiwork.
Then came two books about the outgrowth of the military life. "Kubilek" is named after a hill on the Bainsizza Tableland where the author fought and was wounded. It gives a picture of the Italian as a soul which will be recognized as true to life by every one who has had to do with him. No one can read it without feeling an admiration and an affection for that extraordinarily loyal being the Italian soldier who tolerates hardship with equanimity and without complaint and who is so appreciative of anything done for his comfort or welfare. "La Ritirata del Friuli" ("The Retreat from Friuli") is not up to the author's standard.