Descensus ad Inferos: Man and Machine in the Postwar Industrial Landscape of Vittorini’s Politecnico

Abstract

The end of World War II and the Liberation of Italy from the Nazi troops coincides with the emergence of a new role for intellectuals who try to juxtapose the physical liberation of the Italian peninsula with a cultural liberation. This is one of the reasons that led to the creation and circulation of many new journals that contributed to debates regarding contemporary society and the changes triggered by the advent of the “second industrial revolution”, the so-called “Italian Miracle”. One such journal, "Il Politecnico" (1945-1947) considers these changes by proposing an active role for the intellectual who must “protect” rather than “console” the human subject, as Elio Vittorini, the director of the periodical, states in the inaugural issue. This paper focuses on an excerpt from Franco Fortini’s contribution to the final issue of the journal, his “Diary of a Young Intellectual Bourgeois”, in which he describes his experience visiting a factory in 1947. Fortini, one of the most prolific and original authors of Il Politecnico, contributed essays, translations, and poems, always situating himself somewhere between literature and politics. In this piece, he provides a series of reflections on the new industrial landscape. My analysis closely examines Fortini’s encounter with a “monstrosity” at the “heart of the factory”: a sandblaster who is “condemned” to wear a “protective suit”, which is incapable of protecting the worker from losing his humanity day by day. The aim of this paper is to reveal, through the account of a rare factory visit of the ’40s, the problematic relationship between Human and Machine and the risks posed to the former by the new Italian industrialism.