Copyright © 1994 The Johns Hopkins University Press. A

-----------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright © 1994 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.
Modernism/Modernity 1.3 (1994) 109-127
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Marketing Modernism: Marinetti as Publisher
Claudia Salaris
Translated by Lawrence Rainey
-----------------------------------------------------------------------In the period when Filippo Tommaso Marinetti brought to life his ambitious project of artistic
reawakening, mass society was still in an early stage of development, far from having acquired the
characteristics that would subsequently become more and more clearly defined with the ever more
rapid development of new technologies. Yet it was precisely this new world, just emerging at the dawn
of the twentieth century, with its profound economic and anthropological transformations, that became
the reference point for futurism, a movement that responded to the radical nature of this epochal shift
with a project almost equally global inits ambitions, that committed itself to an aesthetic renovation
also entailing moral and intellectual claims, and that sought to involve not just an intellectual elite, but
all the classes and sectors of modern society. Harking back in certain ways to the criteria of collective
art previously suggested by Wagner and Lautréamont, Marinetti chose to pursue a program of cultural
democratization, setting himself the goal of bringing art into the realm of daily life.
The advent of mass society, as Benjamin noted long ago, entails the "decay of the auratic," 1 a process
in which art loses its halo of associations with ritual and magic as the values of tradition disappear. His
viewpoint might almost have been designed to illustrate a well-known prose-poem by Baudelaire,
"Perte d'auréole" (lost halo), a witty sketch in which Baudelaire explores the new marginality assigned
to the artist by the world of modernity. The protagonist, a poet, recounts his earlier attempt to cross a
boulevard jammed with morning traffic. Trying to leap over the mud while also avoiding the horses
and [End Page 109] carriages that fly in every direction, he had made a sudden movement that caused
his halo to fall into the mud. Stricken with panic and fearful of being injured, he then decided to leave it
on the ground. Yet he feels no regret, he tells his interlocutor, for now he is free to stroll through the
city incognito, "like all common mortals." Now, the poet informs his hearer, he is "an exact
resemblance of yourself, as you can see!" 2
Responding many years later to the same sense of the loss of the artist's role in modernity, Marinetti
attempted to relocate or rediscover the sense of aura within the forms of modernity itself. Perhaps it is
no accident that he placed his own artistic rebirth in a muddy ditch as well in the famous allegorical
narrative that prefaces "The Founding and First Manifesto of Futurism," in which an automobile
accident is represented as a second birth and myth of initiation to modern life:
Oh! Maternal ditch, almost full of muddy water! Fair factory drain! I gulped down your nourishing
sludge; and I remembered the blessed black breast of my Sudanese nurse....When I came up torn, filthy,
and stinking from under the capsized car, I felt the white-hot iron of joy deliciously pass through my
heart! 3
The passage plainly indicates the necessity of descending into the inferno of modern life, of accepting
the challenges posed by an existence dominated by speed, standardization, noise, and mass
communications; but that project, in turn, implicitly requires that it be translated concretely into a
program of recuperating, for the domain of art, the universe of new signs that is offered by the
metropolis, signs that can be used for constructing a new epic, an industrial epos shaped by the mythic
language of the machine.
That implicit program of recuperation is signalled not by the allegorical narrative, but by the medium
of its transmission and the relationship of the narrative to the event that it heralds. Adopting a
polemical stance towards the communicative means of more traditional culture, closed in upon itself
and incapable of seeing beyond the institutional limits imposed by academies, universities, readers'
circles, and salons, Marinetti understands the new world of mass communications and, decades before
Marshall McLuhan, intuitively perceives that "the medium is the message." "The Founding and First
Manifesto," published on the first page Le Figaro (Paris) on 20 February 1909, embodies this very
understanding: it is launched from an international venue in a language that addresses the widest
possible audience. Moreover, it announces a pseudo-event, the birth of Futurism; it is by means of the
press that this event is immediately realized. (In point of fact, Marinetti possessed only a handful of
followers at the time, all of them poets, and it was not until much later that he would be joined by
painters, musicians, and architects, to form a genuinely global movement.) From the beginning, in
other words, Marinetti possessed an uncommon capacity for using the media and forging public
relations, gifts that he utilized in a self-conscious effort to promote Futurism in much the way that one
would promote an industrial product that is to be introduced into the market and publicized. [End Page
110]
At least part of Marinetti's sensibility to advertising was a result of his living in Milan, a city then in a
stage of rapid economic growth. What struck him in particular were two phenomena that were
absolutely new and that plainly accompanied the development of modern society: on the one hand,
industrialization, which, advancing in stages of sudden expansion, dissolves the pyramidal structure of
an older social order in favor of massification, and on the other hand, the birth of popular political
parties and unionization. Both industry and politics possesstheir own linguistic registers enabling them
to enter dialogue with a wide public, penetrating almost every level of society. Aiming at creating an
avant-garde that would address a mass society, Marinetti introduced into the world of art precisely the
kinds of communicative systems that typified the political avant-garde (verbal violence, techniques of
agitation, meetings, etc.) and industrial advertising (hypervaluation in the representation of its own
products, a massive use of posters, the launching of leaflets, etc.).
