Abstract

The analysis of F. T. Marinetti's works written from 1909 to 1912 is supported by a paradoxical hypothesis: what if Marinetti's futurism was less an expression of modernity than an anti-modern reaction? Behind a superficial and enthousiastic agreement to some issues coming from the Second Industrial Revolution, Marinetti hides a pessimistic vision of humanity and history. Futurism could be his Trojan Horse to bring this feeling into the citadel of modernity, thus anticipating in Italian literature what Mussolini made in Italian politics: preserving the Status Quo behind a modernistic maquillage. Marinetti is a “Futurist Without Future”: despite his enthousiasm for some technological innovations, he is totally abstracted from the scientific culture, like most Italian writers of his time: Unlike H. G. Wells, to whom he was often compared, he doesn’t appear very interested in detecting “the shape of thing to come”, while he seems more concerned in updating the old mythologies to the new “steel Gods” of technology. This could explain why the futurist literature has not so much in common with Science Fiction. Marinetti’s first futurist works (1908-1911) show – behind a quite superficial interest for machines and technologies – a real obsession with the human body and everything related with it: sexuality (Mafarka le Futuriste), food (Le Roi Bombance) and violence (Gli indomabili). As in François Rabelais' Gargantua Et Pantagruel, which they openly recall, Marinetti's bodies in Mafarka le Futuriste or Le Roi Bombance are expanded to grotesque dimensions. These issues are temporarily set aside in 1912, when Marinetti finds a completely new style which is described in the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature as “Words-in-Freedom”. This step further will cause the first important crisis in the Futurist Movement, as many early subscribers will not follow him. This crisis (the “fracture of 1912”) is described in the first chapter, while in the second chapter the “grotesque element” in Marinetti's works is thoroughly analysed. Finally, the third chapter deals with the not so frequent “future projections” in his poems and novels. The observation that machines and future in these works are often tied with Death – the “foundation tale” of Futurism shows the first car accident of Italian literature – leads to a last hypothesis: the young italian poet grown up in Egypt may have experienced the discovery of modern industrial Europe as a real shock; the invention of Futurism could be the result of a traumatic stress disease.