The Poetry and Selected Prose of Camillo Sbarbaro (PDF)

Introduction (p. 1)

The historical background

When Sbarbaro first appeared on the literary scene, in the first decades of the 20th century, the literature of the Italian avantgarde was closely related to the social and political events that shaped European history from the middle of the 19th century to that mythical year of 1914.

However the political, social and intellectual crisis experienced at the end of the 19th century in the rest of Europe failed to bring in Italy the kind of transformation of the political and social structures that had been experienced elsewhere.

While many movements paralleled similar events in France and other countries (for example the formation of the Socialist Party in 1892, the fasci dei lavoratori of 1893 in Sicily, the labor movements in Milan and Turin and other major Italian cities, etc.), the overall intellectual and social direction of Italy remained somewhat repressive and backward.

The State with its aristocratic and wealthy interests continued to oppose any populist movement that would grant even the smallest ackowledgement of the rights of workers or that would lead to universal electoral suffrage.

The State countered any movement with additional doses of taxation, growing bureaucratization of its own structures, the expansion of police powers and an ill-timed imperialistic adventurism in Africa. The ruling class, evermore defensive in the presence of such transformations, continued to promulgate a government reserved for the elected officials in an attempt to silence the masses.

All this represented a rather strong reaction to the hopes that had been expressed by "positivism," the major European current of thought which trusted in the liberating power of science and fostered ideals of progress. This movement had been responsible for the progressive and liberal attitudes of the ruling classes.

With the decline of those ideals, the hopes and the attitudes of

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