We continue -and close- with this post the presentation of the artistic avant-garde movement Futurism (see previous post * or **, taking up again other fragments of the first manifesto.

VlIl. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! Why look behind us, that is like digging into the mysterious saddlebag of the impossible? Time and Space are dead.
We already live in the Absolute, since we have created the omnipresent celerity.
IX. We want to glorify war -the only hygiene of the world-, militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas that kill and the contempt for women.
X. We want to demolish museums, libraries, fight moralism, feminism and all opportunistic and utilitarian cowardice.
XI. We will sing to the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure or rebellion, the multi-coloured and polyphonic undertow of revolutions in modern capitals: the vibration of the arsenals and warehouses under their violent electric windows, the stations, populated with snakes and smoke, the suspended factories of the clouds by the roaring of its chimneys; the bridges like the jump of a giant about the diabolical and deadly cutlery of the rivers, the adventurous boats always sniffing out the horizon, the locomotives in their big pigsty, which piappe on the rails, flanged by long tubes, and the high flight of airplanes, in which the propeller has clicks of banners and cheers of applause, warm salutes from a hundred crowds.

We can corroborate in these quotes from the first manifesto the characteristic elements pointed out in the previous post, such as the disproportionate denial of the past, the exaltation of the material and technological modernity of the moment ("modernolatry" or the idolatry of the modern), and, above all, its attitude (that of its author in particular), unbridled, discriminatory and aggressive, typical of that "pathology of destruction", criticised by Compagnon, which will be linked to fascism.

_{Cover of the book/poem Zang Tumb Tumb, by Marinetti, published in 1914 Source}

Perhaps the main contributions of Futurism are in the strictly formal linguistic level, where technical proposals should be highlighted, especially. They were proclaimed in the "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature", of 1912, and some of them were specified by Marinetti in his poems, particularly in his book Zang-Tumb-Tumb. Among them: the disposition of nouns at random, the use of the verb in the infinitive, the abolition of the adjective.

The most important of these were included in what he called "imagination without threads" and "words in freedom": it is a question of "the absolute freedom of images and analogies, expressed by loose words, 'without threads', which are conductors of the syntax, and exempt from punctuation", summarizes the scholar of the artistic avant-garde Guillermo de Torre.

And finally, the typographic reform, whose main aspects this critic synthesizes and comments, which we will quote at length:

Marinetti replaced the pure typographical vision of the page with a pictorial vision. Furthermore, his typographic revolution involved not only the use of various typefaces, but also the radical transformation of the page by the direction of the lines: vertical, oblique, circular, or linked by means of parentheses and keys, spaced out, with large capital letters. All these innovations, which correspond to an ultra-expressive need, can be viable, and have been used, simultaneously or later, since the Apollinaire of the *Caligrams (...), became a commonplace in advertising typography.

Undoubtedly, some of these innovations will permeate the following poetry until our days, , although certain elements had been shown by Mallarmé, for example, in his poem A stroke of the dice.... Although it can be considered as the "hyperbolic expression of the poetry of the modern", in Raymond's words,
spatially enriched, graphically, contemporary poetry.

_{Word in freedom (First record), by Marinetti (1916) Source}

Futurism, being the first avant-garde movement, influenced the following ones, but its influence, as has been pointed out by some scholars, was infused and superficial, not in depth, even some of its features became incoherent between them. Therein lies the criticism sustained by Octavio Paz:

The Italian Futurists, by proclaiming an aesthetic of sensation, opened the door to temporality. Time entered through the door of sensation; only it was a dispersed and non successive time: the instant. The sensation is instantaneous. Thus, futurism was condemned, by its very aesthetics, not to the constructions of the future but to the destructions of the instant. (...) Elimination of time as succession and as change: the aesthetic
futuristic movement was resolved in the abolition of the movement.

Peace indicates one of the strong contradictions of this movement which, proclaiming the movement, was sinking in the immobility of the disconnection.

_{Futurist group: Russolo, Carrà, Marinetti, Boccioni and Severini in front of Le Figaro, Paris, 1912 Source}

Other criticisms have been voiced, such as the one that warns that there was no futurist generation, since Marinetti's monopolising and despotic spirit turned the "movement" into a sect; hence the Italian specialist Giuseppe Prezzolini affirms that "futurism was Marinetti's school", and that there was more proclamation and programme than work.

Finally, let us return to a painful aspect: the relationship with fascism. The nationalist exaltation, taken to the extreme of patrioterism, the declarations prone to violence and populism, as well as its segregationist attitudes, found a propitious terrain to be realized in Italian Fascism. In 1924 Marinetti explicitly recognized: "Fascism has been nourished by futuristic principles". It is no accident that Mussolini in 1929 appointed him to the Royal Academy of Italy.

He would thus deplorably and tragically close the futurist adventure, which, as the historian Francesco Flora points out, is an expression of "contemporary illness".

Bibliographical references:

Compagnon, Antoine (1993). The five paradoxes of modernity. Venezuela: Monte Ávila Editores.
Friedrich, Hugo (1974). Structure of modern lyrics. Spain. Edit. Seix Barral.
Paz, Octavio (1985). The sons of the silt. Colombia: Edit. La Oveja Negra.
Pierre, José (1968). Futurism and Dadaism (Introduction by Philippe Soupault). Spain: Edit. Aguilar.
Raymond, Marcel (1983). From Baudelaire to Surrealism. Spain: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Torre, Guillermo de (1974). History of avant-garde literatures (Volume I). Spain: Edit. Guadarrama.
http://mason.gmu.edu/~rberroa/futurismo.htm