I wrote:
--- On Wed, 7/23/08, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
(I'm thinking here
> especially of Futurism in Russia and Italy.)
>
To see what I'm talking about, compare the following three documents, one written by a proto-Fascist, one written by a bunch of Russian socialists, and one written by an idiosyncratic French Communist. Notice any similarities? ;)
The Futurist Manifesto F. T. Marinetti, 1909
MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt. 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. 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. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements. 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. 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. 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. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice. 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.
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html
A Slap in the Face of Public Taste David Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, Vladmir Mayakovsky, Victor Khlebnikov
To the readers of our New First Unexpected. We alone was the face of our Time. Through us the horn of time blows in the art of the world.
The past is too tight. The Academy and Pushkin are less intelligible than hieroglyphics.
Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc. overboard from the Ship of Modernity.
He who does not forget his first love will not recognize his last.
Who, trustingly, would turn his last love toward Balmont’s perfumed lechery? Is this the reflection of today’s virile soul?
Who, faint-heartedly, would fear tearing from warrior Bryusov’s black tuxedo the paper armor-plate? Or does the dawn of unknown beauties shine from it?
Wash your hands which have touched the filthy slime of the books written by the countless Leonid Andreyevs.
All those Maxim Gorkys, Krupins, Bloks, Sologubs, Remizovs, Averchenkos, Chornys, Kuzmins, Bunins, etc. need only a dacha on the river. Such is the reward fate gives tailors.
>From the heights of skyscrapers we gaze at their insignificance!...
We order that the poets’ rights be revered:
To enlarge the scope of the poet’s vocabulary with arbitrary and derivative words (Word-novelty). To feel an insurmountable hatred for the language existing before their time. To push with horror off their proud brow the Wreath of cheap fame that You have made from bathhouse switches. To stand on the rock of the word “we” amidst the sea of boos and outrage. And if for the time being the filthy stigmas of your “common sense” and “good taste” are still present in our lines, these same lines for the first time already glimmer with the Summer Lightning of the New Coming Beauty of the Self-sufficient (self-centered) Word.
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/slap.html
A SURREALIST MANIFESTO The Surrealist Manifesto was written in 1924 by Andre Breton and then signed by such artists as Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud, Jacques Baron, Joe Bousquet, J.-A. Boiffard, Jean Carrive, Rene Crevel, Robert Desnos, Paul Elaurd, Max Ernst, and Breton himself. Released to the public on January 27th 1925.
With regard to a false interpretation of our enterprise, stupidly circulated among the public, we declare as follows to the entire braying literary, dramatic, philosophical, exegetical and even theological body of contemporary criticism: 1. We have nothing to do with literature; but we are quite capable, when necessary, of making use of it like anyone else, 2. Surrealism is not a new means or expression, or an easier one, nor even a metaphysic of poetry. It is a means of total liberation of the mind and of all that resembles it. 3. We are determined to make a Revolution. 4. We have joined the word surrealism to the word revolution solely to show the disinterested, detached, and even entirely desperate character of this revolution. 5. We make no claim to change the mores of mankind, but we intend to show the fragility of thought, and on what shifting foundations, what caverns we have built our trembling houses. 6. We hurl this formal warning to Society; Beware of your deviations and faux-pas, we shall not miss a single one. 7. At each turn of its thought, Society will find us waiting. 8. We are specialists in Revolt. There is no means of action which we are not capable, when necessary, of employing. 9. We say in particular to the Western world: surrealism exists. And what is this new ism that is fastened to us? Surrealism is not a poetic form. It is a cry of the mind turning back on itself, and it is determined to break apart its fetters, even if it must be by material hammers!
Bureaus de Recherches Surrealistes, 15, Rue de Grenelle
http://www.seaboarcreations.com/sindex/manifestbreton.htm