The New York herald., 1922-10-22

IT makes the wise remark that We
seem to know the past better than
the present, because no movement becomes
intelligible till we see where it is going.
ing italian Futurists (and ex-Futurists); /;
and we have seen them going more and
more to the cabarets.
The cabaret" as we use the term here.
is, we believe. fairly new invention in
Italy. 1t is not to be confused with the
cafe" In a very real sense the history
of Italian literature and art could be writ
ten around cafes. those 'ritrovi"-"gather-
ing places"-where, since the discovery OF
coffee in the seventeenth century men OF
genius with plenty of time on their hands
have come together to enjoy the clash of
mind on mind. Before the eighteenth CEN
tury. when the first cafe became famous.
the meeting place of Bohemia was the
fencing club. the artists studio the rich
mans playhouse-the casino" and the
country estate; in the earlier Renaissance
Il was the aristocratic salon and the feudal
castle. OF course. since the days of Adam
and the Anderthal man the inn. with good
meat and good wine. never lost popular
ity.) One thinks of the famous Cafe" of
Milan, where a hundred and fifty years
ago the first writer's of the modern Italian
nation came to self-consciousness and
later, in the "Semiserious Letters OF Griso-
tomo." founded patriotic romanticism; of
aft in, xyhfo fob
q full century Of italian struggle discussed
over it's coffee cups-its doors never closed
till the Austrian airplanes began to come
I'm 1915; Of the Cafe del Greco of the sos
IN Rome. where D'Annunzio's dazzling
rrilliancy first burst upon an astonished
company of idlers: of the Cafe del Buon
Gusto where Carducci. on his trips to the
Eternal City. used to foregather with we
forget what unknown and illustrious
philologists OF the university. And we still
hear returning tourists talking of the Cafe
Aragno. which. however. Italian intel
lectuals" now shun to escape the plague
of locusts that has descended upon it from
the nearby Parliament, Italy. meantime.
Is one graveyard of old cafes whose glory
has departed to make way for the glory
of new cafes. (Which impels US to observe
that If the artists boycott our own Green
wich village Bohemia will rise again
somewhere else: for the number of those
who are anxious to "epdter'' the bourgeois
Is exceeded only by the number of
bourgeois anxious to be "epateed.")
The new Italian cabaret is not the old
italian cafe; nor is it the cabaret of Paris
1t is something between the two. most sug-
gestively described perhaps by the name
which in the case Of Bragaglias House OF
Art" it has come actually to affect, "the
experimental theater."
The cabaret" proper Cor improper) does
not find in Italy an environment wholly
congenial to luxuriant growth. The cab
aret, for its sturdiest fiorescence. requires
the presence in large numbers in the sol
OF that nitrogenous microbe which the
Subtcdy Sun refers to as the transient
The transient" is a man momentaTily out
of his native habitat and cut loose from
tradition (from Mrs. Transient. in other
words). In his hands money becomes dis
sociated from the laborious process by
which IT was earned. 1t flows easily. TC
develop to full maturity the transient need:
a opolis-Paris. London. New York
Vienna Now. Italy has no metropolis ir
the strict sense of the term. The centers
OF population are. roughly. OF equal i'm
portanee. The Italian cabaret must ac
eOrdingly depend in large part upon loea
patronage. and it remains under the re-