Palazzeschi, the futurist who was wary of progress

In a 1967 letter, Alberto Mondadori noted that Aldo Palazzeschi was ahead of his time. The title "Palazzeschi nostro contemporaneo", the proceedings of the 2024 Florence conference edited by Simone Magherini (Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2026), derives from that observation. Together with Carteggio 1931–1966 con Mino Maccari (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura), edited by Maria Federica Cartenì, this volume offers an opportunity to re-examine the author of Il Codice di Perelà not only as one of the great experimentalists of the twentieth century, but also as one of the most original anti-modernists in Italian literature.

Had Antoine Compagnon (Les Antimodernes, from Joseph de Maistre to Roland Barthes, 2005) devoted more space to Italians, Palazzeschi would probably have found a place amongst the ‘antimodernists’: writers who belong fully to modernity, yet recognise its contradictions before others do. His career is exemplary. A Futurist in his youth, close to Marinetti and fascinated by the avant-garde, in his later works and interviews he became a stern observer of consumerism, standardisation, the cult of technology and the gradual loss of religious meaning. The revolutionary of yesterday discovers that true conformism does not lie in defending the past, but in worshipping progress.

Not insignificant in this development is his association with Mino Maccari, the driving force behind Il Selvaggio. Their correspondence reveals a shared mistrust of the culture of speed, the reduction of culture to a commodity, and the disappearance of the human and rural dimension. These are not merely philological documents: many of the concerns that run through those letters have become our own. Palazzeschi does not construct philosophical systems nor does he propose nostalgic restorations. He observes people, their gestures, their way of speaking and of desiring. From seemingly marginal details, he derives a penetrating diagnosis of Italian society. His primary target is bourgeois materialism, incapable of understanding those who devote their lives to a seemingly ‘unproductive’ ideal such as that of the poet. Today, that poet might be the intellectual, the artist or anyone who sets aside part of their existence from the exclusive logic of utility.

His critique of progress remains surprisingly relevant today. In Il Palio dei buffi, he describes it as a ‘race of collective madness’: he does not deny the benefits of technology, but rejects the idea that it should become a new religion. ‘What does it matter to me if I can fly like a sparrow or a swallow, when my mind remains that of a sparrow or a swallow?’, he writes. Machines expand material possibilities, but they do not make man wiser; imagination remains the true instrument of knowledge. For him, the telephone is “an invasion of privacy”, anticipating the theme of technology’s encroachment on the private sphere; whilst, on the subject of consumerism, he observes that it is not material comfort that makes us unhappy, but rather the constant comparison with others. And when he states that “today it is not the work that counts, but the persona”, he seems to be describing the image-driven society decades in advance.

Religious sentiment also remains at the heart of his thinking. “To live peacefully, one needs a religion,” he asserts, even going so far as to re-evaluate dogmas: “The finest things about religion are the uplifting of the humble and the dogmas. Dogmas are not to be debated, but believed.” A provocative statement born of the conviction that a civilisation cannot thrive solely on technology, material well-being and perpetual doubt.

Palazzeschi was not, however, a nostalgic figure. Like the anti-modernists described by Compagnon, he knew that history does not turn back; it was precisely for this reason that he urged us not to sacrifice, on the altar of innovation, that which makes a civilisation human: moderation, imagination, mystery and poetry. His legacy, on closer inspection, is not so much an aversion to progress as a refusal to confuse the means with the end, or quantity with quality of life. It is perhaps in this ability to critically question modernity that his most authentic contemporaneity still lies today.