Essay on Sant'Elia and the Futurist Vision
Sant’Elia and the Futurist Vision
Sant’Elia was born in Como, Lombardy, April 30, 1988 as the son of a barber Luigi Sant’Elia and of mother, Cristina Sant’Elia of whom little has been documented. As well, he had one younger brother, Guido and one older sister, Giuseppina both of which outlived their middle brother who, in 1915, would meet an untimely death in the Battle of the Isonzo during World War I.
At the time of Sant’Elia’s birth, the Regno D’Italia was still in its adolescence. The scars that continue to be visible today and reflect the countries history of vacillating borders and foreign rule, along with its inability to compete with the demands of the Industrial Revolution, fueled the explosively expressionistic Futurist Movement.
The most telling mark of Italy’s fractured past is ‘la questione della lingua’ (the question of the language). Although the Tuscan dialect was chosen to be the official language of Unified Italy, the mottled linguistic coloring of Italy could not be easily erased. As a result of the country’s lack of linguistic uniformity, it suffers to this day from a greatly splintered national identity. Many movies, such as those of the Neorealist genre, include subtitles written in Italian proper, because the regional dialects spoken by their actors are virtually incomprehensible to Italians from other locales. In the province of Bolzano the majority of the population speaks German, in the Aosta Valley region a form French Provincial is spoken, the south is heavily influenced by the Spanish language, and in the region of Friuli-Venezia, Friulano has existed in literature sine the 13th century and sustained in modern times by those such as Pier Paolo Passolini who are invested in its dissemination and recognize its merit as a historical treasure, a cultural pride, and an identity determinant.
Another remnant of Italy’s divided past is the regional inequality that exists between the commercial, class, and
Sant’Elia was born in Como, Lombardy, April 30, 1988 as the son of a barber Luigi Sant’Elia and of mother, Cristina Sant’Elia of whom little has been documented. As well, he had one younger brother, Guido and one older sister, Giuseppina both of which outlived their middle brother who, in 1915, would meet an untimely death in the Battle of the Isonzo during World War I.
At the time of Sant’Elia’s birth, the Regno D’Italia was still in its adolescence. The scars that continue to be visible today and reflect the countries history of vacillating borders and foreign rule, along with its inability to compete with the demands of the Industrial Revolution, fueled the explosively expressionistic Futurist Movement.
The most telling mark of Italy’s fractured past is ‘la questione della lingua’ (the question of the language). Although the Tuscan dialect was chosen to be the official language of Unified Italy, the mottled linguistic coloring of Italy could not be easily erased. As a result of the country’s lack of linguistic uniformity, it suffers to this day from a greatly splintered national identity. Many movies, such as those of the Neorealist genre, include subtitles written in Italian proper, because the regional dialects spoken by their actors are virtually incomprehensible to Italians from other locales. In the province of Bolzano the majority of the population speaks German, in the Aosta Valley region a form French Provincial is spoken, the south is heavily influenced by the Spanish language, and in the region of Friuli-Venezia, Friulano has existed in literature sine the 13th century and sustained in modern times by those such as Pier Paolo Passolini who are invested in its dissemination and recognize its merit as a historical treasure, a cultural pride, and an identity determinant.
Another remnant of Italy’s divided past is the regional inequality that exists between the commercial, class, and
Cited: [1] Di Scala, Spencer M. (third edition). (2005). Italy From Revolution to Republic, 1700 to the Present. Colorodo: Westview Press. [2] Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso Emilio, (1909) Le Figaro. La Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo. From, http://users.dickinson.edu/~rhyne/232/Eight/Marinetti.html [3] Meyer, Esther da Costa (1995). The Work of Antonio Sant’Elia. Yale Universtiy Press/New Haven & London.