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From Symbolism to Futurism: Poupées Électriques and
Elettricità
Daly, Selena
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2009-06
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Rivista di Studi Italiani, Year XXVII (1): 46-59
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Rivista di Studi Italiani
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BIBLIOTECA DI RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI
CONTRIBUTI
FROM SYMBOLISM TO FUTURISM: POUPÉES ÉLECTRIQUES AND
ELETTRICITÀ
SELENA DALY
University College Dublin
I
n this paper I will examine how Filippo Tommaso Marinetti transformed
his three-act drama Poupées Électriques (1909) into a one-act Futurist
Sintesi Elettricità (1913). Through the analysis of draft versions of
Elettricità and of Futurist manifesti, both the process by which Marinetti
enacted this textual transformation and the reasons behind the changes made
to the French play in its passage to becoming an Italian playlet will be
explored. A series of drafts for Elettricità, which are held at the F. T.
Marinetti Papers Collection at the Beinecke Library, Yale University,
uncover the progression from French original to Italian translation. Close
textual analysis of the two plays will demonstrate how Marinetti sought to
change elements of Poupées Électriques so that Elettricità would reflect his
new Futurist world vision. The significance of many of the changes Marinetti
made only becomes clear when Elettricità is contextualised within other
developments in the Futurist ideology and to Marinetti’s manifesto output.
Poupées Électriques was published in May 1909 although it had already
been performed on January 15th, 1909 at the Teatro Alfieri in Turin in a
three-act, Italian translation entitled La donna è mobile. The play was
extremely badly received, to the surprise even of some of the theatre critics
present. After the second act, Marinetti was forced to take a curtain call to a
chorus of boos to which he responded “Ringrazio gli organizzatori di questa
fischiata che profondamente mi onora”1, a phrase which would later form one
of the cornerstones of his theory of Futurist drama in which he outlined “la
voluttà d’esser fischiati”2. Although Poupées Électriques was only performed
and published in 1909, the genesis of this work stretches back at least two
years earlier, and so was conceived of when Marinetti’s style was far from
the iconoclasm and revolution associated with the birth of Futurism. Quoted
in Tullio Pànteo’s biography of Marinetti, which was published in 1908, is a
conversation between an “affascinante scrittrice straniera” 3 and Marinetti.
She asks him about his new play “I Fantocci” which “doveva essere
46
SELENA DALY
rappresentato fin dall’inverno scorso”. Marinetti replies that it is finished “e
da molto tempo!”4 which indicates that Poupées Électriques dates to
approximately 1907.
Subsequent to the first performance, Marinetti reworked Poupées
Électriques into another Italian version, entitled Elettricità so that what had
been a three-act dramma became a one-act Futurist sintesi. Elettricità was
essentially the second act of Poupées Électriques, presented now as a standalone piece. It was first published in 1920, along with the manifesto Il teatro
futurista sintetico and other Futurist sintesi, with its title changed to
Elettricità Sessuale. The play, under the title Elettricità toured Italy in 1913
and 1914 and was performed in Palermo, Messina, Catania, Catanzaro, Pisa,
Novara, Genoa, Turin, Milan and Bologna5. The shortened play underwent
one final mutation in May 1925 when it was performed, the text unchanged 6,
under the title Fantocci elettrici in Rome at Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s Teatro
degli Indipendenti7.
Almost all scholars who have written on the transformation of Poupées
Électriques into Elettricità have maintained that the amount of variation
between the two works is minimal. Günter Berghaus, for example, has
written that “what was now called Elettricità was nothing but the second act
of La donna è mobile, the Italian version of Poupées Électriques”8. To my
knowledge, the only detailed study made of the passage from Poupées
Électriques to Elettricità is an article by A. Rombout, published in 1988,
which, though flawed in many of its facts, nevertheless raises some
interesting points. Rombout makes frequent reference to the lack of any real
variation and modification of Poupées Électiques prior to its retitling as
Elettricità. The article states that “il semble bien, qu’à l’exception de
quelques variants, de caractère minime, dans le texte de chaque version, seuls
le titre de chacune et le nom de ses principaux personnages aient subi des
changements notables”9 and that any changes that are present are “loin d’être
pertinentes”10. It is contentions such as these by Berghaus and Rombout that I
wish to challenge in this paper. While it is undeniable that the number of
changes that can be observed between the longer French text and the shorter
Italian one is small, I believe that these changes are highly relevant to
Marinetti’s developing concepts of Futurist theatre, love and mechanical man
and that they must be interpreted in relation to Marinetti’s other writings on
these subjects during this period.
