Rousseau, Picasso, and Braque are marvelous examples of loving intelligence and effective evocation. To the same period belongs his generous and successful campaign on behalf of the great Italian sculptor, Medardo Rosso, which culminated in 1911 in the Florentine Exposition of the works of Rosso and of the French impressionists.
At the same time his literary activity was increasing. His book on Rimbaud does not content the latest connoisseurs, though it was Soffici who made known to them the existence of the prodigious creator of the Illuminations; but it is none the less one of the best intellectual biographies of an exceptional figure, and it served to reveal the name, the work, and the greatness of the first pure lyrist of France and of Europe.
In Lemmonio Boreo Soffici began a sort of satirical romance of adventure in which a contemporary and indigenous Don Quixote sets out, accompanied by force (in the person of Zaccagna) and astuteness (in the person of Spillo), to chastise the rabble and to speak his mind to fools. But the critics did not like the beginning of the work; and the moralists failed to see the beauty of certain pages, and spun theories as to a thesis which did not exist. Soffici was discouraged, and poor Lemmonio’s career was cut short at the end of the first volume.
This partial defeat did not lead Soffici to
