The writings of Bruno Filippi offer something rare in anarchist writing-truly beautiful literature. I hope this comes across in my translations-where it does not, the fault is all mine. Filippi entered upon his brief life of revolt at he age of 15, in the midst of World War I, involving himself in anarchist anti-militarist activity. Several of his brief works reflect the dehumanizing effects of military life and participation in a slaughter that was qualitatively different from any war up to that time in the sheer capacity for destruction. One could not rightly speak of savagery" in relation, to this slaughter since its destructive capacity was the precise outcome of the technological progress of civilization. And at this time, some began to seriously question progress and civilization themselves. Among them were anarchists like Bruno Filippi and Renzo Novatore. In this light of this horrendous historical cataclysm, it should come as no surprise that Filippi's writing is usually very dark and tinged with cynicism.

His essays, stories and prose poems show no mercy for either domination or subservience in any form, and he was as harsh in his assessment of the slaves who resigned themselves to their slavery as to the masters who exploited and oppressed them. He could be faulted, like- Renzo Novatore, for his lack of class analysis. But when watching the masses of the poor and working people go out without protest to slaughter each other at the orders of their masters, it must have been difficult for the few who did refuse this slaughter not to be disgusted by such sheep­-like behavior. In 1919, when their was an uprising in Italy, Filippi was out there fighting with the insurgent exploited, clear about who was the enemy.

His writing is bound to offend some who can only read through the lens of political correctness. That is their problem. All forms of puritanical morality impoverish existence.

Though his writing is dark and often cynical, in the midst of his cynicism and contempt there is also humor, joy and love of life. His hatred for the world as it is clearly sprang from the love of life and the dream of a world free of all domination.




From 'The Free Art of a Free Spirit'

Row after row of those who are more morally than physically chronic consumptives, pinheads, cripples, hunchbacks, blind; horrible faces sculpted by vice, by syphilis, by alcohol.

Whose toothless, yellow, slobbering mouths vomited against my horrible insults.

All the hatred that gurgles in your throat, forming two rivulets of slobber that run down from the corners of your mouth, does not move me from my indifference.

Still you shake your fist, which was trained to toss dung. And you women insult me as well, you in whose womb human sorrow perpetuates itself. You are all vile, vile! Despicable beings, worthy of the whip! Crawling reptiles in search of one filthy crust of bread, dogs who lick the hand of anyone who beats you! Is it for you, really for you, that I must rise up in revolt?

For you, for your children and your mothers?

Carcasses rotting in resignation, worm-eaten mummies of a decadent society, you deceive yourselves. I wouldn't give the tiniest drop for your cause, nor even waste a cigarette on you.

Go on with your descent into the mud. While you bring yourselves down, I will climb. I will rejoice in seeing the degeneration that makes its way inside you. I rejoice. I rejoice.

Day after day, your forehead recedes, your mouth becomes more sinister. Day after day, the stigmata of putrefaction are noticed under your yellowing skin.

And I laugh, I laugh!

What a joy to be present at the collapse of a world, to see blood, corpses, rot everywhere!

Meanwhile the bourgeoisie and the people deceive each other and slaughter each other.

I am here, amused by all this bustling about.

Here a Kaiser, there a Wilson and everywhere people who moan and don't rise up.

Into the mud, reptile!

I do not want to unite with the multitude of those who flatter the proletariat, excusing them, praising them, adorning them with wreathes. No, oh distinguished windbags, your verve disguises nothing. The "people" is always there, idiotic, cowardly, resigned. And I, who consider myself superior, desire to be so, and both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat will pay for my superiority. You languish in hunger and hardships, you vegetate, bestially fertilizing wombs with a swarm of ragged, filthy, scrofulous, stunted brats.

Force! You raise your cowardly lament in chorus! You say that you are hungry. You stretch out your hand in front of the shop window full of jewels. Do it, take it! You complain to each other about the war when you yourselves Are its authors, and it continues because you put up with it! But. I flee from your putridity that would sully me. Proudly alone, 'I break the chains that link me to you and separate myself from the pack of mangy dogs, submissive to the shepherd. I will wander the world alone carrying my hatred and scorn everywhere. Alone in struggle. A one in victory and in defeat. My ideas will be the poison that must end up intoxicating you and you tremble before me as before the King, the supreme!...