Until 1912, Marinetti wrote all of his plays, poetry, novels and manifesti in
French. The manuscripts and drafts of what would become Elettricità, which
are held at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, reveal that Elettricità,
written sometime between the first performance of Poupées Électriques in
January 1909 and the first performance of Elettricità in September 1913, was
no exception to this rule. The F. T. Marinetti papers hold five different
versions of what would become Elettricità and these manuscripts, which
47
FROM SYMBOLISM TO FUTURISM: POUPÉES ÉLECTRIQUES AND
ELETTRICITÀ
have not before been referenced in scholarship, reveal key information about
the gestation of the one-act Italian play11. What is extremely significant is the
discovery that Marinetti initially conceived of the one-act reduction of
Poupées Électriques in French and that it became an Italian text only at a
later date. The earliest manuscript at the Beinecke Library is entitled
Electricité: scène dramatique futuriste 12 and shows that Marinetti’s first stage
in the process was to make handwritten comments, in French, on a printed
copy of the second act of Poupées Électriques. All the changes to Poupées
Électriques that appear in the final published Italian text Elettricità Sessuale
are present in these French drafts of Electricité, proving that the French
Electricité was an intermediate step between Poupées Électriques and
Elettricità.
The works that Marinetti wrote in French were subsequently translated by
his secretary Decio Cinti and then often revised and edited by Marinetti
himself. I surmise that Cinti was also the translator of La donna è mobile, the
translation into Italian of all three acts of Poupées Électriques, but, as no
copy of this play exists, it is impossible to definitively ascertain this fact 13. It
is important to state at this point that Elettricità is not presented as a
translated work but rather as an original text written in Italian, on which
Cinti’s name does not feature14. Unfortunately, the drafts held at the Beinecke
Library does not give any indication as to at what point Marinetti moved
from drafting the play in French to writing it in Italian15.
One of the most obvious differences that can be observed between Poupées
Électriques and Elettricità is the revision of the protagonists’ names. The
creator of the electric puppets in Poupées Électriques is called John Wilson
and his wife is Mary, while in Elettricità, they have become Riccardo and
Maria Marinetti. This name change appears to have been a decision Marinetti
made at a very early stage of the re-drafting process as the characters are
called Marinetti in the earliest manuscript at the Beinecke Library (Box 23,
Folder 1288) when changes were made to the printed text of Poupées
Électriques. In one of the later drafts of Electricité it would appear that
Marinetti considered moving away from this autobiographical twist by
calling the protagonists Richard and Marie Franck 16. Endowing the characters
with his own surname possibly appealed to Marinetti’s sense of irony and
reflected his desire to see the spheres of life and art joined together.
Elettricità ends with the line “È pazzo!... È pazzo!... Il signor Marinetti è
impazzito!”17, which recalled the real shouts from his audience after the
premiere of Le Roi Bombance in Paris in April 1909. In a previously
unpublished letter also held in the F. T. Marinetti Papers at the Beinecke
Library, Marinetti recounts the riotous first performance of the play and the
shouts of, recalling the audience’s shouts of “Il est fou! Arrêtez-le! A la
Salpêtrière! L’Art dramatique est en danger! A bas le Futurisme! Vive
48
SELENA DALY
Poesia! A bas la pédérastie!”18
A highly significant variation between the two texts is the change of genre.
Poupées Électriques is described on the title page of the May 1909 first
edition as a “drame en trois actes”19 while the published text Elettricità
Sessuale of 1920 bears the subtitle “sintesi drammatica” 20, as did the 1925
version Fantocci elettrici. Rombout attaches importance to the fact that, in an
article written in 1914 during the country-wide tour of Elettricità, Marinetti
still refers to the Elettricità as a “dramma”21 and that Marinetti only
identified the piece as a sintesi upon its publication in 1920, five years after
the publication of the manifesto of Il Teatro futurista sintetico. My
examination of documents housed at the Beinecke Library in Yale University
however shows this chronology to be incorrect. The earliest manuscript at
Yale is entitled Electricité: scène dramatique futuriste22. The ‘second’
version is entitled Electricité: synthèse futuriste23. Because of the variation in
characters’ names between this version and the previous manuscript, it is
possible to say with certainty that Marinetti decided upon the subtitle
synthèse futuriste after considering and rejecting that of scène dramatique
futuriste. This means that Rombout’s assertion that Marinetti decided to label
Elettricità Sessuale as a sintesi only in 1920 is incorrect as the manuscripts
make clear that he considered Elettricità as a sintesi prior to the 1913 tour.
