The Fourth Dimension and Futurism: A Politicized Space

Sorelian nationalism was also fostered in Mario Missiroli's II Resto del Carlino (founded in mid-1910), the journal that published Boccioni's defense of "plastic dynamism." From its inception, Il Resto del Carlino included articles by Sorel outlining his rapprochement with French nationalists. [76] As a former contributer to Orano's La Lupa and Corradini's Il Tricolore, Missiroli was well equipped to develop Sorel's nationalist themes, and his criticism echoed the attack on the materialist and rationalist foundations of democratic ideology initiated by Sorel's Italian followers. For instance, in an article titled "Le nationalisme italien," published in the Sorelian journal Independance, Missiroli denounced "Jacobin democracy," the corruption of its politics, and the decadence of its institutions. [77] While professing admiration for Sorelian royalism in France, Missiroli claimed that the absence of a strong monarchical tradition in Italy made that country's nationalism all the more dynamic and creative. [78] Like the Italian Futurists, Missiroli did not fully endorse Corradini's program, although he applauded Italy's status as a "proletarian nation." In Il Resto del Carlino, Missiroli declared Sorel a "man of order" who advocated a "creative" rather than nihilistic theory of revolution. [79] The publication of Boccioni's "Plastic Dynamism" in the pages of Il Resto del Carlino therefore signals his awareness of the synthesis of nationalism and syndicalism developed by Sorel's Italian apologists. The Italian Sorelians defined their nationalism in terms of the regenerative force of Bergsonian intuition and the ability of that force to overwhelm the rational order underlying democratic institutions. Il Resto del Carlino's readers were well prepared for Boccioni's own Bergsonian variation of the nationalist agenda.

Fourth-Dimensional Force Lines: Placing the Spectator at the Center of the Revolution

The national syndicalist synthesis outlined above had a direct impact on the Futurism of Marinetti, who also conjoined syndicalism and nationalism. "Marinettian futurism," according to historian Giovanni Lista, "is first recognized in the anarcho-syndicalist current," where the Futurist commander-in-chief became cognizant of the Sorelian "myths of action and violence." [80] Thus, Marinetti's Founding Manifesto of Futurism (1909) was published in the March 1909 edition of syndicalist Octavio Dinale's La Demolizione, the Sorelian journal that propagated opposition to parliamentarianism. La Demolizione's stated aim was "to reunite the world in a single body [fasces] to oppose active energies to the inertia and indolence that threatens to suffocate all life." [81] The fasces of La Demolizione included all those who shared revolutionary syndicalism's "combative energies" in an attempt to engage "all domains" in "the vast social battle." [82] As Lista points out, Dinale's journal used the term fasces, from which th e word fascism derives, to describe a political program explicitly linked to the militancy of Marinetti's Futurism. In a March 1910 edition of La Demolizione, Marinetti underscored the connection in his manifesto titled "Our Common Enemies"; [83] furthermore, he followed Sorel's Italian apologists in promulgating a theory of national syndicalism. Shortly before Dinale helped launch La Lupa's program of revolutionary nationalism in 1910, Marinetti had given a conference on "The Beauty and Necessity of Violence" in Milan (July 30), outlining a notion of political agitation aligned to Futurism's cultural program. [84] The conference was also meant to augment his political candidacy in the district of Piedmont, where the union of nationalism and revolutionary syndicalism had recently been formulated by Corradini in the Piedmontese journal Il Tricolore. [85] As we have seen, Corradini's synthesis, later published in La Lupa, transformed the Sorelian battle between classes into a struggle between proletarian and bo urgeois nations. Corradini's program called on members of the working class to abandon their proletarian internationalism and instead identify their interests as workers with that of national regeneration. Marinetti's lecture "The Beauty and Necessity of Violence" advocated just this synthesis and met with an unruly response on the part of the Milanese proletariat. [86]