TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

y Piero della Francesca. Pound was not unique in his praise. The nineteenth-century
historian Jacob Burckhardt gave Sigismondo an exemplary status by calling him a
leading figure in the furtherance of humanism. In contrast, Nietzsche emphasized
Malatesta‘s rebellious side and located in him the advent of modern individualism, at war
both with authority and with a world hostile to beauty.
Rainey takes Nietzsche‘s side and locates in Pound‘s worship of Malatesta all that
gives him his eventual excuse to favour rash acts if they could be shown to serve his art.
As damning evidence of Pound‘s worship of wilful individualism we are given the fact
that he wished to meet Antonio Beltramelli, a journalist from Romagna, who had
celebrated Sigismondo in his newspaper articles ―The Chants of Faunus‖ (1908) and ―A
Temple of Love‖ (1912). These articles narrate Sigismondo‘s love for Isotta degli Atti,
his mistress and third wife. Beltramelli‘s articles popularized the idea that the ‗I/S‘
initialling that accentuates the church of San Francesco was a secret code that re-
inscribed the church as a temple to Malatesta‘s love for Isotta and, as such, an insolent
monument to his disregard for its sacredness. The ―S‖ and the ―I,‖ everywhere appointed
in the church, were thought to represent these lovers‘ first names. Beltramelli‘s eventual
publication of Mussolini‘s ―The New Man‖ in 1922 calls the dictator a modern Malatesta,
making Rainey‘s claim that Malatesta organized fascistic impulses in his early twentieth-
century enthusiasts easy to believe.
As if Pound‘s desire to meet Beltramelli in 1922 weren‘t enough evidence of his
favouring a Nietzschean interpretation of Malatesta, his behaviour on March 12, 1923
apparently drives home all that was wrong with his enthusiasm for this ruthless strong-
man. Attempting to see the manuscripts of Gaspare Broglio at the Biblioteca Gambalunga
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