“«Fiumanism = the Italian city of Fiume – city of new life – liberation of all the oppressed (peoples, classes, individuals) – discipline of the spirit against formal discipline – destruction of all hegemonies, dogmas, conservatisms and parasitisms – crucible for new energies – few words, much substance».
“ The motto of Fiume from La testa di ferro a self published newspaper in Fiume by Mario Carli,
Gabrielle D’annunzio is seen as a proto fascist and a figure of the “far right” in liberal and leftist circles. However the true soul of Gabrielle D’annunzio is that of a superman above all the tiny intellectual boxes others attempt to put him in. In this essay I will attempt to use Fiume as an example of D’annunzio’s genius and how he defied the whole world, past and present.
Fiume started out as a right wing-attempt of Irrendentia, but after the coward’s in Rome had submitted themselves to the allies the possibility of annexation was gone. Therefore D’annunzio declared Fiume a “regency” to await a true leader for the Italian people. Though Fiume only lasted for sixteen months its impact on culture and art was greater than some civilizations that lasted a thousand years. Art was no longer something for the bourgaise to enjoy in glass cases inside suffocating museums but instead something in the streets to actively participate in. Fiume had become the first state to turn aesthetics into ideology.
The charter/constitution of Fiume is something FF has gone into already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBXZ0MRli7A&t=1313s
But some points to state here is that it was co-written by Alceste De Ambris a syndicalist writer and gave the greatest rights to women yet seen on earth at that point, they were even allowed to join the legionnaires, divorce and abortion were also openly permitted. Homosexuality was also legalized and Fiume became the first state to openly endorse its practice. As D’annunzio attempted to capture the vitalistic spirit that only the poets knew of he would endorse state sponsored dueling and boxing alongside poetry and art competitions. It was truly a utopia for the cultured thugs of his time.
While Fiume may have been a hedonists wet dream it had other facets too. Eastern practices like Zen-Buddhism, Karate and Yoga are helped by people like Harukichi Shimoi with his Arditi Karate Dojos and Giudo Keller’s Yoga magazine. Ironically in the eye of the storm of the “madness of Fiume” as European newspapers liked to call it, the citizens of Fiume were exposed to zen knowledge that the rest of Europe wouldn’t have until well after ww2. This is the inherent contradiction all great men (and cities) have, Fiume was authoritarian yet anarchistic, A place where De’Sade could have lived out his wildest dreams yet also the only city in Europe where the Buddha could have walked and felt at home. This was the beauty of Fiume, nothing that is beautiful exists without ugliness or change.
Fiume was seen by many as a cancerous blot in the heart of Europe, but those who could look to the future and had hearts of poets saw differently, Lenin called fiume the only true European revolution and D’annunzio as the only real revolutionary Europe had to offer. The Soviet Union under Lenin was the only country to recognize Fiume’s legitimacy on the world stage and vice versa. For D’annunzio’s part he organized the League of Fiume getting representatives from the fledgling Irish free state alongside a menagerie of various nationalists across the world, including nationalists fro: Dalmatia, Albania, German Austria, Montenegro, Croatia, German Irredentists now under Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, France and Italy, Catalonia, Malta, Gibraltar, Ireland, the Flemish. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, India, Persia, Afghanistan. India, Burma, China, Korea, the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico. The Chinese in California, the Blacks of America.
Such a gathering of international nationalism had never been seen before and would never be seen again. The League of Fiume then gave weapons and technical support to these oppressed nations with only the Irish Free State refusing for fear of American reprisal. D’annunzio hoped to inspire a global revolution against the decayed globalist bourgeois powers that be in order to ferment a international “holocaust” against them. Because of this Fiume was nicknamed the “city of the holocaust” as he wanted Fiume to be its center.
At the end of this I would like to state that as Futurists we are not looking back at Fiume love or trying to “recapture its spirit”. No! We already have captured it because we are it! Every futurist or dissident nationalist alive today is already a citizen of Fiume and has been one since D’annunzio declared the city reborn! Eja Eja Alalà and Me Ne Frego!
Futurism Forever 