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March on Fiume
“To die is not enough.”
—
D’Annunzio
When pressed about his political allegiance,
Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) refused to commit himself. “My undertaking
may seem rash and alien to my art and style of life,” he wrote to his
publisher, “but… people must realise that I am capable of doing anything.”
After his election to Italy’s Chamber of Deputies he showed his contempt for
the parliamentary circus by rarely attending the sessions, and behaving
unpredictably when he did. Nicknamed “the deputy of beauty”, D’Annunzio
watched the parliamentary debates as an artist rather than a participant.
Originally elected to the Chamber as a ‘rightwing’ nationalist, he had no
trouble crossing the floor to vote — and sit with — members of the
‘extreme left’.
Plagued by creditors, D’Annunzio settled in
France in 1910 to concentrate on his writing and art. Since the 1890s he had
enjoyed mass appeal and on returning to Italy in 1915 he was greeted by some
one hundred thousand admirers. A strong supporter of Italy’s involvement in
the First World War, D’Annunzio, aged fifty-two, volunteered for active
service in the trenches. A daring aviator, he led bombing raids, losing an eye
in an aeroplane accident. In a final act of heroism, as the war drew to a
close, he flew as far as Vienna and there dropped propaganda pamphlets from
his aeroplane.
At the Peace Conference of 1919, Italy
claimed the port of Fiume on the grounds of self-determination. Little aroused
the indignation of so many Italians as much as the question of Fiume. The US,
Britain and France argued that Fiume be included in Yugoslavia and occupied
the port. A group of young army officers begged the war hero D’Annunzio to
seize Fiume for Italy. On September 12 he marched from Rome at the head of a
thousand black shirted legionaries; the Allied troops withdrew and
D’Annunzio, who announced his intention of remaining in the city until it
was annexed by Italy, assumed control of the port city as the ‘Commandante’.
Within a few weeks some seven thousand
legionaries and four hundred sailors had joined him. They saw in D’Annunzio
a heroic alternative to the sedentary parliamentarians they despised. For them
the Commandante’s Fiume became “the symbol of a moral, political and
social rejection of the entire established order.” The legionaries called
for the freedom of all oppressed people and viewed with interest the Soviet
experiment in Russia. They were open to an alliance with the syndicalists,
anarchists and Socialists. D’Annunzio established contacts with Sean
O’Kelly, the future President of Ireland, who then represented Sinn Fein in
Paris; with the Egyptian nationalists; and with the Soviet government. Lenin
referred to D’Annunzio as one of the only revolutionaries in Italy.
 In asserting the independence of
Fiume,
Gabriele D’ Annunzio denounced the big powers, especially British
imperialism:
“Fiume is as invincible as she has ever
been. True, we may all perish beneath her ruins, but from these same ruins the
spirit will rise again strong and vigorous. From the indomitable Sinn Fein of
Ireland to the Red Flag which unites cross and crescent in Egypt, rebellions
of the spirit, catching fire from our sparks, will burn afresh against the
devourers of raw flesh, and the oppressors of unarmed nations. The voracious
Empire which has possessed itself of Persia, Mesopotamia, New Arabia and a
greater part of Africa, and yet is never satisfied, can, if it so wishes, send
its aviator-murderers against us, just as in Egypt it was not ashamed to
massacre insurgents, who were armed with nothing more than sticks.”
Many of D’Annunzio’s emblems were
later taken over by Mussolini. The legionaries’ black shirts derived from
the tunics of first world war shock troops. Garibaldi, the father of modern
Italy, had made all Italians familiar with the idea of a coloured shirt as a
symbol of a liberating cause. Even the word Fascio, from which is
derived Fascism, meaning “group” or “association” (literally
“bundle”), had long been used by the Italian leftwing. In 1872 Garibaldi
had founded a Fascio Operaio, and in 1891 an extreme leftwing group was
set up known as Fascio dei Lavoratori.
For fifteen months the Commandante held
out against Allied protests and an Italian government blockade. Then on 24
December 1920, “the Christmas of Blood” as D’Annunzio called it, 20,000
troops moved against D’Annunzio’s 3,000.
While it lasted, the short lived Free
State of Fiume, under the direction of Commandante D’Annunzio, stood as a
heroic, passionate revolt against mediocrity. For in the words of D’Annunzio:
“Blessed are the youths who hunger and
thirst for glory, for they shall be satisfied.”
Gabriele
D’Annunzio
“Everything in life depends
upon the eternally new. Man must either renew himself or die.”
— D’Annunzio
Gabriele
D’Annunzio, Decadent poet, artist, musician, aesthete, womanizer, pioneer
daredevil aeronautist, black magician, genius and cad, emerged from World War
I as a hero with a small army at his beck and command: the “Arditi.” At a
loss for adventure, he decided to capture the city of Fiume from Yugoslavia
and give
it to Italy. After a necromantic ceremony with his mistress in a cemetery in
Venice he set out to conquer Fiume, and succeeded without any trouble to speak
of. But Italy turned down his generous offer; the Prime Minister called him a
fool.
In a huff, D’Annunzio decided to declare
independence and see how long he could get away with it. He and one of his
anarchist friends wrote the Constitution, which declared music to be the central principle of the State.
The Navy (made up of deserters and Milanese anarchist maritime unionists)
named themselves the Uscochi, after the long-vanished pirates who once
lived on local offshore islands and preyed on Venetian and Ottoman shipping.
The modern Uscochi succeeded in some wild coups: several rich Italian merchant
vessels suddenly gave the Republic a future: money in the coffers! Artists,
bohemians, adventurers, anarchists (D’Annunzio corresponded with Malatesta),
fugitives and Stateless refugees, homosexuals, military dandies (the uniform
was black with pirate skull-&-crossbones — later stolen by the SS), and
crank reformers of every stripe (including Buddhists, Theosophists and
Vedantists) began to show up at Fiume in droves. The party never stopped.
Every morning D’Annunzio read poetry and manifestos from his balcony; every
evening a concert, then fireworks. This made up the entire activity of the
government. Eighteen months later, when the wine and money had run out and the
Italian fleet finally showed up and lobbed a few shells at the
Municipal Palace, no one had the energy to resist.
D’Annunzio, like many Italian
anarchists,
later veered toward fascism — in fact, Mussolini (the ex-Syndicalist)
himself seduced the poet along that route. By the time D’Annunzio realized
his error it was too late: he was too old and sick. But Il Duce had him killed
anyway — pushed off a balcony — and turned him into a “martyr.” As for
Fiume, though it lacked the seriousness of the free Ukraine or
Barcelona, it can probably teach us more about certain aspects of our quest.
It was in some ways the last of the pirate utopias (or the only modern example)
— in other ways, perhaps, it was very nearly the first modern TAZ [Temporary
Autonomous Zone].
I believe that if we compare Fiume with the
Paris uprising of 1968 (also the Italian urban insurrections of the early
seventies), as well as with the American countercultural communes and their
anarcho-New Left influences, we should notice certain similarities, such as:
— the importance of aesthetic theory (cf. the Situationists) — also, what
might be called “pirate economics,” living high off the surplus of social
overproduction — even the popularity of colorful military uniforms — and
the concept of music
as revolutionary social change — and finally their shared air of
impermanence, of being ready to move on, shape-shift, re-locate to other
universities, mountaintops, ghettos, factories, safe houses, abandoned farms
— or even other planes of reality. No one was trying to impose yet another
Revolutionary Dictatorship, either at Fiume, Paris, or Millbrook. Either the
world would change, or it wouldn’t. Meanwhile keep on the move and live
intensely.
Excerpted from Hakim Bey’s T.A.Z.
The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism
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