And meanwhile, I laugh at your grotesque and bloody throng, I laugh so much that I no longer see anyone, and it seems to me that humanity is an immense gangrenous sore that perpetually disgorges thick putrescent pus. And this sore is moved, shaken, covered with scabs that later disappear in order to make way for another disgorging of putrescent matter.

And I laugh and laugh!...

Most ancient roots of a sentimentalism that has already ended,

why do you persist in your moldy ideas? Don't you here the thundering life that pursues and teaches?

Absorbed up to now in a placid dream of peace, in a shining future, you fought this way, with your eyes lost in your illusions. But now we pose a problem, and you must have the courage to confront it and discuss it.

To you we pose the problem: to be or not to be. Up to now, your dream was altruism, sacrifice for humanity, for the future. And so you sacrificed your entire being in this inversion. Why should you care about the future? Why should you care about the progress of the people? Since you, who call yourselves anarchists, are sure to engage in a battle that is already lost for you before it has even started, since you will certainly not see the society of which you dream, and even if the people rebel, social conditions would not change for you and your rebellion would have to continue.

So what's the use of going down among a mass that cannot comprehend you since its conditions are such as to render you unintelligible to them? If you are rebel geniuses as you claim, you should not replace Christian self-denial and patriotic servitude with the altruism of the anarchist who sacrifices herself for a future he will not see and this for people who do not comprehend you. You must recognize that, being born into a society that is harmful to us, we rebels are in reality the best slaves. Being slaves of evolution, by means of our sacrifice, we allow humanity to take a tiny step. If only that were adequate, but since progress never ends and is, therefore, useless, since once society has attained the social form for which we fought it will not stop, but will need to go on toward a goal that we can, tot imagine at all today, we must admit that all of our bustling about is utterly without purpose. So we observe that the strongest and best energies of every epoch are exploited by this immense leech that is humanity.

Socrates, Christ, Bruno and a vast multitude of great thinkers have been the victims of this rising movement, which is harmful for anyone who submits to it. For it is natural that the slaves in Rome, being born in that era, were content with their condition just as wage-slaves are today.

Relative contentment, let's be clear about it, formed of resignation, cowardice, ignorance, etc., etc. Defects that the mass will always have in greater or lesser degrees because collectivities are always inferior to individuals.

The people are conservative: they are satisfied with the society they find. The minority are innovators instead and therefore they rebel. The mass restrains revolutionary action with its brute weight and submits to it.

It grows accustomed to the new state of things. It rots there until the minority rebels once again.

And do I have to suffer through this entire balancing act? I, who have the strength and awareness to be my own motive force, will not be the little cog that is overwhelmed, annihilated by the heavy social gears.

Rebel, because today society oppresses me and tries to prevent the free expression of my being, I use every weapon to fight it.

Rebel against the mass that is also my enemy with its superstitions, morals, degradations, etc. I fight against the mass as well. In struggle only for MY redemption, for MY freedom, for MY present.

I don't give a damn for all the rest.

The priest triumphs, alcohol kills, the government slaughters; it means nothing to me because it doesn't touch me.

I, I defend only myself from attacks.

And if I should fall in this unequal struggle, certainly not alone [* Alas, you did fall alone! (Italian editor's note)] , I will have the sublime satisfaction of having risen up against a world and having won intellectually if not materially.

Scholars, scientists, poets, novelists, painters, this is why your genius is worthless in front of me. You are a reflection of life, I am its essence. And you certainly, feel atrocious pain in your hearts at seeing rhetorical castles collapse, and in spite of it all you continue to support them out of hatred for anything new. And, after all, you do well. You are born to crawl, I fly. For you the mud, for me the peaks. For you cowardly annihilation, for me the sublimation of being. And surely if life is for the strongest, I will have it. I will take it by force and by force I will steal well­-being and enjoyment.

