Below is a translation of Marinetti's bullet-point list that condenses the main battle-cries of Futurism.
Today in class, you (yes, you) and your fellow group members are going to write and present your own manifesto for 2019. We're going to use Marinetti's framework, but twist it to our own desires (a goal that Marinetti would have approved of).
MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
1. We want to sing the love of
danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of
our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now
magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements
of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the
slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the
splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A
racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with
explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun
fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at
the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its
orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself
with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the
primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in
struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry
must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow
before man.
8. We are on the extreme
promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment
when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space
died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already
created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war —
the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture
of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums
and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian
cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great
crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic
surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals
and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway
stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the
thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the
diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon;
great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses
with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose
propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic
crowds.
_____________________________________________________________________
Manifesto of ____________________________
1. We want to:
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be:
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to:
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty:
5. We want to sing:
6. The poet must:
7. Beauty exists only in... :
8. We want to glorify:
9. We want to demolish:
10. We will sing of:
No comments:
Post a Comment