  Alexander S. Kaun That Futurism is not a mere fad, a capricious bubble, is apparent from the fact that after five years of stormy existence the movement does not disappear or abate, but, on the contrary, continually gains soil and spreads deep and wide over all fields of European art. The critics of the new school no longer find it possible to dismiss it with a contemptuous smile as a silly joke of over-satiated modernists, but they either attack the Futurists with the vehemence and fury of a losing combatant, or they discuss the doctrine earnestly and apprehensively. To set art free of the atavistic fetters of the old culture and civilization, to imbue it with the nervous sensitiveness of our age, have been the negative and positive aims of Futurism. It is absurd to abide by the forms of Phydias and Æschylus in the days of radium and aeroplanes. The influence of the old masterpieces is accountable for the fact that of late humanity ceased to produce great works of art. It is quite natural that the protest against the “historical burden” should have originated in Italy, a country which, after having served for centuries as a pillar of light, has so degenerated that in our times it can boast only of such names as the saccharine Verdi and the pretentious D’Annunzio. It is natural, I should like to add, that in this country Futurism is still a foreign plant; for, fortunately or unfortunately, we have been free of a burdensome heritage, and an iconoclastic movement would appear quixotic. Started in Milan in the end of the year 1909, the movement has swept the continent and has revolutionized art. Even conservative England feebly echoes the battle-cry in the attempts of the The “parent” of Futurism and the present leader of Futurist poets, Marinetti, is, to say the least, an unusual personality. His Boswell, Tullia Pantea, describes his master’s life in its minutest nuances and chants dithyrambs to his wonderful achievements. We learn that Marinetti was born in Egypt in voluptuous surroundings, his father being a millionaire. From his childhood on he disposed of unlimited sums of money. “At the age of eleven he knew a woman; at fifteen he edited a literary magazine, Papyrus, printed on vellum paper; at seventeen he fought a duel.” We follow this enfant terrible to Paris where he lavishly squanders his millions, fights duels, and faces the court for his pornographic poems. He is sentenced to an eight weeks’ imprisonment for an exotic work which I shall not venture to quote, as it is too repulsive to the English reader. Pantea further describes his master’s kingly palazzo in Milan, where “... at night in the bed-chamber decorated with astonishing elegance and with mad extravagance meet the most beautiful women of Italy and Europe.” I quote these nauseatic details, for they help to explain the erotic aroma of Marinetti’s poems. Their erotism is morbid, aroused by artificial “convulsions of sensuality,” “imitation of madness,” “a cancan of dancing Death.” Yet we cannot overlook the beauty of the verses, their devilish rhythm, and enchanting mysticism. Some of his early poems, more natural than his latest Words at Liberty, are intoxicating with their mad exoticism. The following is one of his best-known poems, The Banjos of Despair: Elles chantent, les benjohs hystÉriques et sauvages, comme des chattes ÉnervÉes par l’odeur de l’orage. Ce sont des nÈgres qui les tiennent empoignÉes violemment, comme on tient une amarre que secoue la bourrasque. Elles miaulent, les benjohs, sous leurs doigts frÉnÉtiques, et la mer, en bombant son dos d’hippopotame, acclame leurs chansons par des flic-flacs sonores et des renÂclements. The hysteric and savage banjos that meow like cats maddened by the odor of the storm; the sea which, swelling its back of a hippopotamus, applauds their songs with its sonorous twick-twacks and snorts—I understand the poet, I believe him. But, as I said, this is Marinetti’s early poetry. How far he has “progressed” you may judge from the following quotation from his latest Words at Liberty, as it appears in The London Times: INDIFFERENZA