Despite Marinetti’s decision to label his one-act play as a synthesis and to
publish it alongside other sintesi in 1920, it in fact does not fit in very well
into that genre. It is by far the longest of any of the so-called sintesi24 and is
far less dramatically innovative that his other works of this time, such as Le
basi and Le mani. According to Marinetti, the new synthetic theatre should be
“brevissimo e [capace di] stringere in pochi minuti, in poche parole e in pochi
gesti innumerevoli situazioni, sensibilità, idee, sensazioni, fatti e simboli” 25.
Other of his sintesi, such as Simultaneità, embrace far better his visions of a
theatre that would be “dinamico [e] simultaneo” 26. Simultaneità presents on
stage two contrasting scenes – one of a middle-class family, the other of a
young prostitute who is putting on her make-up – although neither is aware
of the other, resulting in a “dinamico assoluto di tempo e di spazio, con la
compenetrazione simultanea di 2 ambienti diversi e di molti tempi diversi” 27.
Elettricità can however be seen to fit in with certain aspect of Marinetti’s
vision of a modern theatre, the first of which is the need to reduce a play to
only its essential elements. He decries passéist theatre that dilutes a theatrical
idea over two, three or four acts, that fills a play with irrelevant characters,
that begins with seven or eight useless pages, ensuring that the first act will
be “noiosetto”, the second “divertente” and the third “divorante” 28. The
approach he derides is very reminiscent of the style employed in Poupées
Électriques and this comment could be interpreted as a description of part of
Marinetti’s thought process in adapting Poupées Électriques into Elettricità.
Marinetti’s decision to present in Elettricità what is essentially the middle act
49
FROM SYMBOLISM TO FUTURISM: POUPÉES ÉLECTRIQUES AND
ELETTRICITÀ
of a three-act play results in a certain ambiguity and lack of clarity which can
also be explained by comments made in the manifesto on synthetic theatre.
In his discussion of passéist theatre he is contemptuous of the fact that “il
pubblico debba sempre capire con la massima completezza il come e il
perché di ogni azione scenica e sopratutto sapere all’ultimo atto come vanno
a finire i protagonisti”29 and further elucidates that it is stupid to present
everything logically and clearly because “nella nostra esperienza di vita
troviamo quasi solo dei pezzi di disputa”30. In fact, what Marinetti presents
the reader/spectator with in Elettricità is a decontextualised piece of theatre,
not weighed down by expositions about setting, character and motivation,
which furnishes him with the scope to present his ideas on Futurist love and
the mechanical man in a much less cluttered context.
It must also be remembered that Marinetti was a master of propaganda and
identifying Elettricità as a sintesi, when in reality it may not have completely
fit into this genre, was a useful marketing device and also encouraged, I
would argue, the critics to regard the work as markedly distant from his
earlier three-act traditional drama, which relied heavily on Symbolist
aesthetics31. In fact, none of the theatre reviews published during the 1913/14
tour that appear in Giovanni’s Antonucci’s authoritative volume Cronache
del teatro italiano mention the fact that Elettricità was a re-worked version of
the second act of Poupées Électriques. Indeed, the play itself receives scant
mention in the reviews, as most critics were more interested in reporting
details of the uproar with which the public greeted the evening’s
entertainment. Among the views of the critics were that “naturalmente
nessuno capì niente del dramma” 32 and that the play presented two puppets
and four actors “che dicono un mondo di schiocchezze mentre il pubblico
sbadiglia”33. Two more guardedly positive critics commented that “ce n’era
abbastanza per interessare il pubblico”34 and “la cosa è commentatissima e, in
fondo, non dispiace”35.
In 1911, in his Manifesto dei Drammaturghi futuristi, Marinetti wrote that
“i leit-motivs dell’amore e il triangolo dell’adulterio, essendo già stati troppo
usati in letteratura, devono essere ridotti sulla scena al valore secondario di
episodi e o di accessori, cioè allo stesso valore a cui l’amore è ormai ridotto
nella vita, per effetto del grande sforzo futurista” 36. Just a couple of years
later, he put this theory into practice as he reworked Poupées Électriques into
Elettricità, removing the first and third acts which are the ones most
concerned with love and adultery and relegating these ideas to mere subplots,
less important than the role of the puppets. Poupées Électriques had featured
several other characters, most importantly Paul de Rozières and Juliette
Duverney, who were other love interests of the protagonists, John and Mary.
There are still references to these two characters in Elettricità (now called
Paolo and Giulietta) but they do not appear and their function is greatly
50
SELENA DALY
reduced.