One of the most interesting aspects of this program consisted in the strategy adopted for the sale and
diffusion of works of art and books. Marinetti created a complex of entrepreneurial functions and
activities aimed at moving goods created by artist-producers to public consumers, and so became the
unquestioned manager of a vast program of cultural marketing, responsible for coordinating and
directing the entire enterprise. His initiatives extended from publishing to organizing theatrical
tournées, from arranging propaganda expeditions in various countries abroad, typically accompanied
by lectures and readings, to preparing exhibitions both abroad and in Italy. An impresario of poets and
painters, Marinetti would deploy his own economic resources in financing these operations. His house
(first in Milan, then in Rome after 1925 or so) was always the official seat, the corporate headquarters
of the movement, a mixture of house and museum in which Oriental furniture (inherited from his
father, Enrico, formerly a lawyer and businessman in Alexandria, Egypt) was placed alongside the
paintings, books, and sculptures of the Futurists. Over the entrance door was a plaque with the simple
inscription, "Futurism."
It is a commonplace to say that "publicity is the soul of commerce," but before Marinetti nobody had
thought that advertising might be also the soul, or motor, of art. Fifty years after the foundation of
Futurism, the poet Aldo Palazzeschi could still recall the sense of shock that this produced among
contemporaries.
Marinetti had understood from the beginning the power of advertising, a power that would eventually
accomplish feats and address people from the highest to the lowest, omitting no one within the social
structure...for more orthodox thinkers, to use it for matters of intellectual and cultural life was
considered an ignominy so base that no dictionary was thought to possess a term that could sufficiently
describe its wickedness. 4
Among contemporary cultural circles, Marinetti was reproved for operating in a style all'americana (in
an American style) that was deemed inappropriate to the world of art. Giuseppe Prezzolini, who was
interested in rhetoric and the arts of persuasion, 5 remarked that Marinetti had the "advertising
personality of a good travelling salesman": [End Page 111]
For him everything is of equal value, provided only that it happen to come from his own firm.
Extremely adept at launching new products, he never wonders whether the goods that he is selling are
fine or coarse: for him, all of it is merchandise of the highest quality. 6
In the early years of Futurism, prior to the outbreak of the Great War, Marinetti would cover the walls
and hoardings of all the major cities of Italy with massive white posters that contained a single word in
glaring red: "Futurism." 7
One of the most specific and widely debated instruments within Marinetti's complex of entrepreneurial
functions was the so-called serata futurista ("Futurist evening" or "Futurist soirée"). This became a
privileged form of communication during the "heroic" years of Futurism prior to the Great War, an era
when the theater was still an important means of socialization that spanned the spectrum of Italian
culture, permitting people of different socio-economic strata to meet in a single place without
distinctions of class or income. From the ground floor to the gallery and the boxes, the theater became a
container embracing everyone, a site in which the creativity of the Futurists would spread like lava
running from the mouth of a volcano: spectators and artists became the chemical components of an
incandescent fusion in which the event was no longer the spectacle in itself, but the ensemble of
emotions, tensions, actions, and reactions being created.
Marinetti's management of the serata revealed the same intense concern with entrepreneurial values. In
general he rented the theater himself, and typically admission was priced very low or made free in
order to encourage an audience as large as possible. Every performance was preceded by an advertising
barrage that included advertisements in the daily newspapers, posters on walls, and the distribution of
leaflets or handbills. The audience was largely composed of intellectuals, professionals, and aristocrats,
with a smaller representation of young people and workers. The performance itself consisted of
participantspresenting their paintings, reciting poetry or other "words-in-freedom" compositions, or
declaiming manifestos. Marinetti and his companions insistently provoked the audience, which in turn
responded by launching missiles of every imaginable kind: the serata was transformed into a miniature
war that required a visceral involvement on the part of the spectator. To quiet the brawls the police
were typically called in, unintentionally lending themselves to a role that had already been scripted for
them in advance. From beginning to end the entire event was carefully choreographed by Marinetti,
including the predictable aftermath: daily newspapers promptly reported the event with shocked
headlines, lengthy articles that detailed the brawls in all their fury, and editorial commentary that
deplored the Futurist provocations, all of these inadvertently furnishing the Futurists with advance
publicity for the next serata to follow.
