/lit/ - Literature

>Hail! great incendiary poets, you Futurist friends! . . . Hail! Paolo Buzzi, Federico
de Maria, Enrico Cavacchioli, Corrado Govoni, Libero Altomare!1 Let’s flee the city
of Paralysis, devastate Gout, and lay the great military Railroad along the flanks of
Gorisankar,2 summit of the world!
>We left the city with firm and nimble strides, as if dancing in our desire to find
everywhere obstacles to overcome. Around us, and within our hearts, the immense
intoxication of the old European sun as it swayed between wine-colored clouds . . .
That sun struck us in the face with its great torch of flaming purple, then flared
out, vomiting itself into the infinite.
>Whirlwinds of aggressive dust; blinding mixture of sulfur, potash, and silicates
through the windows of the Ideal! . . . Fusion of a new solar orb that soon we shall
see shining!
>“Cowards,” I cried, turning toward the inhabitants of Paralysis who were heaped
below us, an enormous mass of angry howitzers awaiting our future cannons.
>“Cowards! Cowards! Why all this howling like cats skinned alive? Are you afraid
that we’ll set fire to your hovels?—Not yet! . . . After all, we’ll need something to
keep warm with next winter! . . . For the moment we are content with blowing up
all traditions, like rotten bridges! . . . War? Very well, yes: war is our only hope, our
only reason for living, our only desire! . . . Yes, war! Against all of you who are dying
too slowly, and against all the dead who are clogging the streets! . . .

Why aren't you reading Marinetti yet, /lit/?

We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.

Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry.

Up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggresive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer’s stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.

We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit.

The poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor, and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.

Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce and prostrate them before man.

We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!... Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.

We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.

We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.

We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.