The Modernist period is replete with visions of a new aesethetics, a
new idea of what art and language ought to represent in a world drastically
different from any that came before. The basic argument of these theories
center around an attempt to reconsider, redefine, and recreate the role
of art in an world where everything (from humanity's origin to women's roles
in society) has been called into question. Most theories make reference
to the many cultural, scientific, and psychological developments which occured
during this period, including the work of Einstein,
Darwin, Freud,
and Edison. Many posit a correlation between the social changes brought
about by the heightened awareness of both physical and internal space. Many
even offer strategies through which art and language might be rethought
in order to better reflect modern life. Only Futurism, however, aligned
these theoretical frameworks with an enthusiasm for and fascination with
the machines of everyday life. As Marinetti outlines in "Technical
Manifesto of Futurist Literature":
Sitting on the gas tank of an airplane, my stomach warmed by the pilot's
head, I sensed the ridiculous inanity of the old syntax inherited from Homer.
A pressing need to liberate words, to drag them out of their prison in the
Latin period! Like all imbeciles, this period naturally has a canny head,
a stomach, two legs, and two flat feet, but it will never have two wings.
Just enough to walk, to take a short run and then stop short, panting! (M
92)
The language of Homer cannot fly; an airplane can. To create a language
that can fly, we must destroy Homer, "liberate words,"
and start again. This, briefly, is Marinetti's aesthetic theory. It is grounded
in a "lyric obsession with matter" (M 95), which replaces
"the ego of the writer, whose function now would be to shape the nets
of analogy that would capture elusive matter in the mysterious sea of phenomena."29
Instead of focusing upon subjective memories of the past, Marinetti offers
a Bergsonian vision of the time, a chain of sensations which produce a fragmented
and heterogenous notion of subjectivity. By destroying the pre-existing
conception of language, Marinetti attempts to redefine communication through
a dynamic ontology in which the past and present are continually becoming
the future. As he remarks in "Destruction of Syntax -- Imagination
Without Strings -- Words-in-Freedom":
Now suppose that a friend of yours ... finds himself in a zone of
intense life (revolution, war, shipwreck, earthquake, and so on) and starts
right away to tell you his impressions. Do you know what this lyric, excited
friend of yours will instinctively do?
He will begin by brutally destroying the syntax of his speech. He wastes
no time in building sentences. Puncuation and the right adjectives will
mean nothing to him. He will despise subtleties and nuances of language.
Breathlessly he will assault your nerves with visual, auditory, olfactory
sensations, just as they come to him. The rush of steam-emotion will burst
the sentence's steampipe, the valves of punctuation, and the adjectival
clamp. Fistfuls of essential words in on conventional order. Sole preoccupation
of the narrator, to render every vibration of his being. (F 98)
Language forces the flow of memories and sensations to adhere to particular
rules of syntax. The emotions generated from an event are, subsequently,
destroyed by sentences, puncuation, and proper narrative conventions. Futurism's
theory of language, on the other hand, attempts to destroy narrativity and
linearity, to allow words to explode into one another, thereby enabling
the energy and excitement of their content (that is, "life") to
appear without hindrance. Unlike the "discourse network of 1800,"
which rigidly separates words from noise, Futurism prioritizes the "half
word" or "gesture," thereby aligning signification not with
a transcendental "Truth" but with the physical body, which "becomes
a medium, a process, and enters into a system of energetic exchange that
will necessarily destroy it as an autonomous entity."30
Just as Bergson compares the workings of the human brain to a telephone
exchange, so too does Marinetti insist upon reading the human body as an
interface, a point of exchange that cannot function without a "double,"
or analogous concept; consequently, it is only in the encounter between
bodies that the "power" of Futurist language can fully emerge.
To this end, Marinetti's "Technical Manifesto" proposes the elimination
of all "colorful" or nonessential words such as adjectives, adverbs,
and conjunctions, in order to "free nouns from the domination of the
writer's ego."31 Puncuation, too, is
annulled because it slows down discourse; in its place Marinetti suggests
mathmatical signs (+ - x =) and musical symbols, which indicate direction
or intent, but do not interrupt the flow of language. Likewise, the infinitive
verb must be used exclusively, "because they adapt themselves elastically
to nouns and don't subordinate them to the writer's I that observes
or imagines" (M 92). Perhaps most significantly, Marinetti insists
upon "constant, audacious use of onomatopoeia," which, because
it "reproduces noise, is necessarily one of the most dynamic elements
of poetry" (M 109). Although onomatopoeia is an ancient poetic
technique, Luigi Russolo notes that "for centuries, poets did not know
how to make use of this very effective source of expression in language."32
This can be attributed to an unwillingness to fully exploit the "noise"
of consonants; as he remarks, "no noise exists in nature or life (however
strange or bizarre in timbre) that cannot be adequately, or even exactly,
imitated through the consonants" (AN 56). Words like "Trrrrrrrrrrrrrr"
to represent a speeding train, or "cuhrrrrr" to represent the
wheels of an automobile, bring an immediacy and directness to language,
and reinforce Futurism's goal of merging the everyday with the poetic.