In relation to the French text, Giovanni Calendoli wrote that “per la prima
volta F. T. Marinetti obbedisce anche alla suggestione della macchina, che
costituirà il motivo ispiratore centrale del primo manifesto futurista, lanciato
il 20 febbraio 1909 poco dopo la composizione di Poupées électriques”37 but
I do not agree with this assessment. Although it may at first be tempting to
view the electric puppets present in both plays as representative of Futurist
modernolatria and machine aesthetics, they in fact are far more connected to
a nineteenth-century Romantic conception of puppets and automata, typified
by Heinrich von Kleist’s Über das Marionettentheater (1810) and E. T. A.
Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (1816). The character descriptions of the two
puppets in Elettricità have not been altered from those present in Poupées
Électriques and do not provide any indication that the puppets should be
considered as avatars of a Futurist sensibility. The male puppet is a bald old
man in a dressing gown and slippers sitting in a rocking chair while his
female partner is wrapped in a brown shawl “coi capelli brizzolati, con la
faccia stanca, con le guance cascanti, con una bocca dall’espressione cattiva,
con gli acidi, con una fronte rugosa, su cui pendono sei riccioli grigi e
unticci”38. As Daniela Quarta has observed, the puppets “sono meccanici, non
tanto perché sottendano l’ideologia della macchina, né per affrontare il
problema della tecnologia”39.
According to Riccardo Marinetti in Elettricità, the puppets are “i simboli di
tutto ciò che esiste fuori dal nostro amore, ecco i simboli di tutta l’orribile
realtà: dovere, denaro, virtù, vecchiaia, monotonia, noia del cuore, stanchezza
della carne, stupidità del sangue, leggi sociali […]”40. While the list of ideas
that the puppets represent has remained unchanged from the original French
text, the words had been framed in a less forceful manner in Poupées
Électriques. John Wilson had declared that the puppets “me donnent une idée
exacte de tout ce qu’il y a hors de notre amour; toute la réalité affreuse
[etc.]”41. The identification of the puppets as explicit symbols of all of these
things in Elettricità communicates a much stronger message, in keeping with
Marinetti, the author’s, altered perspective regarding the symbolism of the
puppets post-1909. As Segel has commented, “their constant presence
reaffirms [Riccardo’s] contempt for bourgeois society and validates his
misanthropy”42. The puppets provide a continuous reminder to the
protagonists of that which they do not wish to become. The ending of
Elettricità, when the puppets which had been disposed of are returned by the
fishermen, illustrates the fact that “di queste immagini passatiste non ci si
potrà liberare”43.
The shift in the puppets’ symbolism between the two plays can be observed
through an examination of their altered names from one text to the other. In
Poupées Électriques, the puppets were called Monsieur Prudent and Mère
Prunelle, names which emphasise, respectively, their caution and constant
51
FROM SYMBOLISM TO FUTURISM: POUPÉES ÉLECTRIQUES AND
ELETTRICITÀ
watchfulness. In the draft manuscripts in French entitled Electricité at the
Beinecke Library, the puppets’ names are changed first to Monsieur Mari and
Madame Mère but are then crossed out in favour of Le professeur Mariage
and Madame Famille. These names are also the names that appear in the
Italian Elettricità, in which the puppets are called Il Professor Matrimonio
and La Signora Famiglia. In the text of Poupées Électriques, it is explained
that the name for the female puppet was chosen because she resembles
Juliet’s mother, Rose, whose nickname is Mère Prunelle. As neither Juliet nor
Rose appears in the Italian play, the name would have lost much of its
significance, explaining in part Marinetti’s decision to alter it. A further, and
more significant, rationalisation for the puppets’ name changes can be found
in the fact that the names in Elettricità no longer focus on the puppets’
personal characteristics but rather on what they represent for Riccardo and
Maria Marinetti, a point which Marinetti, the author, also emphasises at other
parts of the sintesi, namely when Riccardo declares them to be symbols of
odious reality, which contrasts with John Wilson’s milder sentiments in
Poupées Électriques.
It is not in fact the puppets that represent Marinetti’s dream of creating a
mechanical man, but Riccardo Marinetti, their creator. Riccardo/John shows
a desire to go beyond the identification of his puppets with bourgeois reality
to achieve a true synthesis of human and machine. In Act two of Poupées
Électriques, Mary accuses John that he considers her “comme l’un de tes
fantoches”44, to which he teasingly replies that she is “le plus beau de tous”45.
He continues in a more serious vein, saying “Au fait, vos mécaniques sont
identiques…Et c’est toujours l’électricité qui fait vibrer vos nerfs comme des
fils bons conducteurs de volupté”46 (translated as “Infatti, i vostri meccanismi
sono identici…L’elettricità fa vibrare i nostri nervi come fili buoni-conduttori
di voluttà”47). In the third act of Poupées Électriques, which is not present in
Elettricità, John reiterates this idea that Mary resembles one of his puppets.
