The aim of this paper is to highlight parallels between two recent interpretations regarding the rhetorical figure of personification and, more broadly, the processes of animating inanimate objects: one interpretation derives from the field of studies of literary futurism, while the other derives from the study of aesthetics and hinges upon the aesthetic category of cuteness and the art associated with it. Following a theoretical introduction of the two interpretations, critical, iconographic, and historical-stylistic evidence will be presented to demonstrate a degree of interdependence between their artistic aims from a formal and historical point of view.

In his afterword to the recent edition of Marinetti's novel Venezianella e Studentaccio, Patrizio Ceccagnoli argues that the use of the rhetorical figure of personification in the novel invokes the concept of commodity fetishism – in the sense of the term in which Marx employed it – and describes the recurring animation of inanimate objects in Marinetti’s writing as a fetishistic act. ‘However, in giving to matter a de facto human psychology, Marinetti simply ascribes to the substitute (the “life of matter, the non-human”) various aspects of what has been replaced (the “literary I”, the human)’ (Ceccagnoli 2013: 146). The principle characteristic of this interpretation is immediately apparent: the animation of objects is not seen simply as a process of vivification (of, for example, the monuments of Venice), but also as a process of mortification of those negative contents the city represents – the past.