So I’ve not really put much up about me for a while.
I’m currently reading Danchev’s 100 Artists’ Manifestoes. In total honesty what I’ve read so far has been interesting but not amazing. The manifestoes are solid documents but the ones I have read up to this point have all been a bit bland, and expected, except for the totally absurd ones which don’t really seem to fulfil much purpose.
However, Marinetti’s futurist manifesto, the opener of the book, is exquisitely eloquent. It did exactly what I expected the others to do; it riled me up and got me on side, wanting to fight the battle of a futurist. Perhaps the later manifestoes pale in comparison to Marinetti’s, I don’t know. But the imagery is vivid, the writing exhilarating, and I urge you to read it! Here’s one of my favourite parts:
“…A furious gust of madness tore us out of ourselves and hurled us along roads as deep and plunging as the beds of torrents. Every now and then a feeble light, flickering behind some windowpane, made us mistrust the calculations of our all-too-fallible eyes. I cried out, ‘The scent, nothing but the scent! That’s all an animal needs!’
And we, like young lions, chased after Death, whose black pelt was dotted with pale crosses, as he sped away across the vast, violet-tinted sky, vital and throbbing.
And yet we had no idealised Lover whose sublime being rose up into the skies; no cruel Queen to whom we might offer up our corpses, contorted like Byzantine rings! Nothing at all worth dying for, other than the desire to divest ourselves finally of the courage that weighed us down!”