This “poem” is a description of a battle during the Turco-Bulgarian war; the As usual we spent the night in our favorite cafÉ, which is attended by the most elegant women. Some one suggested that we take an automobile ride in the suburbs. We whirled over the sleepy streets. Out of town. Deep darkness.... Moment of falling. We are hurled into an abyss. Ecstasy.... Then—we are on the bottom of a ditch filled with malodorous dregs. We drown in the mud. Mud covers the face, the body, mud blinds the eyes, fills the mouth. Finally we succeed in getting out of the filthy ditch and we go back to the city. But.... For a certain time there remained with us the taste of rottenness; we could not get rid of the rotten odor that permeated all pores of our bodies. In the moment of falling into that ditch the idea of Futurism came into my head. On the same night before dawn we wrote the entire first manifesto on Futurism. Thus the new art was born under peculiar circumstances—“under the sign of scandal”—and scandal became the tactics of Italian Futurists who have professed their “delight in being hissed” and their contempt for applause. A few points of that manifesto: We shall sing of the love of danger, the habit of energy and boldness. Literature has hitherto glorified thoughtful immobility, ecstasy of sleep; we shall extol aggressive movement, feverish insomnia, the double quick step, the somersault, the box on the ear, the fisticuff. There is no more beauty except in strife. We wish to glorify war—the only purifier of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchist, the beauty of Ideas that kill, the contempt for women. We wish to destroy the museums, the libraries, to fight against moralism and feminism, and all opportunistic and utilitarian meannesses. This bombastic program has been heralded by the Italian Futurists ever since 1909. Fortunately they went no further than threats, but they strove to attract attention and in this they gloriously succeeded. Their attitude toward women was expressed in the motto: “MÉprisez la femme.” Love for woman is an atavism and should be discarded into archives. We chant hymns to the new beauty that has come into the world in our days, a hymn to swiftness, a doxology to motion. Woman is justified in her existence inasmuch as she is a prostitute. Sensuality for the sake of sensuality is extolled as the only stimulus in human life,—its only aim. Otherwise human beings are of no importance, at best as important as inanimate objects. The suffering of a man is of the same interest to us as the suffering of an electric lamp, which, with spasmodic starts, shrieks out the most heart-rending expressions of color. These aphorisms belong to the pen of Marinetti or to those of his disciples, who are but pigmies in comparison with their leader. They greeted the war with Turkey in Tripolitania enthusiastically, and Marinetti joyously witnessed the splendor of “bayonets piercing human bodies” and similar features of the great “health-giver”—war. At that time he began the cycle of his pictorial poems recently published in the Words at Liberty. Here is one of his early descriptions: A stream. A bridge. Plus artillery. Plus infantry. Plus trenches. Plus cadavers. Dzang-bah-bakh. Cannon. Kha-kh-kha. Mitrailleuse. Tr-r-r. Sh-sh-sh-sh. S-s-s-s-s-s. Bullets. Chill. Blood. Smoke. His ideal is the smoking concert, circus, cabaret, and night-club as “the only theatrical entertainment worthy of the true Futurist spirit.” “The variety theater is the only kind of theater where the public does not remain static and stupidly passive, but participates noisily in action.” The variety show “brutally strips woman of all her veils, of the romantic phrases, sighs, and sobs which mark and deform her. On the other hand, it shows up all the most admirable animal qualities of woman, her powers of attack and of seduction, of treachery, and of resistance.” The variety theater is, of course, antiacademical, primitive, and ingenuous, and therefore all the more significant by reason of the unforeseen nature of all its fumbling efforts.... The variety theater destroys all that is solemn, sacred, earnest, and pure in Art—with a big A. It collaborates with Futurism in the destruction of the immortal masterpieces by plagiarizing them, parodying them, and by retailing them without style, apparatus, or pity. At this point I am ready to agree with the Russian critic, A. Lunacharsky, who thus defines Marinetti: He combines in his personality the exoticism of an East-African with the cynical blaguerie of a Parisian and the clownishness of a Neapolitan. In connection with the foregoing it is curious to observe the pranks of Marinetti’s colleagues in the land of eternal contradictions—Russia. The Russian Futurists, Ego-futurists, and Acmeists, vie with the Italians in noisiness and eccentricity, and they have aroused an extensive pro and con polemic. In the last issue of Russkaja Mysl there is an interesting criticism of the Futurist poetry written by Valery Brusov. This foremost poet, known on the continent as the Russian Verhaeren, began his literary career some fifteen years ago with the one-line “poem”: “Oh, conceal thy pallid legs.” This extremist is now ranked by the Futurists among the reactionaries. Brusov is not hostile to Futurism, although he opposes