Even the tone that Marinetti used in his speeches and addresses to the gallery was tinged with the
language of advertising. On the one hand he carefully sought to shock by deliberately taunting and
provoking the audience, while on the other hand he glorified the successes of his group with a lyrical
rhetoric of excessive emphasis. Not [End Page 112] untypical is a speech from one of the Futurist
evenings that took place in Florence in 1913 at the Teatro Verdi, in which Marinetti assaulted the
audience thus:
We are a handful of tamers here in this cage of wild animals that are roaring and yet also frightened.
You will leave here tamed, bearing within yourselves an involuntary admiration for us that you will be
unable to repress....Seven thousand mediocrities against eight artists whose formidable genius you
cannot deny. 8
Marinetti's activities as a publisher were strictly connected with his propagandistic efforts. 9 In this
regard his views owed much to wider changes that were taking place within the world of publishing in
Italy, the outcome of a growing perception among contemporary intellectuals that cultural activity was
something to be developed as part of a continuous process through a cycle of production and
consumption, via specific channels and institutions. Reviews were now increasingly flanked by
complementary cultural enterprises, such as publishing houses and retail outlets. Italian intellectuals
who were most responsive to current events, in line with the industrial development that marked the era
dominated by the governments of Giolitti, increasingly understood that culture was a product, and that
as such, it was to be regulated by the laws of the market. Ideas, in order to become subjects of
discussion, had to be widely diffused. Sharing this viewpoint, Marinetti had founded the journal Poesia
in Milan in 1905, an eclectic monthly that hosted Symbolists, Parnassians, decadents, neo-romantics,
modernists, the crepuscolari, and even authors writing in dialect. Yet its foundamental project was
always that of self-promotion and publicity for Marinetti himself. The first number of the journal was
announced with a "circular letter" prepared for the press, which adopted a synthetic and dramatic style
of immediacy that indicated its origins in the language of advertising, a style that would become a
constant in Futurism itself. By this time Marinetti was already standing accused of being an intellectual
too attentive to the clamor of publicity, a weakness he was thought to share with Gabriele D'Annunzio,
another great writer who understood the value of image and self-publicity in the modern society of the
spectacle.
Promotional systems created in support of the journal were numerous: the habit of concocting "puffs"
for the press, with reviews that were prepared in advance; sending numerous copies of certain issues as
complimentary gifts to influential reviewers and authors; an insistent program of editorial selfpublicization; a constant search for support for the journal from other intellectuals, including requests
for collaboration, which were also handsomely paid. More important, authors were rewarded with
figures that ranged from one hundred liras (received by the poet Giovanni Pascoli) to three hundred
liras (offered to d'Annunzio). Marinetti himself, it might be noted, much preferred Pascoli as an author;
his payments reflected not his value judgments, but the fluctuations of the market. 10 Another feature
designed to contribute to the journal's propaganda and self-publicity aims was the series of "inquests"
that it sponsored: on "the beauty of Italian women," on "free verse," and [End Page 113] on and on.
