Avant-Garde Florence

by Adamson, Walter L.

• ISBN13: 9780674055254
• ISBN10: 067405525X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-12-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

They envisioned a brave new world, and what they got was fascism. As vibrant as its counterparts in Paris, Munich, and Milan, the avant-garde of Florence rose on a wave of artistic, political, and social idealism that swept the world with the arrival of the twentieth century. How the movement flourished in its first heady years, only to flounder in the bloody wake of World War I, is a fascinating story, told here for the first time. It is the history of a whole generation's extraordinary promise--and equally extraordinary failure. The "decadentism" of D'Annunzio, the philosophical ideals of Croce and Gentile, the politics of Italian socialism: all these strains flowed together to buoy the emerging avant-garde in Florence. Walter Adamson shows us the young artists and writers caught up in the intellectual ferment of their time, among them the poet Giovanni Papini, the painter Ardengo Soffici, and the cultural critic Giuseppe Prezzolini. He depicts a generation rejecting provincialism, seeking spiritual freedom in Paris, and ultimately blending the modernist style found there with their own sense of toscanitagrave; or "being Tuscan." In their journals--Leonardo, La Voce, Lacerba, and l'Italia futurista--and in their cafe life at the Giubbe Rosse, we see the avant-garde of Florence as citizens of an intellectual world peopled by the likes of Picasso, Bergson, Sorel, Unamuno, Pareto, Weininger, and William James. We witness their mounting commitment to the ideals of regenerative violence and watch their existence become increasingly frenzied as war approaches. Finally, Adamson shows us the ultimate betrayal of the movement's aspirations as its cultural politics help catapult Italy into war and prepare the way for Mussolini's rise to power.

Author Biography

Walter L. Adamson is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Intellectual History, Emory University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Sources of Avant

Gardism in Nineteenth-Century Florence

The Myth of Tuscany and the Problem of the Post-Risorgimento Intellectual Life, the University, and Foreigners Modernizing Florence

The Impact of Socialism and Aestheticism

The Leonardo Years Fin--de-Siecle

Florence and the Myth of Paris

The Birth of Leonardo and the Search for Secular Religion

The Rhetoric of Cultural Renewal Spiritual Crisis and the End of Leonardo

La Voce:The Making Ofd Florentine Avant-Garde New Departures

New Divisions Cultural Politics in Florence

1909-1911 A Widening Circle of Participants

War in Libya and Simmering Discontent

Culture Wars and War for Culture: The Years of Florentine Futurism

The Politics of Autobiography Lacerba and Futurism

1913-1915 The Words of a Modern Man

The Intervention Campaign

The Fate of the Florentine Avant--Garde

The War Years and the Postwar Crisis

The Experience of War

The War at Home and the Politicization of the Avant-Garde

The Emerging Culture of Florentine Fascism Modernism and the Postwar "Recall to Order" Conclusion

The Cultural Politics of Florentine Modernism

The Rhetoric of Mussolini

The Florentine Avant--Garde between Two Worlds

Note

Bibliography

Index

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