Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso

(1876–1944)

   Born in Alexandria, Egypt, and educated in French language schools, Marinetti was caught up in the “free style” poetry that was coming into vogue at the turn of the century. Between 1902 and 1908, he wrote three collections of poetry in free verse. Faced with the social tension between dreams and reality, Marinetti chose the urban, technological, industrial reality, and the mystique of the superman. His Mafarka le futuriste (Mafarka the Futurist, 1910) pointed the way toward what was to become the futurist movement. He defined it in his Manifesto of 1909. “We sing the love of danger, courage, rashness, and rebellion . . . [not] thoughtful immobility and ecstasy [but] the new beauty of speed . . . we glorify war, militarism and patriotism.” The breaking of constraining rules, being agitated and nervously aware—these were the elements of futurism, identifying order and tradition with the dead past. Museums, libraries, and elite schools should be closed (or, indeed, burned) and the pope expelled from Rome. Futurist libertarians were able to satisfy the apparent longing among many of the young generation for a party of the right that would free Italy from the status of being an “also-ran” and from alternating between being imitation-French and imitation-German.

   Marinetti was a “Fascist of the first hour” and was present at the initial meeting in Milan’s Piazza di San Sepolcro. He was elected to the central committee of the Fascist movement (still not yet a party) in the founding session of 23 March 1919. Benito Mussolini welcomed Marinetti’s support in the early years, but when faced with choosing between Catholic support and the support of the futurists, he found no difficulty in turning his back on Marinetti, who resigned from the central committee of the Fascist party in June 1920 because of what he saw as the transformation of Fascism by its appeasement of the Church. Marinetti nevertheless never broke with the regime. He accepted being named among the first appointees (all chosen by Mussolini himself) to the newly created Accademia d’Italia (and became its president during the war) and associated himself with the regime’s propaganda activities. It was Marinetti’s voice, for instance, that announced the dramatic return to Italy of Italo Balbo and the Air Armada from its New World visits in August 1933. Marinetti volunteered to fight in the war against Ethiopia. When Italy went to war with the Soviet Union, Marinetti, who was in his midsixties, rejoined his regiment on the Don River. Subsequently, he joined Mussolini at Salo. His death in Bellagio (Como) in 1944 was honored by a state funeral.

   See also Balbo, Italo; Literature.