Still another were the contests for poetry and prose that were open to the young and unknown. Poesia,
moreover, was also supported by a book series that published works by the authors who had won its
contests, or works that reported the results of inquests that had proven especially controversial, such as
the one on free verse (Enquête internationale sur le vers libre [International inquest on free verse;
1909]). 11 And finally, in an Italian culture that was still largely provincial in nature, the international
character of Poesia gave it a special glitter, even as it simultaneously served a crucial function as a
bridge between Italy and the rest of Europe. One need only glance at a number of issues to see how
many authors of genuinely international caliber were offered to the Italian public: William Butler
Yeats, Alfred Jarry, Jean Cocteau, Paul Claudel, Miguel de Unamuno, the Russian symbolist poet
Valery Bryusov, or the Greek national poet Costas Palamàs. To be sure, cosmopolitanism was also a
characteristic innate in Marinetti's personality. An Italian who was born in Egypt, he had been educated
in French and felt far more comfortable writing in it than in Italian until perhaps as late as 1915, and his
earliest literary efforts were directed at taking of the role of a "Franco-Italian" poet. All these
circumstances meant that Marinetti tended to regard culture as an essentially comparative and
international activity, with the result that versions in multiple languages also became a recurrent feature
of Marinetti's publishing activities. 12
The journal Poesia continued to appear until 1909, serving as a springboard for the launching of
Futurism. Yet while it reprinted "The Founding and First Manifesto," its publication was suspended
shortly thereafter. It had proven an invaluable testing ground for the techniques of cultural
communication that the movement would subsequently adopt, but it remained inextricably tied to the
hinterland of Symbolism by its origins, its collaborators, and its history, and after the break announced
by Futurism, Marinetti strove to keep his distance from Symbolism in all its forms. Notwithstanding
the suppression of the journal, its book publishing imprint ("Editions of Poesia") continued to be kept
in existence, and in 1910 it was renamed only slightly as "Futurist Editions of Poesia," retaining a
reminder of the earlier review that had hovered so precariously between the past and the future. From
now on it would be the book that became the principal means for diffusing the movement's poetics and
propaganda, one of the most vital functions of the complex Futurist organism. The "Futurist Editions of
Poesia" were soon flanked by other series and imprints that were typically connected to particular
groups of Futurists in specific cities and their reviews: Marinetti's movement became extraordinarily
extensive and multifarious, not limited to a single cenacle. Increasingly it was structured like a political
party, guided by a charismatic leader and possessing an official policy that was shaped by Marinetti's
closest collaborators, generally the best and most prominent painters and poets. Yet it could also count
upon an extensive network of Futurist groups that were scattered in every region of Italy, as well as on
a number of sympathizers abroad.
The existence of such groups inevitably generated autonomous initiatives that could then be supported
or absorbed by Marinetti, such as Lacerba, the review [End Page 114] founded by Giovanni Papini and
Ardengo Soffici in Florence in 1913. They soon allied themselves with Marinetti, who undertook much
of the journal's distribution on his own account for as long as the collaboration lasted. How many
readers followed the journal is difficult to establish, as is also the case with the earlier review, Poesia.
Yet it is safe to say that press runs were quite high in comparison with those of contemporaneous
literary journals. Exact figures do not exist for Poesia, though the number of retail outlets that carried it
(which the journal listed in every issue) and the letters from readers (which were published in a regular
rubric) suggest a rather ample diffusion. Marinetti himself remarked upon the press runs of Poesia's last
two numbers, which were issued in quantities much larger because dedicated to Futurism: thirty
thousand copies of the penultimate number, forty thousand for the final one. Yet these are figures that
need to be compared with actual inventories or press orders, sinch Marinetti was not averse to inflating
his reports for advertising purposes.
For Lacerba, on the other hand, there are more reliable figures available for comparison. The review
had a considerable impact and its engaging polemical battles left an indelible impression in the memory
of intellectuals of the time. Even Gramsci was intrigued by it, as he was by Marinetti and the Futurists
in general, and in 1922 he wrote a letter to Trotsky in which he stated that Lacerba had a press run of
"twenty thousand copies" and "four out of five copies had circulated among workers." 13 The figure
differs little from one recalled by Marinetti in a letter written to Mario Carli in 1919, when Carli was
director of the newspaper Roma Futurista: "I am convinced that when censorship disappears, it would
be possible to surpass the largest press runs of Lacerba, which were 18,000 copies." 14 But both these
accounts differ significantly from figures offered by more contemporary documents. Aldo Palazzeschi,
in a letter written on 16 May 1913 to Attilio Vallecchi, the printer of Lacerba, speaks of only "ten
thousand copies," while Giovanni Papini, writing a bit earlier to Palazzeschi, described the journal's
success in the following terms: "Lacerba is selling like hot cakes. A great deal of discussion--and
conversions everywhere. The number has been well received and very few of the 8,000 copies are left."
15 And only a few days earlier Papini had written Marinetti to say that he was sending him copies of
Lacerba to distribute at his own expense:
Today the printing of L[acerba] was finished and you should immediately receive 3000 copies. At the
beginning you will find an article of mine which I have chosen to title Against Futurism. Don't be
alarmed. I have done so deliberately in order to attract attention and arouse people's curiosity. It is a
defense of the Fut[urists]...Don't be upset if I repeat in several places that I am not a Futurist. For
tactical reasons that is a necessity. 16
This letter reveals a considerable awareness of the mechanisms of propaganda, as Papini describes an
essay whose title appears to be an assault against Marinetti's movement, but which actually announces
Lacerba's shift toward a position in its [End Page 115] favor. Papini cunningly exploits widespread
hostility against Futurism in order to thwart his readers' expectations and so prove all the more
shocking.