When Mary bursts into tears, John ironically remarks “C’est le bouton des
larmes que j’ai fait jouer sans le vouloir!…C’est vraiment bizarre, ce que tu
ressembles à mes fantoches”48. Berghaus identifies an irony in this comment,
as “in her moralistic behaviours, [she] has in actual fact become like the
figures of bourgeois respectability”. Berghaus also wonders though whether
the John’s association between his puppet and his wife could be the semiarticulation of a desire to possess the perfect automaton, one that
“mechanizes all desires and fulfils to perfection the `mechanics of love´”49.
While not discounting the first interpretation, I am more convinced by the
latter reading of this particular comment by John. This desire to mechanize
emotion, present in Poupées Électriques and reiterated in Elettricità, is
reflected in the content of many of Marinetti’s Futurist manifesti on the
nature of love and sentiment between the year 1910 and 1913, the gestation
52
SELENA DALY
period of Elettricità. In L’uomo moltiplicato e il regno della macchina,
written in 1910, Marinetti outlines his vision of a “tipo non umano e
meccanico”50 and announces the imminent discovery of “una vera sensibilità
delle macchine”51. In the Manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista of May
1912, Marinetti wrote that “...noi prepariamo la crezione dell’uomo
meccanico dalle parti cambiabili. Noi lo libereremo dall’idea della morte, e
quindi dalla morte stessa...”. In preparation for the creation of this mechanical
man, Marinetti stresses the need to diminish, if not yet to destroy completely,
“il bisogno di affetto” and thus he dreams of a new kind of life that will be
“liberata dal sentimentalismo e dalla lussuria” 52. The man of the future must
reduce “il proprio cuore alla sua vera funzione distributrice. Il cuore deve
diventare in qualche modo, una specie di stomaco del cervello, che si empirà
metodicamente perché lo spirito possa entrare in azione”53. This idea is
repeated in the Teatro di Varietà manifesto of 1913, in which Marinetti wrote
that variety theatre “meccanizza bizzarramente il sentimento, deprezza e
calpesta igienicamente l’ossessione del possesso carnale, abbassa la lussuria
alla funzione naturale del coito, la priva di ogni mistero, di ogni angoscia
deprimente, di ogni idealismo anti-igienico”54. These repeated ideas of
mechanizing human emotions are very much in keeping with the sentiments
that John Wilson voiced in Poupées Électriques and Riccardo Marinetti in
Elettricità.
A very significant change in the texts of the two plays occurs at the moment
that Marinetti (or Wilson in Poupées Électriques) throws the puppets off the
balcony. Most critics acknowledge these divergences and the consequences
they bear for the interpretations of the two plays. While Poupées
Électriques’s third act ends with Mary’s suicide, which is, in Giusi
Baldissone’s words, a “rinuncia all’amore, poiché non si potrà mai avere
intero”55, Elettricità ends with the rejection of the puppets themselves.
According to the protagonist of each play, the ugliness of the puppets
afforded “un’affascinante bellezza al mare, alle nuvole, alle navi, agli uccelli
e a quelle stelle”56, a sentiment Mary Wilson/Maria Marinetti does not share
and so her husband throws them away. As John Wilson throws the puppets
from the balcony, he shouts only the word “vlan!” In Elettricità, an addition
is made at this point. Riccardo declares, “L’amore è futurista. Inganna,
uccide i lenti, i vecchi, i paurosi, i seduti. L’amore forma dei complotti di
giovani contro coloro che non sono più giovani…Famiglia e Matrimonio,
vlan, dalla finestra!”57 Clearly as Poupées Électriques was written before the
launch of Futurism in February 1909, this comment that love is Futurist is
completely absent from the French text. The insertion of this declaration
results in a complete overturning of the meaning of the protagonist’s action
from Poupées Électriques to Elettricità. As Berghaus observed, in Poupées
Électriques, this action is evidence of John “succumbing to Mary’s morality”
while in Elettricità it can be interpreted as “a Futurist act of rebellion against
53
FROM SYMBOLISM TO FUTURISM: POUPÉES ÉLECTRIQUES AND
ELETTRICITÀ
false sentimentality”58.
Marinetti envisaged a new kind of Futurist love in Elettricità, which after
the rejection of the puppets, could be completely uninhibited. The new
Futurist conception of love would be devoid of human emotion, affection and
sentiment, as we have seen above. In an interview of March 1909, published
alongside the first edition of Poupées Électiques, Marinetti spoke of how he
wished to “combattre enfin le tyrannie de l’amour, qui, surtout dans les pays
latins, entrave et tarit les forces des créateurs et des hommes d’actions” 59.
