Don't Shed Your Tears for Anyone Who Lives on These Streets
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Palazzeschi, Aldo (pseudonym of Aldo Giurlani; Florence, February 2, 1885–Rome, August 17, 1974). Despite fanatically (in other words, with fanaticism) joining the Futurist movement after meeting Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (in other words, engaging with him), P. never approved of the group’s militarism (in other words, its enthusiasm for soldiers and war) and he broke with it (in other words, with Futurism) at the start of World War I; by that point (in other words, up until that moment) he had already published the book of poems The Incendiary (1910), the novel Man of Smoke (1911), and the manifesto Controdolore [sic] (1914). That break led to a particularly prolific period (twelve works in almost forty years) followed, beginning in 1956, by a decade without publishing anything of importance (in other words, anything of relevance), which ended in 1966 with The Integral Comedian; which gave rise to the publication of five other works until 1972, two years before his death (in other words, his demise). He died as the result of a poorly treated dental abscess: in other words, of an inflammation produced by the accumulation of pus in his gums stemming from an infection; in other words, from the penetration and development of pathogens within his organism.
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Popowa-Mutafowa, Fani (Sewliewo, October 16, 1902–Sofia, July 9, 1977). Author primarily of historical novels that aspire to psychological profundity, P.-M., who was the most popular woman writer in her country before and after writing panegyrics to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, was condemned to seven years in a detention center for her participation in the Weimar meetings. She was exempted after eleven months due to a lung disease. She didn’t publish anything between 1939 and 1972, the date of her final novel, Dr. Petar Beron, about the well-known Bulgarian educator.
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Pound, Ezra (Hailey, Idaho, October 30, 1885–Venice, November 1, 1972). “I hadn’t seen Ezra since 1938. Thirteen years had not aged him particularly. He still looked leonine, big-chested and swarthy. Wearing a yellow sweater that gave him the appearance of a tennis coach. […] ‘You see why I like deck-chairs,’ he said, packing them flat against the wall and indicating the dimensions of his cell. The room contained an iron bed, chaos of clothes and a muddle of magazines and paper. We had to shout at each other even in his cell because a large television set outside in the corridor blared away. ‘They try to reduce us idiots to the level of insanity outside,’ Ezra confessed. ‘Have you written any poems in here?’ I asked. ‘Birds don’t sing in cages.’ We didn’t mention poetry again” (Ronald Duncan about his visit to see P. at St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric hospital in November 1948).
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Rebatet, Lucien (Moras-en-Valloire, November 15, 1903–Moras-en-Valloire, August 24, 1972). The most important works by R., author of A Contribution to the History of Russian Ballets (1930), bear titles that leave little room for debate about his political ideas: Bolshevism Against Civilization (1940), “Jews in France” (1941), “Foreigners in France,” “The Invasion,” “Loyalty to National Socialism” (1944), etc. In 1942 he published The Rubble, an anti-Semitic pamphlet in favor of collaboration with Nazi Germany, of which they printed sixty thousand copies during the occupation and which led Charles Maurras to call him a “maniacal coprophagist and an impulsive, sick dwarf.” Some time later he sought refuge in Sigmaringen Castle with the main figures of French collaborationism, including Louis-Ferdinand Céline, whose Bagatelles for a Massacre he’d openly celebrated in 1938. He was arrested in Feldkirch (Austria) in May 1945 and condemned to death in November 1946; some months later, in April 1947, the sentence was reduced to forced labor in perpetuity and one hundred and forty-one days in chains, despite which he was freed in July 1952. A year earlier he had published one of his most important works, the novel The Two Banners, followed by Ripe Ears (1954) and the essays For Jean Paulhan (1968) and A History of Music (1969). His most important works, and the ones that best reveal the scant or nonexistent evolution of his political ideas following the debacle of fascism, are the ones published after his death, however: his Memoirs of a Fascist (1976), Letters from Prison to Roland Cailleux (1945–1952) (1993), and Dialogue of the Defeated, Clairvaux Prison, January–December 1950 with Pierre-Antoine Cousteau (1999).