Marinetti, it should be noted, could sustain his role as an impresario of poets and painters not only
because of his formidable managerial capacities, but also because of his substantial wealth. In 1907,
upon the death of his father, he had inherited a conspicuous sum of money. Exactly how much is not
known, though Marinetti himself, in his memoirs dictated many years later, recorded that a French
newspaper with a large circulation reported at the time that his inheritance amounted to eighty million
liras. 17 Marinetti, in any event, employed his patrimony to finance Futurism with uncommon
generosity and with a perceptive sense of how to create a more enduring kind of goods: today the
works that his movement produced and the books that his publishing house issued constitute an object
of great value both in the world of culture and in the domain of the market. Marinetti himself defined
the motivations that prompted him to become an impresario of unknown talents in the following terms.
I had the good fortune to inherit a substantial sum from my father, but I chose not to use it in a manner
either base or banal. I have, instead, availed myself of the opportunities offered by independence to
realize a vast and audacious plan for intellectual and artistic renewal in Italy: to protect, encourage, and
materially to help the young, innovative, and rebellious minds that are daily suffocated by the
indifference, the avarice, or the myopia of publishers. 18
Marinetti spoke these words in his defense during the trial on charges of pornography that were lodged
against him in 1910 for the presence of several erotic scenes in the novel Mafarka il futurista (Mafarka
the Futurist; 1910). 19 As was typical for Marinetti, his case was pleaded by a trio of illustrious lawyers
(Innocenzo Cappa, Cesare Sarfatti, Salvatore Barzilai) and supported by an expert witness who was
then of considerable renown, the author Luigi Capuana, all of which enabled him to turn the trial into
yet another publicity success that was partly achieved through his careful organization of a press
campaign involving intellectuals from Italy and abroad, a success that also helped to speed the book's
translation into Russian and Spanish. And yet it remains a fact that Marinetti's cultural entrepreneurship
was based upon a disinterested love of art which was combined with his wish to address the needfor an
alternative space that could sustain the talents he wished to launch into the marketplace of art and
literature: the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, Ardengo Soffici,
Fortunato Depero, Enrico Prampolini, as well as the writers Aldo Palazzeschi, Corrado Govoni, Paolo
Buzzi, Luciano Folgore, Francesco Cangiullo, and many others. Paolo Buzzi, the first poet whose work
was published by Marinetti in book form, later recalled:
Because of my poverty and the necessity that I faced of having to find a job, which required studies that
were not intellectual in nature, my literary tendencies would have been dead heaven only knows how
long ago if I had not met with that electric lighthouse [End Page 116] that you know of. And later,
having come into contact with publishers, some of them quite large ones, I immediately perceived the
evil mediocrity and the fierce mentality of the petty shopkeeper that animate them: with the result that
returning to the old and crazy publishing house [of Marinetti] always gave me a shiver of enthusiasm
and, more important, a bit of courage, of faith in the future. 20
The "Futurist Editions of Poesia" were perhaps the most important embodiment of Marinetti's desire to
create an alternative cultural space, becoming an experimental laboratory in the true sense of the term,
where the canons of a new writing, the "words-in-freedom," were successively elaborated and
consecrated for the first time with Marinetti's celebrated Zang Tumb Tuuum (1914). 21 Marinetti
himself was perfectly clear about his aims and the role of the publishing house within a larger artistic
reawakening: "We reserve the 'Futurist Editions of Poesia' for those works that are absolutely Futurist
in their violence and intellectual extremism and that cannot be published by others because of their
typographical difficulties." 22
Marinetti, then, was a publisher whose activities were largely unaffected by the need to make money.
Instead they resembled those of so-called engaged or committed editors such as Giuseppe Prezzolini
and Piero Gobetti, though with some crucial differences: the impulse of extreme avant-gardism, on the
one hand, and the communicative systems that were adopted to embody that impulse, on the other.