This was also the subject of another manifesto published in 1910 entitled
Contro l’amore e il parlamentarismo, in which he expresses similar ideas to
those articulated in Elettricità. He wrote “noi disprezziamo l’orribile e
pesante Amore che ostacola la marcia dell’uomo…Noi siamo convinti che
l’amore – sentimentalismo e lussuria – sia la cosa meno naturale del
mondo”60.
Not only are many of the ideas expressed in Elettricità echoed in his own
Futurist manifesti, elements of the sintesi also bear strong similarity to
Valentine de Saint-Point’s Manifesto futurista della lussuria, published in
January 1913. There is another addition to Elettricità, not present in Poupées
Électriques, which bears a strong similarity to one of de Saint Point’s
statements. Riccardo Marinetti declares that “Bisogna soddisfare
continuamante
l’istinto
esploratore
dell’amore…creare
quindi,
artificialmente, il mistero, intorno al corpo adorato…dimenticare la carne che
si è già esplorata…allontanarsene, anche…dimenticarla, perché diventi un
segreto ossessionante, perché diventi ignota e nuova!” 61 De Saint-Point had
written in her manifesto that “la lussuria è la ricerca carnale dell’ignoto” 62
which is the same sensation Riccardo is trying to excite in his wife. Just like
Marinetti, de Saint-Point is opposed to “tutto l’istrionismo dell’amore” and to
the exaggerated sentimentality and the “parole che inebbriano e ingannano”.
The use of the verb “ingannare” echoes Marinetti’s identification of love as a
force that “inganna” in the comment added to Elettricità. De Saint-Point
identifies lust as a “forza poiché uccide i deboli ed esalta i forti cooperando
alla selezione” which recalls Marinetti’s addition to Elettricità that love kills
the slow, the old and the fearful. Although Marinetti is talking about love and
de Saint-Point about lust, the phraseology that each uses is strikingly similar
and thus, leads me to conclude that there is much cross-fertilization to be
found between Elettricità and the Manifesto della lussuria futurista63.
In Elettricità, Riccardo Marinetti is characterized as a true Futurist man. In
an article written in 1914, Marinetti wrote that the second part of Elettricità
“diventa la glorificazione di una serata futurista, cioè la messa in luce di un
cervello novatore e distruttore il quale si trova in antagonismo con la società
che lo giudica pazzo”64. There is however an incident which has been added
to Elettricità, and therefore from Poupées Électriques, that reveals an aspect
54
SELENA DALY
of Riccardo’s character and that casts him as more a passatista than a
futurista. In the opening scene, Giovanni, one of the servants, is lighting
petroleum lamps and says “accidenti al petrolio! E dire che si potrebbe avere
la luce elettrica! Queste lampade, poi, sono proprio di quelle che si usavano
ai tempi del mio bisnonno!”65 This comment constitutes an implied criticism
of Riccardo, suggesting that he is behind the times and has not embraced
modern technology. These comments are made within the play’s opening
minute and prepare the audience to regard Riccardo as an outmoded
traditionalist, which is a rather anomalous presentation in the light of his
characterization in the remainder of the play. A possible reason behind
Marinetti’s decision to retain the oil lamps might be found in the play’s
climax which occurs when a gust of wind comes in through the open balcony
doors and extinguishes these lamps, plunging the room into darkness. In the
darkness, Riccardo pretends to be Maria’s former lover Paolo who has come
to kiss her before he leaves for the Far East. The drama of this scene relies on
the fact that it happens in the dark and also on the fact that Riccardo is in
control of when his little game should come to an end. He calls the domestic
servants to come and relight the lamps but there is a short interval before they
arrive, which greatly increases Maria’s distress. Such a sequence of events
would have been impossible if the lights in question had been electric. A
power cut would have been a possibility but this would have removed control
of the situation from Riccardo as he would have been unable to dictate the
point at which the lights would return. Although electricity fascinated
Marinetti and featured in many of his Futurist manifesti, in Poupées
Électriques he is less interested in electric light than in atmospheric
electricity. In fact he wrote in 1914 that the first part of Elettricità was “un
esame minuziosamente seguito in tutti i punti delle influenze dell’elettricità
atmosferica sull’anima e sui nervi femminili” 66.
It is an under-acknowledged fact that of all of Marinetti’s literary works
that first appeared in French and then in Italian, Elettricità is the only one
which does not bear the name of Marinetti’s translator, Decio Cinti.