the contemporary bearers of its banner. In a dialogue supposedly carried on between a Symbolist and a Futurist Brusov makes the latter say: Tell me, what is poetry? The art of words, is it not? In what else does it differ from music, from painting? The poet is the artist of words: they are for him what colors are for the painter or marble for your sculptors. We have determined to be artists of words, and only of words, which means to fulfill the true vocation of the poet. You, what have you done with the word? You have transformed it into a slave, into a hireling, to serve your so-called ideas! You have debased the word to a subservient rÔle. All of you, the realists as well as the symbolists, have used words just as the “Academicians” have used colors. Those understood not that the essence of painting is in the combination of colors and lines, and they have strived to express through colors and lines some meager ideas absolutely useless for commonly known. You likewise have not understood that the essence of poetry lies in the combination of words, and you have mutilated them by forcing them to express your thoughts borrowed from the philosophers. The futurists are the first to proclaim the true poetry, the free, the real freedom of words. And so, since words have become enslaved and carry, unfortunately, within them the ballast of established notions and conceptions, the Futurists experiment in liberating the words of their accepted meanings by creating new words, weird combinations of syllables, skilful
Do you feel the heights? The poet does, however, and he proclaims in his defense: “The more subjective is truth, the more objective is the subjective objectivity.” Brusov’s point of view is expressed in the impassioned words of the historian of literature who appears at the end of the above-mentioned dialogue: In the new poetry, that is, in the poetry of the last centuries, one observes a definite shifting of two currents. One school puts forward the primary importance of the content, the other—that of form; later the same tendencies are repeated in the two successive schools. Pseudo-Classicism, as a school, placed above all form not the “what” but the “how.” The content they borrowed from the ancients and then performed the task most important in their eyes—the elaboration of that material. The Romanticists, in contra-distinction to the Pseudo-Classicists, insisted first of all on the content. They admired the middle ages, their yearning for an ideal, their religious aspirations. The weak point of Futurism appears to be, as is the case with every revolutionary movement, the fact that alongside with the true fighters for new horizons straggle parasitic marauders, that on the heels of the sincere searchers of artistic truth tread nonchalantly buffoons and charlatans. The number of the latter is so great that the true prophets drown in the vast slough, and the public sees but the caricature side of the movement. Take for instance, the Post-Impressionist and the Futurist painters. Any unbiased and open-minded observer will admit that many of them, like Odilon Redon, Duchamp, Picasso, Chabaud, even Matisse, have created works which, whether you like them or not, possess the sure criterion of art: they stir you, arouse your thoughts and emotions. Yet how easy it is to smuggle into their midst colossal nonsense and counterfeit can be judged from the following episode: To art-critics: A manifesto of the school of the Excessivists. Hurrah! Brother-Excessivists, hurrah! Masters splendid and renascent, we are on the eve of various exhibitions of banal and stereotypical paintings. Let us smash, then, the palettes of our forefathers; let us set fire of Joy to the pseudo-masterpieces, and let us establish great canons destined to rule art henceforward. The “Excess in everything is a defect,” once said a certain ass. We proclaim the reverse: excess at all times, in everything, is the absolute power. The sun can never be too ardent, the sky too blue, the sea-perspective too ruby, darkness too black, as there can never be heroes too valiant or flowers too fragrant. Down with contours, down with half-tones, down with craft! Instead—dazzling and resplendent colors! And so on. Bombastic phrases borrowed from Marinetti and his colleagues. The manifesto is signed Joachim Raphael Boronali. Boronali is the anagram of Aliboron—the French word for donkey. The jesters later explained that they intended by the euphony of an Italian name “to arouse with more certainty the admiration of the crowd.” The next step was to procure the services of Lolo, an old donkey well known to the artists on Montmartre, as its stable is at the cabaret Lapin Agile. The following