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Rosà, Rosa (pseudonym of Edith von Haynau; Vienna, November 18, 1884–Rome, 1978). In 1908 this aristocratic Austrian woman married the Italian writer Urlico Arnaldi; seven years later, when her husband was at the front, she came into contact with Futurism and joined the movement. She wrote A Woman with Three Souls (1918), a strange and early example of surrealist science fiction with a feminist theme, and There’s No One but You! (1919), another Futurist novel. In 1917 she illustrated B. Corra’s book Sam Dunn Is Dead, and in 1922 she illustrated A. Ginna’s The Locomotive with Trousers, as well as other literary works; her graphic work, which is more extensive and integrates elements of expressionism, Futurism, and art nouveau, and is powerfully reminiscent of the work of Gustav Klimt and Aubrey Beardsley, still awaits rediscovery by critics. She also, late in life, published two essays, Eternal Mediterranean (1964) and The Byzantium Phenomenon (1970), and left two unfinished novels, The House of Happiness and Flight from the Labyrinth, which were considerable departures from her earlier Futurist style, as well as an autobiography entitled The Danube Is Gray.
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Rossi, Giovanni (L’Aquila, February 12, 1920–Rome, April 14, 1994). In 1942 the publication of some poems plagiarized from Gabriele D’Annunzio led to his denunciation by F. Gentilli and the ensuing scandal; he didn’t publish again until 1972, that time a very commendable book of poems, encumbered only by the somewhat excessive influence of F. Gentilli.
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Sân-Giorgiu, Ion (Botoșani, 1893–Udem, 1950). Writer, expressionist, professor, art and literary critic, playwright, and journalist, S.-G. is not remembered for any of those things, but rather for his anti-Semitism, his sympathies for the extreme right, and for having held the position of minister of education in the Romanian government in exile when it was expelled from power by the Allied advance during World War II. He was condemned to death in absentia by a Romanian court after the war and died in exile in Germany.
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Sánchez Mazas, Rafael (Madrid, February 18, 1894–Madrid, October 18, 1966). Journalist, novelist, essayist, poet, founding member of the Spanish Falange party, and minister under Franco, S. M. came up with the not very imaginative slogan “¡Arriba España!”—basically “Long live Spain!”—and wrote the poem “Prayer for the Fallen Members of the Falange” as well as taking part in the composition of “Cara al Sol,” the Falangist anthem. His body of work is one of the few among Falangists that leaves a positive impression on readers, as long as they never read it and avoid ever laying eyes on a portrait of the author.
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Santa Marina, Luys (Colindres, January 5, 1898–Barcelona, September 14/15, 1980). Pseudonym of Luis Narciso Gregorio Gutiérrez Santa Marina. Writer. Journalist. Falangist. Representative in the Francoist courts. Author of works on Queen Isabella I of Castile, Joan of Arc, Francisco de Zurbarán, and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. A Spaniard, with all that sadly entails.
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Settimelli, Emilio (Florence, August 2, 1891–Lipari, February 12, 1954). He founded the magazines Il Centauro (1913) and L’Italia Futurista (1916), the first official organ of the group, where he published texts he’d written about “Futurist science” and the “synthetic Futurist theater”—the latter in collaboration with T. Marinetti and B. Corra—Futurist Rome (1918), and Dynamo (1919). S. is also author (again in collaboration with B. Corra) of a revolutionary theory on the objective evaluation of artistic objects that was published as a manifesto entitled “The Weights, Measures, and Pr
ices of Artistic Genius” (1914). After Spiritual Adventures (1916), Futurist Masquerades (1917), and Survey of Italian Life (1919), S. published texts that clearly state—from their very titles—his adherence to fascism, which happened in 1921: Benito Mussolini and The Fascist Coup d’Etat (both 1922) and The Souls—B. Mussolini (1925). Marinetti expelled him from the Futurist ranks at the Bologna Conference of 1933 and Mussolini had him jailed for his criticisms of some fascist leaders and his anticlericalism; he spent five years in prison: his bad luck with those whom he admired and supported is typical of the Italian twentieth century, one could say.
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Somenzi, Mino (Marcaria, January 19, 1899–Rome, November 19, 1948). Pseudonym of Stanislao Somenzi. He took part in the occupation of Fiume and became a Futurist, then headed up the movement’s principal magazines: Futurismo (1932–1933), Sant’Elia (1933–1934), and Artecrazia (1934–1939). His was a left-wing Futurism, as seen in his text I Defend Futurism (1937); naturally, his stance was shared by very few.