Elettricità is a truly Futurist work and one which clearly establishes itself as a
separate entity, with different intentions and purpose, from Poupées
Électriques. Elettricità constitutes far more than a mere translation of its
French predecessor. Rather it is an adaptation and transformation, which has
been modified to take account of Marinetti’s new, Futurist sensibility.
__________
NOTES
1
Quoted in Giovanni Antonucci, Cronache del teatro futurista, Rome:
Abete, 1975, p. 37.
55
FROM SYMBOLISM TO FUTURISM: POUPÉES ÉLECTRIQUES AND
ELETTRICITÀ
2
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “La voluttà d’esser fischiati”, in Teoria e
invenzione futurista, by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, ed. Luciano De Maria,
Milan: Mondadori, 6th ed., 2005 [1st ed. 1968], pp. 310-13 [Henceforth TIF.]
3
Tullio Pànteo, Il poeta Marinetti, Milan: Società Editrice Milanese, 1908,
p. 14.
4
Pànteo, p. 24.
5
For details of these performances, see Günter Berghaus, Italian Futurist
Theatre 1909-1944, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004 [first edition 1998], pp.
187-93.
6
Fantocci elettrici was printed in Teatro, IV, 1, January 15th 1926, pp. 1418.
7
On the front page (no page number) of the first edition of Elettricità
Sessuale (Milan: Facchi Editore, 1920), are the words: “rappresentato al
Teatro Alfieri di Torino nel 1911, dalla Compagnia Maggi, venne poi
rappresentato, in TOURNÉE, dalla Compagnia Tumiati nel 1913”. This
reference to a performance in 1911 is certainly a misprint and refers to the
1909 performance used actor from Andrea Maggi’s company. In Il teatro
sperimentale degli indipendenti (1923-1936) (Rome: Bulzoni, 1984),
Alberto Cesare Alberti refers to Poupées Électriques saying it was
“rappresentato in Francia negli anni successivi anche da una compagnia
appositamente formata, suscitando tumulto e scandalo” (p. 192), although
this is the only reference I have found to a French performance of the play.
8
Berghaus, Italian Futurist Theatre, p. 188.
9
A. Rombout, “Des Poupées Électriques aux Fantocci Elettrici ou comment
se fabrique une `sintesi futurista´”, in Vitalité et contradictions de l’Avantgarde: Italie-France 1909-1924, Paris: Corti, 1988, pp. 195-204, here p. 196
10
Rombout, p. 203.
11
F. T. Marinetti Papers, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 23, Folder 1288-1292.
12
F. T. Marinetti Papers, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 23, Folder 1288.
13
In The Genesis of Futurism: Marinetti’s Early Career and Writings
1899-1909 (Leeds: Society for Italian Studies, 1995), Berghaus says that La
donna è mobile was translated by Cinti. In correspondence with Berghaus,
he was unfortunately unable to recall the provenance of this information. In
Pinocchio’s Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Automatons and Robots in
Modernist and Avant-Garde Drama (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1995), Harold B. Segel states that there was “appropriate
but minor Italianization of locale and characters” (p. 262) but once again
does not refer to the source of this information.
14
Marinetti never translated any of his own works from French into Italian.
In his pre-Futurist career, he did translate poems from Italian into French for
56
SELENA DALY
Anthologie des poètes italiens contemporains, an edition published in 1899
for the journal Anthologie-Revue de France et d’Italie. In 1908, Marinetti
carried out the translation of poems by Stéphane Mallarmé from French into
Italian (Versi e prose di Stéphane Mallarmé, Milan: Istituto Editoriale
Italiano, 1916).
15
Box 23, Folder 1292 is a manuscript, in Italian, of Elettricità Sessuale.
Interestingly, it is an Italian translation of the entire three acts of Poupées
Électriques. The second act of the play in this folder is a printed copy of
Elettricità Sessuale. The only alteration Marinetti has made to this act is that
he has changed the protagonist’s name from Riccardo Marinetti to Riccardo
Marchi. This manuscript is undated so it is difficult to ascertain when it was
written but the fact that the second act consists of the printed text of
Elettricità Sessuale suggests that it might date to sometime after 1920.
16
F. T. Marinetti Papers, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 23, Folder 1291.
17
F. T. Marinetti, Elettricità Sessuale in Marinetti, Teatro, ed. by Jeffrey T.
Schnapp, Milan: Mondadori, 2004, p. 192 [Henceforth, ES.]
18
F. T. Marinetti Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. Box 1, Folder 1.
19
F. T. Marinetti, Poupées Électriques, Paris: E. Sunset & Co., 1909,
unnumbered title page [Henceforth PE.]
