From the Sexual Question to the Praise of Prostitution. Modernism and Sexual Politics in Florence, 1908-1914

MAURO PASQUALINI

Journal of the History of Sexuality

University of Texas Press

Lugar: Austin, TX; Año: 2012 vol. 21 p. 409 - 442

1043-4070

Between 1908 and the out b r e a k of the First World War, a groupof young Italian intellectuals gathered around the modernist Florentinemagazines La voce (The voice, published between 1908 and 1916) andLacerba (published between 1913 and 1915) were catapulted to the centerof public attention because of their reflections on sexuality. The initiativeto discuss sexuality had its origin in La voce?s earliest issues, increased inintensity during February 1910 due to a special issue dedicated to the?sexual question,? and reached its height in a Convegno per la questionesessuale (Congress on the sexual question) organized by La voce in Florencein November 1910. This event garnered national attention: it attracted theinterest of heterogeneous cultural groups, well-known intellectuals andpoliticians attended, and the national press widely covered it. For threedays, hundreds of attendants from different intellectual, ideological, andregional backgrounds convened in Florence in order to discuss sex education,birth control, and the celibacy of Catholic priests.Despite the major impact of the congress, the sexual question graduallydisappeared from the pages of La voce. Issues of sexuality, however, soonreappeared from an alternative perspective in the journal Lacerba, whichwas founded by intellectuals and artists connected to La voce but moreinfluenced by the Milan-based and highly iconoclastic futurist avant-garde.Beginning in early 1913, Lacerba published a series of articles attackingconventional sexual morality and defending libertinism and homosexuality.The campaign achieved momentum with the publication of the article?Elogio della prostituzione? (Praise for prostitution) in May 1913 by ayoung and unknown collaborator named Italo Tavolato, who had recentlyarrived from Trieste. When Tavolato was prosecuted for obscenity forthis article, he made a sudden leap into celebrity, and both Tavolato andLacerba received much public attention. During the months preceding thetrial, indeed, Tavolato profited from this sudden interest in his work andpublished a booklet titled Contro la morale sessuale (Against sexual morality).Even though the scant twenty-three-page booklet disappointed thosewho had high intellectual expectations from him, its editorial success wassignificant, and Tavolato enjoyed a short period of fame before the FirstWorld War moved the interest of modernist intellectuals out of sexualityand into campaigning for Italy?s intervention in the war.This article analyzes these two major events involving discussions on sexuality in pre-war Italy. It analyzes the basic motivations underlying the organizers and authors of the events, along with their ideological, political, and gender implications.