And you, parodies of human beings, continue on your march through darkness. The light shines on my path. You are afraid to be: this is the truth. The true human being frightens you. In spite of your rhetorical bluster, reality frightens. You dream, you dream. I live. You are not; I am.

I have solved the problem. You howl at me from behind.

"I would like to lie down on a soft, fragrant bed of roses... " "Watch out for the thorns" they cry out to me. "And what do they matter to me? Since thorns are not lacking in life, I prefer those of the roses that give joy with the pain."

And fine. You who are reading this can say that my prose is crazy, abnormal, as you have called my actions crazy and abnormal. But your judgment doesn't interest me at all nor do I solicit it.




From 'Il me Faut Vivre ma Vie
[* "It is necessary that I live my life"-Jules Bonnot, anarchist bank robber]

I don't believe in the right. Life, which is all a manifestation of incoherent forces, unknown and unknowable, rejects the human artificiality of the right. Right was born when life was taken away from us. Indeed, originally, humanity had no right. It lived and that was everything. Today, instead, there are thousands of rights; one could accurately say that everything which we have lost we call right.

I know that I live and that I desire to live.

It is most difficult to put this desire into action. I am surrounded by a humanity that wants what everyone else wants. My isolated affirmation is a most serious crime.

Laws and morals, in competition, intimidate and persuade me.

The “blonde rabbi” [I.e., Christ or christian values.-translator] has triumphed.

One prays, one implores, one curses, but one does not dare. Cowardice, caressed by christianity, creates morality, and this justifies baseness and begets renunciation.

But this desire to live, this will, only desires to develop freely. The christian takes a good look around to see if anyone is watching him and, trembling, commits a sin. Desire: sin; love: sin. This is the inversion.

"Harlot, everybody's female, you have no shame in the world. You are frank and sincere. You offer yourself to anyone who pays, never giving or taking illusions.

"Society, on the other hand, modest and clean in appearance, but horribly infected with gangrene throughout its body, makes me vomit, fills me with horror and loathing, kills me."

I envy the savages. And I will cry to them in a loud voice: "Save yourselves, civilization is coming."

Of course: our dear civilization of which we are so proud. We have abandoned the free and happy life of the forests for this horrendous moral and material slavery. And we are maniacs, neurasthenics, suicides.

Why should 1 care that civilization has given humanity wings to fly so that it can bomb cities, why should I care if I know every star in the sky or every river on earth?

In the past, it is true, there were no legal codes, and it would seem that justice was done summarily.

Barbarous times! Today, instead, people are killed in the electric chair unless the philanthropy of Beccaria [18th century aristocrat whose work 'On Crimes and Punishments (1764)' inspired reform in the Italian penal system.-translator] only torments them in the penitentiary for the rest of their lives.

But I leave you to your knowledge and your legal codes; I leave you to your submarines and bombs. Still you laugh at my beautiful freedom, my ignorance, my vigor. Yesterday the sky was beautiful to look at; the eyes of the unknowing gazed at it.

Today, the starry vault is a leaden veil that we vainly endeavor to pass through; today it is no longer unknown, it is distrusted.

All these philosophers, all these scientists, what are they doing?

What further crimes are they plotting against humanity? I don't give a damn for their progress; I want to live and enjoy.

"Monkey of the Borneo jungle, Darwin has slandered you!"

Meanwhile, my whole being cries out to me: "I want to live!"

I rip the thorns of christian renunciation from my brow and drink in the perfume of the roses.

I am well now. I am delighted to live.

The sirens blare and the blissful crowd goes to the slaughterhouse.

And you as well, oh rebel, you climb your Calvary, you too are

rotten!

How I envy the great Bonnot!

"Il me faut vivre ma vie!"

It's useless, I am rotten. Society has vanquished me. And hatred. I furiously hate the brutal humanity that has killed me, that has transformed into a human hide.

I wish that I could change myself into a wolf so I could sink my teeth into the belly of society in an orgy of destruction.