20
Marinetti, ES, p. 177.
21
The article Rombout refers to was printed in Il Resto del Carlino on
January 20th, 1914, reprinted in Teatro, ed. by Schnapp, p. 194.
22
F. T. Marinetti Papers, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 23, Folder 1288.
23
F. T. Marinetti Papers, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 23, Folder 1289.
24
The other sintesi were Simultaneità, Il teatrino dell’amore, Antineutralità,
Vengono, Un chiaro di luna, Le basi, Le mani, L’arresto, La camera
dell’ufficiale, I vasi comunicanti, Il soldato lontano, Paralleli, I Ghiri, Runoi
Clacla, L’improvvisata, and the manifesto of Il teatro futurista sintetico.
25
Marinetti, Il teatro futurista sintetico in TIF, p. 114.
26
Marinetti, Il teatro futurista sintetico in TIF, p. 118.
27
Marinetti writing in the theatre programme for Simultaneità’s first
performance in 1915, quoted in Marinetti, Teatro, ed. by Schnapp, Vol. 2, p.
545.
28
Marinetti, Il teatro futurista sintetico in TIF, p. 116.
29
Marinetti, Il teatro futurista sintetico in TIF, p. 116.
30
Marinetti, Il teatro futurista sintetico in TIF, p. 118.
31
Berghaus made a similar observation regarding the misleading title La
donna è mobile which promised “something amusing just like the popular
57
FROM SYMBOLISM TO FUTURISM: POUPÉES ÉLECTRIQUES AND
ELETTRICITÀ
aria from Rigoletto.” (Italian Futurist Theatre, p. 33) and left the audience
wholly unprepared for the presence of the electric puppets in the second act.
32
Antonucci, p. 47.
33
Antonucci, p. 52.
34
Antonucci, p. 53.
35
Antonucci, p. 59.
36
Marinetti, “La voluttà d’esser fischiati” [alternative title for Manifesto dei
drammaturghi futuristi], in TIF, p. 311.
37
Marinetti, Teatro, ed. by Giovanni Calendoli, Rome: V. Bianco, 1960, p.
xxi.
38
Marinetti, ES, p. 178.
39
Daniela Quarta, ‘Il teatro pre-futurista di Marinetti – “Dramma senza
titolo”, “Le Roi Bombance”, “Poupées électriques”’ in Revue Romane, XVI,
1-2, 1981, pp. 120-46, here p. 142.
40
Marinetti, ES, p. 189.
41
Marinetti, PE, p. 134.
42
Segel, p. 266.
43
Giusi Baldissone, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Milan: Mursia, 2009 [first
edition 1986], p. 236.
44
Marinetti, PE, p. 131.
45
Marinetti, PE, p 132.
46
Marinetti, PE, p. 132.
47
Marinetti, ES, p. 188.
48
Marinetti, PE, p. 166.
49
Berghaus, The Genesis of Futurism, p. 81.
50
Marinetti, L’uomo moltiplicato e il regno della macchina in TIF, p. 299.
51
Marinetti, L’uomo moltiplicato e il regno della macchina in TIF, p. 299.
52
Marinetti, L’uomo moltiplicato e il regno della macchina in TIF, p. 300.
53
Marinetti, L’uomo moltiplicato e il regno della macchina in TIF, p. 300.
54
Marinetti, Il Teatro di Varietà in TIF, p. 86.
55
Baldissone, p. 233.
56
Marinetti, ES, p. 190.
57
Marinetti, ES, p. 190.
58
Berghaus, The Genesis of Futurism, p. 80.
59
Marinetti, PE, p. 33.
60
Marinetti, Contro l’amore e il parlamentarismo in TIF, p. 292.
61
Marinetti, ES, p. 189.
62
Valentine De Saint-Point, Manifesto futurista della lussuria, January 1913,
copy held in the Collezione Sergio Rossi, Centro APICE, (Archivi della
parola, dell’immagine e della comunicazione editoriale), Milan.
http://apicesv3.noto.unimi.it/img/reggi/0003-0484/(1913)/index.djvu,
accessed February 26th, 2010.
58
SELENA DALY
63
Digitalized
Collezione
Sergio
Rossi,
APICE
(http://apicesv3.noto.unimi.it/img/reggi/0003-0484/(1913)/index.djvu)
64
Marinetti, Il Resto del Carlino [1914] in Teatro, ed. by Schnapp, p. 194.
65
Marinetti, ES, pp. 178-79.
66
Marinetti, Il Resto del Carlino [1914] in Teatro, ed. by Schnapp, p. 194.
__________
59

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