'When in 1909 F. T. Marinetti had his first manifesto of Futurism published in the newspaper Figaro of Paris, I believe he imagined he was a poet, a thinker, an innovator, but surely not a prophet.
'That manifesto and the others that followed it over the years down to the very recent past seem to us full of commonplaces, contradictions, garbled statements and odd notions, but as a whole they constitute a document of the crisis that was to break out in a few years and whose end is not yet in sight.
'F. T. Marinetti was not a thinker nor a serious artist but rather a charlatan and traveling salesman gifted with that secret sense which charlatans, politicians, traveling salesmen and gamblers have and that makes them prophets to a degree. Their profession compels them to heed not the dictates of lucid reason and enlightened imagination but those of fortuitous powers that operate in the profound unknown of history. The details of what they say are inaccurate, the reasons adduced are absurd, the general statement incoherent. On listening to these persons, one meets with large patches of obscurity. But there is something in them that more rational and lucid minds do not see. There is no doubt that the outburst of emotions and clash of interests set off by the war of 1914, and which have not yet subsided, had been indicated by the figurative lance hurled in the right direction by the Futurist manifesto of 1909. The reign of the machine, the cynicism and ferocity employed to realize the aims of States, the worship of violence, the defense of war as an activity leading society back to health, were all a revelation of Futurism. It spread all over the world, from America to Russia, and came to mean many different trends in art and morality but always with the common label of revolt against the past. "Anything," they seemed to say, "even disorder, crime and idiocy is better than the present mediocre, bourgeois state of affairs."
'As always happens when a vogue becomes widespread, it is now easy to see how Futurism was prepared and facilitated by forerunners. The anarchists, the readers of Nietzsche, Stirner and Sorel, the aesthetes of the Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater variety, the imperialist of the Kipling school, the disorganizers of poetry like Mallarmé and the disintegrators of painting like Picasso - how many names, books, theories, how many works of art can be cited that have all merged in the chaotic stream of Futurism! But the fact remains that this word appeared to sum up in a fascinating manner the dissatisfaction of the intellectual generations after 1900. Today, when we turn back to certain artists and writers adhering to the Futurist movement we see them in a truly different guise and it seems incredible to us that at a certain moment Futurism could answer the needs of their spirit.
'Futurism was the glorification of the machine and of speed, of nationalism and of war. It fought religion, pacifism and democracy. In poetry it emphasized the demise of rhythm and proclaimed and realized the suppression of syntax. In painting it accepted the abolition of visible forms and desired the representation of the movements of bodies. In sculpture it demanded that the setting be fused with the subject. In architecture it did away with ornamentation and based itself on functional and mechanical styles of building, with a tendency towards the machine-house and the factory-city. To the stage it brought fast-moving, concentrated and epigrammatic plays. In music it attempted to introduce noise among and above sounds. In typography it made fantastic use of symbols and colors. Its purpose everywhere seems to have been to distort, disrupt and disunite the achievements of time.
'All this turmoil is of small concern to the aims of this book. Important is the fact that with Futurism Italy seemed to resume her function as spokesman of the world. For a moment Futurism provided Italy with the feeling of having expressed the urged needs of the new generations in other countries.'
(The Legacy of Italy by Giuseppe Prezzolini, Professor of Italian, Columbia University, 1948)
