Part Two: Words-in-Freedom

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.

Intro | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Notes | Perf7 TOC

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