After conquering the government and the Eternal City, fascism conquered the majority of Italian intellectuals as well. Some of these yoked themselves to the bandwagon and its fate without reservations; others offered their passive consent; others still, the most prudent, conceded a benevolent neutrality. Intellectuals enjoy handing themselves over to Power, above all, when power is, as in the case of fascism, young, daring, pugnacious and adventurous.
In this amalgamation of intellectuals and artists with fascism, there arose at once several specifically Italian causes. All recent chapters of Italian history are saturated in D’Annunzianism. “The spiritual origins of fascism are in the literature of D’Annunzio.” Futurism — which represented one face, one phase of the D’Annunzian phenomenon — is a psychological ingredient of fascism. The futurists greeted the war of Tripoli as the inauguration of a new era for Italy, while D’Annunzio would eventually become the spiritual leader of Italian intervention in the world war. Futurists and D’Annunzians created in Italy a megalomaniacal, anti-Christian, romantic and oratory mood. The new generations cried for — as Adriano Tilgher and Arturo Labriola have remarked — the cult of the hero, of violence and war. Within a people like the Italians — fiery, meridional and prolific, hot-blooded and fueled by their meager territory — there existed a latent tendency towards expansion. The above ideas found, as a result, a favorable atmosphere in Italy. The demographic and economic factors coincided with the literary suggestions. The middle class in particular was easily enraptured by the D’Annunzian spirit. (The proletariat, led and controlled by socialism, was less permeable to such influence). The idealist philosophy of Gentile and Croce cooperated with this literature, as did all the importations and transformations of Germanic thought.
Idealists, futurists and D’Annunzians sensed a kinship with fascism. They accepted their parentage of it. Fascism was joined to the majority of intellectuals by a sensitive umbilical cord. D’Annunzio, though, did not incorporate himself into the fascist project, within which he was unable to play the lieutenant; he did, however, maintain cordial relations with fascism, and did not shun its platonic love. The futurists, meanwhile, fell voluntarily into the fascist ranks. Rome’s L’Impero is still directed by Mario Carli and Emilio Settimelli, two survivors of the futurist experience. Ardengo Soffici, another ex-futurist, collaborated with Il Popolo d’Italia, Mussolini’s official outlet. The idealist philosophers, too, failed to wrestle with fascism; Giovanni Gentile, after his fascist education reform, offered an idealist apologia for Mussolini’s bludgeon. Finally, those solitary literati lacking schools or churches at last accepted their place in fascism’s victorious cortege. One of the greatest representatives of this literary category, Sem Benelli, too cautious to don the Blackshirt, collaborated with the fascists, and without confusing himself with them, approved of their praxis and methods. In the last elections, he was one of the more conspicuous candidates on the ministerial roster.
But this occurred while fascism was, or appeared, at its apex. Since fascism began its decline, the intellectuals started rectifying their attitude. Those that held their silence before the March on Rome today feel the need to process and condemn it. Fascism has lost a great part of its clientele and intellectual retinue. The consequences of Matteotti’s assassination have hastened the defections.
Presently, this anti-fascist current is being reaffirmed among intellectuals: Roberto Bracco is one of the leaders of the democratic opposition; Benedetto Croce also declares himself an antifascist, despite sharing with Giovanni Gentile the responsibility and laurels of idealist philosophy; D’Annunzio, projecting a retiring and malcontented air, has announced his retirement from public life and his return to being the same “solitary and proud artist” of yesteryear; finally, Sem Benelli, with a few dissidents of fascism and philofascism, has founded the Liga Itálica, with the object of provoking a moral revolt against the Blackshirts’ methods.
Recently, fascism has received the support of Pirandello; but Pirandello is a humorist on the one hand, and petty bourgeois, provincialist, and anarchic on the other, with much literary genius and little political sensibility. His attitude could never be taken as the symptom of a broader situation. Despite Pirandello, it is clear that Italian intellectuals are disgusted with fascism. The romance between intelligence and Castor oil has ended.
What produced this rupture? We can immediately eliminate one hypothesis: that intellectuals are distancing themselves from Mussolini because he no longer approves of or holds in esteem their collaboration. Fascism tends to festoon itself with imperialist rhetoric and disguise its lack of principles under common literary tropes; but they are not wordsmiths, but men of action. Mussolini is too shrill and snide a man to surround himself with professors and men of letters. A cabinet staffed with demagogues and warriors, experts in attack, in tumult and agitation, serves him best. Between the bludgeon and the pen, he chooses the bludgeon without hesitation. Roberto Farinacci, one of fascism’s current leaders, the principal actor of its last national assembly, is a colossal enemy not only of freedom and democracy, but of grammar as well. But these things are not enough to devastate the intellectuals. In truth, the intellectuals never expected Mussolini to turn his government into a Byzantine academy, nor was fascist prose ever more grammatical than it is today. Neither are the literati, philosophers and artists — the “Artocracy,” as Marinetti calls them — particularly scandalized by the Blackshirts’ truculence and brutality. They have borne them for three years without complaint or condemnation.
The new order of the Italian intelligentsia is a signal, an inkling of a deeper phenomenon. In itself, it is no great matter for fascism, but simply one part of a bigger picture. The loss or acquisition of this or that poet, like Sem Benelli, lacks importance both to the Reaction and to the Revolution. The reactions of the intelligentsia, the “Artocracy,” have not preceded social categories, within which they are embedded, but rather stemmed from them. It is not the intellectuals that change their attitude before fascism, it is the bourgeoisie, the banks, the press, etc., the same people and institutions whose consensus three years ago permitted the March on Rome. The intelligentsia is essentially opportunist; the role of intellectuals in history, in reality, results in very little. Neither art nor literature, despite their megalomania, guide politics; they rely on politics, like so many less exquisite and illustrious activities. Intellectuals form a clientele of order, of tradition, of power, of force, etc., and, when necessary, of the bludgeon and Castor oil. Some higher spirits, some inventive minds, escape this rule; but they are the exceptions. Middle-class people, artists and writers, generally lack revolutionary aptitude and flair. Those that actually dare to rise against fascism are totally innocuous. Sem Benelli’s Liga Itálica, for example, does not wish to be a party, nor does it intend to act politically. It defines itself as “a sacred link for unfolding its sacred project: for the Good and the Rights of the Italic Nation; for the Good and the Rights of the Italic Man.” This program may be very sacred, as Benelli says; but it is also very vague, gaseous, and ingenuous. Benelli, with his nostalgia for the past and taste for archaic phrases, so beloved by today’s mediocre poets, walks the streets of Italy, incanting like the poets of yesteryear “Pace, pace, pace!” His impotent advice is too little, too late.
The Mariátegui Project 