Whereas Prezzolini and Gobetti were deeply concerned with questions of pedagogy and the formation
of a civic elite, Marinetti placed more emphasis on the circulation of ideas per se and, therefore, on
propaganda. More concretely, Marinetti tended to give away a remarkably high percentage of the
copies from any given press run of a book, almost wholly neglecting their distribution in retail outlets
such as bookstores. Journalists, politicians, artists, intellectuals, industrialists, potential sympathizers
and active rivals--all found themselves flooded with gratis copies of books, newspapers, journals,
magazines, and leaflets streaming forth from the Marinetti factories. The poet Aldo Palazzeschi later
recalled with wry humor his own naiveté and surprise when first confronted with Marinetti's plans to
compose hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions--not for Marinetti's book, but for Palazzeschi's own--to
people with whom Palazzeschi had no relations at all:
No sooner had the book been printed in a thousand copies than the question arose of what to do about
the number of copies customarily sent gratis to members of the press and perhaps a few friends. At this
point Marinetti handed me a fat notebook. I began leafing through it with a growing sense of fear and
dismay. It contained some seven hundred names, together with their addresses and a model of the sort
of dedication that each was to receive. The few remaining copies of my book, I was informed, could be
sent to a few booksellers in the larger cities, though without any hurry and as if it were a fact of no
importance in comparison with the announcement that the book was already sold out, which had also
been prepared in advance. The list comprehended a most wild and unsuspected variety of persons: men
from the worlds of politics and culture, prominent industrialists and professionals, men and women of
society, among whom were people who were truly famous and in some cases notorious for their [End
Page 117] implacable opposition to Futurism, persons who would surely throw the book away with a
curse, or would even burn it. But it was exactly those who didn't want it, according to Marinetti's
theory, who had to receive it....I was resolutely opposed to a project of this kind and after much
discussion we at last agreed that I would make a wide selection in my own way from the six or seven
hundred addresses, reducing it to almost half. I also announced firmly that I was not prepared to write
hundreds of dedications to persons whom I didn't know.... "Don't worry," replied Marinetti, "I'll dictate
the inscriptions myself, and you can copy them down." 23
In lavishing gratis copies upon an unsuspecting world Marinetti was violating one of the cardinal
principles of the publishing trade, that of profit. But his real goal was to see the book distributed as
rapidly as possible, attempting to augment its value with a maximum of commitment to advertising and
promotion. Such techniques horrified Giuseppe Prezzolini, who, though hardly a commercial publisher,
liked to think of himself as a cultural impresario with experience in the techniques of organizing
intellectual activities, and on these grounds offered a defense for the laws of the marketplace:
A Futurist book is no longer worth a penny...who would ever be such an imbecile as to buy a Futurist
volume when everyone knows that all one has to do is send a greeting card to F. T. Marinetti, Corso
Venezia, 61, Milan, to have the mail disgorging a large packet full of books upon one's doorstep--and
to know that one will regularly receive all the others that the factory of Futurism will publish in the
future?...Something that is given away has less value than something bought.... 24
Prezzolini's judgment is quite plainly and quite wholly negative. Marinetti is not a cultural organizer,
but a "disorganizer." Yet his analysis fails to take into account the situation in which Marinetti was
operating: that of the avant-garde, which by its very nature tends to violate every received law, placing
itself in a polemical relation to reigning rules and protocols. Marinetti, in fact, privileged the immediate
diffusion of the creative product, imposing it upon the public with rules and rhythms of his own
making: the gratis copy, on closed analysis, is an expedient for rapidly and indeed almost immediately
making contact with the right people, for eliminating the mediation of distributors and bookstores.
Though a portion of a press run might be reserved for the normal channels of sales and distribution, it
was always a minor one.
Oddly, this publishing system did not prevent some books from selling quite well, such as the
collectively authored volume I poeti futuristi (The Futurist poets; 1912), which, with a "real press run
of 20,000 copies," 25 soon proved a remunerative enterprise. Exulting in his triumph, Marinetti
announces his promotion of it to Palazzeschi: "It will be distributed in Europe and America, with more
than American vigor. I will place two to three hundred copies at the disposition of each contributing
poet." 26 His project proved successful and the anthology sold well; Marinetti, evidently satisfied,
informed Palazzeschi that booksellers were repeatedly placing orders for more copies: [End Page 118]
This one is selling in a truly exceptional way.... To think of it! Some booksellers, such as Baldini and
Castoldi, for example, have requested additional copies seven times, which means that we have already
sold roughly two hundred copies through each principal bookseller....Even if the newspapers are
exclusively filled with stories about the war, the volume of Poeti futuristi is competing with the war for
space. 27
One more example might be the pamphlet "Sintesi futurista della guerra" (Futurist synthesis of the war;
1914), printed in the climate of the interventionist campaign, which had a press run of "more than
20,000 copies." 28 It depicts the World War through the graphic image of a wedge, with the word
"Futurism" written in the center, the top of which touches a curve representing "Passéism," a
composition anticipating that of the famous Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919-20) by El
Lissitzky.
