We'll obviously be talking a lot about modernism in class - - but it's worthwhile to take a look at one many consider to be one of the earliest (of many) manifestoes of modernism - - F.T. Marinetti's 1909 declaration of Italian "Futurism."
Here's a partial list of Marinetti's principles of Futurism:
1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
. . .
4. 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.
. . .
7. 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.
8. 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.
. . .
11. 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.
Full text
here.
Some of the
big questions we'll try to ask and answer about modernism include:
How do literary movements and texts reflect social and cultural contexts?
What kinds of work do readers do with literary texts?
To what extent is modernism liberating? Oppressive?
What is the picture of "modernity" - - the modern world - - painted by modernism? How accurate does it feel? What does it leave out?
How does modernism attack tradition? What are the benefits of suspecting tradition? Drawbacks?
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