Tying these syntactic rules together is Marinetti's conception of "analogy,"
or the layering of object upon object, noun upon noun, in an endless chain
of words, such as "man-torpedo-boat, woman-gulf, crowd-surf, piazza-funnel,
door-faucet" (M 92-3). These "words-in-freedom," as
he calls them, heighten the "natural" tendencies of human speech
in a world of increased speed and pespective (M 93), reproducing
"the rapport ... between poet and audience" or "between two
old friends," who "can make themselves understood with half a
word, a gesture, a glance" (F 98). Marinetti termed the analogic
process l'mmaginazione senza fili, which literally translates "imagination
without strings," but is commonly described as "wireless imagination."
The concept of the "wireless" is fundamentally different from
that of the phonograph, telephone, or conventional telegraph system, which
require a connecting wire or cable to maintain the communicative link. The
"wireless," as the name suggests, requires no such link, as the
signal itself is transmitted through the air from one receiver to another.
La Radia, the term which Marinetti and Pino Masnata gave "to
the great manifestations of the radio" 1933, is the ultimate symbol
of Futurist poetry, for it liberates words and speech from the confines
of bodies and projects them into a spatial theater that, because "no
longer visible and framable ... becomes universal and cosmic."33
The "universiality" of words, their inutterable connection with
the totality of life, represents Futurism's ultimate destination. This is
evident in the following example from Luigi Russolo's Arte Dei Rumori
(The Art of Noises), in which Russolo quotes from a letter written
by Marinetti "from the trenches of Adrianopolis," describing "the
orchestra of a great battle":
every 5 seconds siege cannons gutting space with a chord
ZANG-TUMB_TUUUMB mutiny of 500 echos smashing scattering it to infinity.
In the center of this hateful ZANG-TUMB_TUUUMB area 50 square kilometers
leaping bursts lacerations fists rapid fire batteries. Violence ferocity
regularity this deep bass scanning the strange shrill frantic crowds of
the battle Fury breathless ears eyes nostrils open! load! fire! what a joy
to hear to smell completely taratatata of the machine guns screaming
a breathlessness under the stings slaps traak-traak whips pic-pac-pum-tumb
weirdness leaps 200 meters range Far far in back of the orchestra pools
muddying huffing goaded oxen wagons pluff-plaff horse action flic
flac zing zing shaaack laughing whinnies the tiinkling jiiingling
tramping 3 Bulgarian battalions marching croooc-craaac [slowly] ...
(AN 26)
The "bursts" of sensations and energies theorized in Marinetti's
manifestoes emerge in this letter through the description of noises, gunfire,
and troop movement, which render the experiences of war as visible, audible,
and tangible as language will allow. The use of "words-in-freedom,"
such as the string "orchestra pools muddying huffing goaded oxen wagons,"
effectively replicates the rapid array of sensations and impressions that
Marinetti experienced on the battlefield. Likewise, the use of onomatopoetic
words such as "taratatata" and "pic-pac-pum-tumb," to
describe shell bursts, troop movements, and other actions, add an immediacy
to the letter, thereby heightening the representation of "life,"
which was central to Futurism's aesthetic designs. All the same, it is important
to note that Marinetti was attempting to put into written language the sounds
of a battle; as such, his efforts can only attain a certain resemblance
to the lived experience. In other words, Marinetti is dependant upon the
technology of writing, both the physical limitations of the written page
and the need to retain a certain narrative cohesiveness -- that is, to make
sense to his readers. This is most evident in the linear structure of the
above letter: a scene is set (battlefield), characters parade in and out,
action ensues, and a resolution (in the form of the transformative effects
of war) is realized by the writer. This consequence of writing was not lost
on Marinetti, whose gave a cautionary analysis of his own system: "When
I speak of destroying the canals of syntax, I am neither categorical nor
systematic. Traces of conventional syntax and even of true logical sentences
will be found here and there in the words-in-freedom of my unchained lyricism"
(F 99). Marinetti later notes that "We ought not ... to be too
much preoccupied with" Futurist language, "But we should at all
costs avoid rhetoric and banalities telegraphically expressed" (F
99). Futurism can only mutilate language so far; in the end, traditional
mores and attitudes are retained.
In many ways, the failures of Futurist writing are not uncommon among the
early modernists, most of whom have disappeared from bookshelves and are
almost entirely forgotten except for the movements they helped create. Certainly
most scholars of "modernism" attest to the aesthetic insignificance
of Futurist art, from their poetry and drama to their plays, music, dance,
cinema, and architecture. While this debasement is largely attributed to
the artistic inabilities of its participants, one can also cite the contradiction
at work in Futurism's dual goal of destroying all shreds of a historical
and artistic heritage while simultaneously attempting to create a new system
of knowledge and "truth" based upon an aestheticization of the
machine. In order to create this "future," Futurism necessarily
employed the same artistic mediums (print, painting, etc.) which characterize
the past. By and large, Futurist work that is most often cited for its originality
and creativity are the works that most consistently reproduce the sensations
and emotions of everyday life in a mechanized world. These include Marinetti's
prose-poem/manifestoes, which aestheticized "a new typographic format,
a format drawn from the world of advertising posters and newspapers,"
and in which "the page supplants the stanza or the paragraph as the
basic print unit";34 Futurist performances,
which introduced the concept of "multi-media" spectacles, simultaneously
combining poetry, theater, dance, cinema, painting, and political debate
within a single space; and, perhaps most significantly, Luigi Russolo's
The Art of Noises, which redefined music not as a product of the
concert hall but as a cacahophony of everyday sounds, from engines and busy
streets to factory whistles and machine guns.
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