procedure is immortalized in an official protocol, the most unique document in the annals of art: Protocol (ProcÈs-verbal de constat). On the 8th of March, before me, Paul Henri Brionne, magistrate of the civil court of Paris, in my office on rue du Faubourg Montmartre, 33, appeared M. ——, “Every year there takes place an exhibition of various works of drawing, painting, and sculpture under the name of the Salon of the Independent Artists; “This exhibition is open for all painters, and unfortunately, alongside with productions of high value there figure ridiculous works that have no signs of art; “In order to show to what extent any work can be accepted in that exhibition, to the detriment of the meritorious productions, he intends to send there in the name of Fantasio, a picture the author of which would be a donkey. The picture will be entered in the catalogue under the title Et le soleil s’endormit sur l’Adriatique, and signed J. R. Boronali; “For said reasons he asks me to be present at the painting of said picture in order to witness the process and draw an official report about it.” Having consented to the request, I went in the company of Messrs. ——, the editors of Fantasio, to the cabaret du Lapin Agile, where in front of said establishment Messrs. —— set up a new canvas on a chair that took the place of an easel. In my presence they arranged paints—blue, green, yellow, and red; to the tail-extremity of the donkey, which belongs to the owner of the cabaret Lapin Agile, was tied a paint-brush. Then the donkey was brought to the canvas, and M. —— upholding the brush and the tail of the beast allowed her to daub in all directions taking care only of changing the paints on the brush. I assured myself that the picture presented various tones passing from blue into green and from yellow into red without constituting anything definite and resembling nothing. When the work had been finished, in my presence the picture and author were photographed. P. Brionne. From the photograph it may be seen that the donkey had been teased with some appetizing food held before his mouth, to which tantalization the so-called Boronali responded with the wags of his “tail-extremity,” according to the phraseology of the solemn document. The picture then having been taken to the Salon, Monsieur Boronali was asked to pay his membership fee, and thenceforward his name figured among those of Matisse, Rousseau, Le Fauconnier, and other great. To the astonishment of the Fantasio group, their prank remained unnoticed for some time; the critics spoke of Boronali’s work along with the other pictures, and the manifesto of the Excessivists was but slightly commented upon. In a series of sensational articles and piquant stories The Fantasio finally succeeded in drawing general attention to their chef d’oeuvre. The Paris press, as well as the foreign, opened a hot discussion on the significance of Boronali’s work in a serious tone. Only the KÖlnische Zeitung in a review of the manifesto and the picture carefully remarked, “If it is not a carnival joke”—referring to the manifesto but not doubting the authenticity of Boronali’s canvas. True, the title of the picture seemed mystifying: why The Sun Asleep over the Adriatic, when there were neither sun nor sea? The Gazette de France ridiculed the title. The New York Herald, endeavoring to justify the name of the picture, suggested that the sun was asleep beneath the Adriatic—an ingenious hypothesis. The Revue des Beaux-Arts gave a detailed and scholarly account of the picture, but found in it nothing extraordinary in comparison with the other Independents. The hardest blow to Boronali’s genius was dealt by De l’Art Ancien et Moderne, which accused him of being banal. “Among the cosmopolite crowd, along with Messrs. GhÉon, Klingsor, Jamet ... struts the sheer banality of M. Boronali.” The scandal that took place after the mystificators had revealed their trick is of secondary importance. What looms out of this incident is the dangerously vague line of demarcation between what is true art and what is mere daubery in Futurism. The Gaulois summed up the affair in a few significant words: The scholastics had maintained that “It is much easier for the ass to disprove than it is for the philosopher to assert.” But here came an ass and proved something in spite of all the philosophers of the world. He has proved—not a priori but a posteriori—that the most manifest daubery may pass as a picture in the eyes of those who accept the non-real, the improbable, and the absurd for new art. Thought uttered becomes an untruth.—Thaddeus Tutchev. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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