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Sybesma, Rintsje Piter (Tjerkgaast, January 22, 1894–Heerenveen, February 5, 1975). Dutch veterinarian and author, a volunteer in the SS of that country, and an employee of the Reich’s Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. He lived until 1975 without ever having to answer for his past.
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Tessore, Atilio (Florence, November 15, 1910–Bottai, on the outskirts of Florence, September 22, 1978). Pseudonym of the Italian writer Atilio Castrofiore. He published his first book of poems at seventeen years of age thanks to the intervention of his father, the writer F. Castrofiore. The performance of his erotic play in Rome’s Monumentale theater in April 1937 is remembered as one of the biggest scandals of the twentieth-century Italian theatrical scene: the drama, whose subject was the rape of a young Italian woman by Austrian soldiers, in what constituted some sort of allegory about the eastern Italian territories, was considered in poor taste by the audience due to the nudity of the main character, played by the actress Luce Caponegro, and some of the Austrian soldiers; the play was not performed again. T. published two more books, with prologues by his father, We Honorable Barbarians (1939) and Many Targets on Every Map (1940), which the Italian critics rejected because of his abuse of hypotaxis. In April 1945 he was captured by partisans near the Milan train station, where it seems he was trying to get to Florence; his father’s payment of an unspecified sum saved him from being shot by firing squad, but not from his trial for collaborationism: despite that, and a sentence against him, in March 1947 he was free; his attempts to reestablish himself as a writer failed because of his shyness. Those attempts included the publication of the memoir White Flag (1949) and the historical novel Evil as an Effect of Ill Will (1961).
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Troubetzkoy, Amélie Rives (Richmond, Virginia, 1863–Charlottesville, Virginia, 1945). Beginning in 1888 with the short-story collection A Brother to Dragons and Other Old-Time Tales, and until 1898, T. was an extraordinarily prolific writer who published four books in 1888 and three in 1893, including The Quick or the Dead? (1888), her most popular novel and a true best seller of the period, and her drama in verse Herod and Mariamne (1888). She published a total of twenty-four books, plays, novels, stories, and poems, with titles like Virginia of Virginia [sic] (1888) and The Queerness of Celia (1926); they all put forth a mix of religious piety and sexual desire, passion and remorse, which must have been exceptionally attractive in that period, given her success as a playwright on Broadway. Her undeniable physical beauty as a young woman, her first husband’s insanity, her divorce, her friendship with Oscar Wilde, and her addiction to morphine only added to that attractiveness. She lived much of her life in Europe, primarily in Italy; her literary friendships included Henry James, Louis Auchincloss, and Ezra Pound.
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Zago, Cosimo (Venice, October 11, 1860–Venice, May 4, 1945). Despite starting to write at a young age, Z. didn’t make a name for himself until he arrived in Rome, where he was on May 23, 1915, when Italy declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Z. enlisted with the Italian volunteers. According to his own declarations, he lost his right leg in Valsugana or Val d’Adige, he couldn’t recall exactly, during the Austrian punitive incursion of May 15, 1916, when he stepped on a mine. He said that in his boot he was carrying the manuscript of an almost completed novel whose subject was said to be, on some occasions, the experiences of a young Italian man on the Tyrolean front, on others, those of a young Italian woman on that same front. Z., whose memory seemed fragile at best, did however remember that his novel was absolutely extraordinary, despite which his attempts to reconstruct it after the war bore no fruit. He was one of the first writers to publicly support fascism, and he was repaid with cultural and diplomatic missions to South America and the United States that seemed designed to relocate his troublemaking over there as opposed to in Italy and, more specifically, so he would feel no need to write, and, moreover, have no possibility of doing so. This is why his whole body of work barely fills one modest volume and is almost entirely composed of circumstantial poems, which he repeated in his diplomatic destinations with slight variances that reflected the local traits, about which, actually, he seemed to know very little. As Z. was naturally extremely slender, the rationing and scarcity of the war years took an undue toll on his health, and he died shortly after the conflict ended.
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Zillich, Heinrich (Brenndorf bei Kronstadt, May 23, 1898–Starnberg, May 22, 1988). His entrance onto the literary scene came in 1936 with the novel Between Borders and Eras; his entrance into the history books took place three years later, when he called Adolf Hitler the “savior of the Reich and the people” in a poem written in his honor. Beginning in 1945 he denied any links to National Socialism, however: incredibly, he was believed. A fervent anti-Semite, he maintained to his last breath that the number of Jews killed by the Nazis was not as high as is typically believed and he continued to consider Germany the “protector of the West.”
