ITS founders would hardly thank me for noting the anniversary, but I can't resist. Futurism is 100 years old today, writes FRANK MCNALLY.
Established in Italy, dedicated to the glorification of war, mechanisation, speed, and a contempt for all things historical, the movement flourished for a while before 1914 and again briefly in the 1930s, when it was central to an attempt to abolish pasta (of which more later). Then it petered out along with its creator, the poet F.T. Marinetti. Nowadays, it’s fair to say, Futurism is a thing of the past.
It might never have been a thing of the present had not the famous French newspaper Le Figaro, on February 20th, 1909, published Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto on its front page. Though a talented self-publicist, the author also had a family friend among the paper’s shareholders. Only this could explain the prominence given to a piece of writing described in the author’s own introduction, accurately enough, as “demented”.
In fairness, his crazed style was in keeping with a movement that revelled in danger, spontaneity and opposition to conventional literature’s “pensive immobility”. Illustrating the point, Marinetti’s epiphany on the glories of the speeding motor-car had come to him during a crash in 1908 when he was forced to swerve violently (and reluctantly) to avoid a pair of cyclists.
Here, from the manifesto, is his description of that event, which gives a flavour both of his ideas and his literary technique (the first paragraph describes what he was thinking at the time; the second describes the accident):
“Let us leave good sense behind and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!
“As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists. . .tottering in front of me like. . .persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself – vlan! – head over heels in a ditch.”
Given an initial platform by Le Figaro, Marinetti would later benefit from a friendship with Benito Mussolini, whom he met at a pro-war demonstration in 1915. Futurism held a natural appeal for the Italian fascists, at first, until its rejection of the past (Marinetti wanted to destroy museums and libraries and proposed a plan for Venice under which the canals would be filled in, using rubble from the old buildings) proved too much at odds with Fascist nostalgia for ancient Rome. The movements parted ways, eventually, although Marinetti never fell out with Il Duce.
One of futurism’s last hurrahs is described in Delizia! The Epic History of Italians and their Food, by John Dickie. It was the 1931 opening of Turin’s Holy Palate Tavern, a restaurant that sought to apply futurist principles to Italian cuisine. The aim, according to Dickie, was to create “the edible equivalent of the discovery of America or the storming of the Bastille”.
Diners on the opening night were treated to such multi-sensory dishes as “Aerovictuals” (black olives, fennel hearts, and candied bitter orange) served with a rectangular pad featuring sandpaper, silk, and velvet surfaces. They were encouraged to stroke the pad with one hand while feeding themselves with the other (there was no cutlery) as the head waiter applied perfume to the backs of their necks and the strains of Wagner wafted from hidden speakers.
Another dish was called “Aroused pig” and featured a peeled salami protruding from “a sauce of espresso coffee and eau de cologne”. One journalist who attended described the new eating experiences as “dumbfounding”, which sounds like a fair description. But the keynote of the cuisine, announced later that year by the Holy Palate’s guest speaker, Marinetti, was its war against pasta.
For the futurists, pasta was “Italy’s absurd gastronomic religion”. They denounced it as being too weighty for the dynamism of modern life. They claimed it made Neapolitans, in particular, “sceptical, ironic, and sentimental”. But its greatest crime in their eyes was that it “induced pacifism”.
Although the food movement might suggest otherwise, Marinetti was by 1930 fast selling out on his revolutionary principles. His 1909 manifesto had noted that he and the other futurist leaders were still under 30 and so had “at least 10” useful years ahead of them. It added: “When we are 40, let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts.” Sadly this invitation was not taken up; and in the manner of a 1960s rock star, Marinetti was condemned to performing into a middle age for which he not planned.
He gradually tempered his avant-garde approach so as to remain at least a “semi-detached member” of the art establishment under fascism. As with many of his beliefs, he also overcame an initial contempt for marriage (and for women generally) by marrying; and for academia, by becoming an academic.
A century on, his movement is rather forgotten. And yet he would hardly be too disappointed with the state of the world. His pasta ban has not been a success, it’s true. But war continues to thrive; and so does the speeding car. It would surely please Marinetti that cyclists everywhere still live in daily fear of lunatic drivers like him.
fmcnally@irishtimes.com