Already these figures suggest that Marinetti, far from being solely the "disorganizer" indicted by
Prezzolini, was in reality an "organizer" of an entirely new type, the inventor of the artistic avant-garde
as a cultural enterprise and shaper of public opinion. This was a dialectical phenomenon composed of
two opposing factors: destruction and construction. In Futurist theory and practice the nihilistic aspects
are united with the constructive ones in a mixture of spontaneity and rationality, a mixture
characteristic of Marinetti's own personality, in which the absolute love of poetry "was accompanied by
exceptional organizational and propagandistic gifts, in which, in a Nietzschean manner, a sultry heart
coexisted with a cool mind." 29
Marinetti, moreover, was an artisan of great stature. If his objectives were grandiose, his enterprise for
realizing them was remarkably small. In the "heroic" period of the "words-in-freedom," one of his
followers (Cesare Cavanna) collaborated closely with a trusted typographer (working for Angelo
Taveggia) under directions furnished by Marinetti during every stage of printing, from the rough sketch
to the completed volume. Busying himself with every detail, from the selection of paper to the design
of the cover, all the way up to the launching of publicity and press relations, Marinetti displayed an
uncommon degree of skill and mastery of detail. And yet the editorial committee of Futurism was
extremely modest, composed of Marinetti and his secretary Decio Cinti, his two servants Marietta and
Nina Angelini, and one or more Futurist volunteers (Boccioni, Buzzi, Russolo), with its headquarters
always located in his house in Milan, until 1912 at Via Senato, 2, and then until 1924 in Corso Venezia,
61.
Yet if the institutional structure in which Marinetti's publishing activities unfolded was essentially
artisanal in nature, his editions pursued goals that might well be termed industrial, goals expressed both
in the publicity systems that he used and in the substantial press runs that he printed, typically ranging
from one to two thousand copies, with an occasional run of twenty thousand. The first edition of
Palazzeschi's L'Incendiario (Arsonist; 1910) was roughly a thousand copies, the second (1913)
surpassed two thousand. Nearly always, however, Marinetti announced press runs that were far above
the real figures: on the cover of Luciano Folgore's Il [End Page 119] canto dei motori (The song of
motors; 1912), for example, he reports that the edition comprises "eight thousand copies." But in
private he wrote to Folgore, "I have had 2,000 copies of your volume printed, so there should be some
left over. For the others, naturally, the press run is at least seven or eight thousand copies." 30
Yet whatever the figures, they are considerably higher than the one hundred copies of the first books of
Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, published by the art dealer and publisher Kahnweiler, or the
three to six hundred copies of the works of Mayakovsky, also published in the Futurist series though
outside of the official publishing house. Yet such large press runs, notable for a publishing firm as
small as Marinetti's really was, responded to a self-conscious decision: Marinetti was opposed to the
rare and precious volume, printed in a limited quantity of numbered copies and destined for a wealthy
public, for bibliophiles or art collectors, and instead he viewed the book as a militant product aimed at
wide usage. In this respect his editions differed both from those of the Cubists, Dadaists, and
Surrealists--almost always in limited editions ornamented with engravings and designs--and from those
of the Russian Futurists, self-published with duplicating machines and artisanal decorations. Marinetti,
in other words, genuinely believed in the possibility of an avant-garde publishing venture that would
extend far beyond purely literary and artistic circles to reach the man in the street.