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Zuliani, Ottavio (Venice, December 2, 1913–Turin, December 9, 1977). Author of a memoir on his literary activity during the fascist period that is essential to understanding the era despite its exculpatory nature and strange title, Let the Chickens Graze (1977). Giulio Ferroni states, in his History of Italian Literature, the 20th Century (1991), that Z. published a single book of poems, entitled Pentagrammed Poetry, in the January 1923 issue of the magazine Nuovo Futurismo. That’s true, except it wasn’t in Nuovo Futurismo but in La Testa di Ferro and it wasn’t published in January 1923 but in August 1921, the title wasn’t Pentagrammed Poetry but The Bird of Paradise, it wasn’t a book of poems but a play, and Z. didn’t publish it but rather reviewed it: the piece was actually written by Enrico Cavacchioli, the incendiary poet.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The struggle was, and still might be, to preserve some
of the values to make life worth living.
And they are still mousing around for a significance
in the chaos.
EZRA POUND, GUIDE TO KULCHUR
Some of the quotes and several passages in these books require some explanation. The statements about the “absurd, unfortunate recipe for a self-centered, mercenary, cautious peace and avaricious mercantilism” and others that follow it are taken from texts by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, including the “First Futurist Manifesto” and “The Necessity and Beauty of Violence.” The story of Carlo Olgiati is based on the story of the same name by Juan Rodolfo Wilcock, in the book The Temple of Iconoclasts (1972). The bit about Mussolini and his particular relationship to the sky over Salò comes from Justo Navarro’s book El espía (2011). The idea that dehumanizing and totalitarian art is accompanied by an opposing current that shifts the destruction onto th
e artist himself comes from Al Álvarez’s book The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (1972). The poem by Flavia Morlacchi is found in Luigi Pirandello’s book Her Husband (1911). The story of Justo Jiménez Martínez de Ostos is superficially based on the book by Max Aub Antología traducida (1972), as are the stories of Arthur Maddow and Juan Antonio Tiben. The speech by Hanns Johst is made up of passages from texts by Juan Ramón Masoliver, Ezra Pound, Octavio Paz, and Arturo Serrano Plaja. The phrase about war as a cleanser comes from “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” by Marinetti, published in Le Figaro on February 20, 1909. The address by Eugenio d’Ors is taken from passages of José-Carlos Mainer’s study in the anthology Falange y literatura (expanded edition, 2013) and from “Pedagogía de la pistola” by Rafael García Serrano. The words spoken by Fani Popowa-Mutafowa come from a speech Miguel de Unamuno gave in 1934. Bruno Corra’s text belongs to “Hermes en la vía pública” by Antonio de Obregón; D’Ors’s reply, to “La fiel infantería” by Rafael García Serrano. The title of Romano Cataldi’s story “Un lungo cane d’ombra” is taken from Luciano Folgore’s poem “Fiamma a gas.” The story of the astrakhan is from Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, The Letter Killers Club (2012), although it departs considerably from the original; the bit about the pack is from Chekhov and appears in his Notebook (2008). Michele Garassino’s defense against accusations of plagiarizing Romano Cataldi’s work is plagiarized from the defense Laurence Sterne made for his appropriations, which, in turn, is plagiarized from a similar defense in The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621). The dream Espartaco Boyano describes comes from Joseph Brodsky’s book on Joseph Roth (2011). A substantial part of the questions about “monsters” are taken from Fernando Montes Vera’s article “Penny Dreadful,” published in Otra Parte Semanal in September 2014, and some ideas that appear in David J. Skal’s book The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (1993). The idea that Futurism was too revolutionary and anarchic to be the art that represented the fascism in power was formulated by Giuseppe Prezzolini in 1923, in “Fascism and Futurism.” The idea of the “self-portraits” by Luca Borrello comes from the work of Jaume Plensa. Some of the ideas about political violence and individual responsibility are taken from the conversation between Margaret Mead and James Baldwin published as A Rap on Race (1971). All the titles by Atilio Tessore are taken from the names of songs by the Spanish band Triángulo de Amor Bizarro.