Multiplied Man

The title of this chapter comes from Marinetti’s uomo moltiplicato, a rallying cry for Italian Futurism. The artifice of optimism is here arrayed in a carnival procession or roll call of name changes, names in flux in the sprawl of pseudonyms endemic in modernism. The supreme instance of this phenomenon is Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa with his host of heteronyms, alternate identities with their own unique practices. The case of Pessoa illustrates and affirms Nietzsche’s hypothesis of the subject as multiple, appraised by William Butler Yeats as “the emotion of multitude.” The pseudonyms and heteronyms populate the modern arts as if “making it new” commenced with the proper name.