Futurism by Lawrence Rainey & Christine Poggi & Laura Wittman

Author:Lawrence Rainey & Christine Poggi & Laura Wittman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2009-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

TACTILISM F. T. MARINETTI

16 January 1921

Period. And once again from the top.

Futurism, launched by us in 1909 in Milan, has given the world a hatred of Museums, Academies, and Sentimentalism; it has given us Art-action, the defense of youth against senility, the glorification of illogical and insane innovative genius, the artistic sensibility of machinism, speed, the Variety Theater, and the simultaneous interpenetrations of modern life, words-in-freedom, plastic dynamism, noise-tuners, and the synthetic theater. Today, Futurism is redoubling its creative efforts.

Last summer, at Antignano, where the Amerigo Vespucci Road (named after the discoverer of America) curves around as it follows the seacoast,1 I discovered Tactilism. Red banners were snapping over factories seized by workers.2

I was naked in the silky water that was being shredded by rocks, by foaming scissors knives razors, among beds of iodine-soaked algae. I was naked in a sea of flexible steel that breathed with virile, fecund breath. I was drinking from a chalice of the sea that was full to the brim with genius. The sun, with its long searing flames, was vulcanizing my body and welding the keel of my forehead, rich in sails.

A peasant girl, who smelt of salt and warm stone, smiled as she looked at my first tactile table. “You’re having fun making little boats!”

I answered her, “Yes, I’m launching something that will carry the human spirit to unknown shores.”

Here are my swimmer’s meditations.

The cruder and simpler sorts of men have left the Great War with no concern beyond that of acquiring greater material well-being.

A minority, composed of artists and thinkers, more responsive and refined, has instead shown symptoms of a deep and mysterious malaise that is probably a consequence of the great, tragic effort which the war imposed on humanity.

The symptoms of this malaise are a sad listlessness, an excessively feminine neurasthenia, hopeless pessimism, a feverish indecision afflicting instincts that have seemingly been lost, and an absolute lack of will.

The cruder and simpler majority is rushing toward a revolutionary conquest of the communist paradise and is launching its final assault against the problem of human felicity, armed with the conviction that it can be resolved by satisfying all material needs and desires.

The intellectual minority evinces ironic contempt for this troubled attempt. No longer taking pleasure in the bygone joys of Religion, Art, and Love, which used to be both their refuge and their privilege, they have brought a lawsuit against Life, which they also no longer know how to enjoy, and are abandoning themselves to rarefied pessimism, sexual inversion, and the artificial paradises of cocaine, opium, prostitutes, etc.

Both majority and minority denounce Progress, Civilization, the mechanical Forces of Speed of Comfort of Hygiene—in short, Futurism, seen as responsible for the misadventures of the past, present, and future.

Almost everyone is urging a return to the primitive, contemplative, slow, solitary life, far away from the abhorrent city.

As for us Futurists, we are courageously facing the agonizing drama of the postwar period, and we are in favor of all the revolutionary assault that the majority is attempting.

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