[Letter from Gramsci to Trotsky, dated 8 September 1922, in Gramsci, Scritti politici, Editori Riuniti. First draft, liable to change, don’t rely on it.]
Here are the answers to the questions on the Italian futurist movement which you put to me.
After the war, the futurist movement in Italy entirely lost its characteristic traits. Marinetti dedicates himself very little to the movement. He has married and prefers to dedicate his energies to his wife. Presently monarchists, communists, republicans and fascists participate in the futurist movement. In Milan recently there was founded a political weekly Il principe [The Prince], which represents or aims to represent the same theories which Machiavelli preached for the Italy of the sixteenth century, that is that the struggle between local parties bringing the nation to chaos, should be set aside by a new absolute monarch, a new Cesare Borgia, who would place himself at the head of all of the disputing parties. The paper is led by two futurists: Bruno Corra and Enrico Settimelli. Even though Marinetti, in 1920, was arrested during a patriotic demonstration in Rome for a vigorous speech against the king, he now works with this weekly.
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