One of the most interesting editorial goals that he pursued was represented by the so-called
"typographic revolution" theorized in the manifestos on literature. Through a subversion of the rules of
composition, Marinetti proposed to regenerate the book by means of a new compositional and graphic
language. The page, no longer viewed as passive screen conditioned by rules of symmetry and
harmony, becomes a dynamic field that is open to the games of free and expressive orthography, to the
visual values of letters themselves, to the sounds and noises represented typographically, and to graphic
components and designed analogies. Typography, no longer considered the humble maidservant of
writing, is called upon to play an essential role in the process of the work's creation: for the first time
within the Gutenbeg Galaxy one witnesses a hot fusion of technology and poetry. The book is
transformed into a living organism that implies the involvment of the reader, to whom is assigned the
task of interpreting and decoding the message, now constructed of linguistic, verbal, phonetic, and
visual materials. If the Futurist painters sought to place the spectator at the center of the canvas,
Marinetti, with his creation of "words-in-freedom," pursued a similar goal: to place the reader at the
center of the book and the page. Such a program destroys the traditional role of illustration as
something posterior that has been tied on to the text; all the visual aspects of the work are now resolved
within the ambience of free-word writing. 31
The precedent for this utilization of typography for its expressive functions, as is well known, was set
by Mallarmé in his poem "Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard," which for the first time had
introduced into poetry the use of typographical characters in a manner that had hitherto been reserved
for newspapers and posters. 32 But Marinetti's "words-in-freedom" codified this new expressiveness
and made it [End Page 120] correspond to the perceptual simultaneity that typified the new man shaped
by technology. Marinetti's theories unleashed a flood of "words-in-freedom" writing in Futurist
journals, newspapers, and books, and those that were issued by his own publishing firm included a
number of modern classics: Luciano Folgore's Ponti sull'Oceano (Bridges on the ocean; 1914), which
had a cover designed by Sant'Elia; Corrado Govoni's extraordinary pictographs and typographical
experiments in Rarefazioni e Parole in Libertà (Rarefactions and words-in-freedom; 1915); Paolo
Buzzi's L'Elisse e la Spirale (The helix and the spiral; 1915); Francesco Cangiullo's Piedigrotta (1915);
and Marinetti's own masterpieces, Zang Tumb Tuum (1914) and Les mots en liberté futuristes (Futurist
words-in-freedom; 1919). In addition to these there were the three major theoretical works that would
prove of great importance for the future of the avant-garde: Boccioni's Pittura Scultura Futuriste
(Futurist painting scupture; 1914); Carrà's Guerrapittura (Warpainting; 1915), and Russolo's L'arte dei
rumori (The art of noises; 1916). 33
The period dominated by the "free-word" works represented the most significant moment in the
trajectory of Marinetti's editorial activities, a trajectory that encompassed two distinct phases: one
centered in Milan, the other in Rome. The first includes the period generally referred to as the moment
of "heroic" futurism, from 1909 to 1914, as well as the years of the Great War and the early 1920s. The
second begins in 1925, the year when Marinetti moved to Rome to an apartment on Piazza Adriana, 30,
and continues until 1943, the year of Mussolini's fall. The later stage was marked by a drop in the level
of production and a change in the criteria that guided Marinetti's operations as a publisher. After 1925
or thereabouts, Marinetti no longer availed himself of the kinds of publicity and advertising systems
that he had used so effectively before: the pamphelts and "puffs" that had been prepared for the press
disappeared, and even the name "Futurist Editions of Poesia" was reduced to a trademark that was
frequently ceded to authors who paid their own costs of publication. Nor was there a favored
typographer who executed complex works under Marinetti's close supervision; now each author would
usually follow his own publication through whatever press was located most conveniently for him.
Marinetti, it should be added, also found himself in a period when his financial resources were severely
reduced. The changed circumstances meant that books of exceptional quality now became a rarity,
though there were still the two extraordinary books of "litho-tin," which is to say, books made entirely
of tin with full-color serigraphs. They constitute the farthest point that Marinetti reached in his
experiments with the book as object: one was titled L'anguria lirica (The lyrical watermelon; 1934) by
Tullio d'Albisola, with designs by Bruno Munari; the other, Parole in libertà futuriste tattili termiche
olfattive (Futurist words-in-freedom, tactile thermic olfactory; 1932), by Marinetti with graphics by
Tullio d'Albisola. 34
Writing in 1916, Terenzio Grandi argued that there was a deep consonance between the aesthetic
principles of the Futurists and what he called "the art of typography." a common ground that had a
double aspect. 35 On the one hand, Marinetti's "words-in-freedom" used certain expressive modules
plainly derived from the lettering [End Page 121] of contemporary advertisements, while on the other it
was becoming increasingly evident that more advanced and modern advertisements were drawing upon
styles and designs that had been pioneered by Futurism. Marinetti was aware of these later
developments and did much to encourage them, and by the later 1930s, when advertising graphics were
being rapidly developed in Italy under the influence of Futurism, "elementary typography," and
Bauhaus, Marinetti could justly claim that much of the most recent advertising was drawing upon ideas
that stemmed from the grammar and aesthetics of his movement:
Commercial firms were increasingly demanding a maximum of clarity without any possible
equivocation concerning their product or their location and in wall posters this produced a sudden
revolution of words-in-freedom with its plastic typography in multiple perspectives reliefs planes
depths with its free orthography its alogical shifts in time of words outside of syntax and literary habits.
Words in freedom were found running luminously across the fronts of buildings and the terraces of
houses climbing everywhere stripped of syntax and ready to say everything because they had become
plastic in their isolation and their percussive throbbing. 36
Through the vehicle of advertising the avant-garde had invaded the great cities and so realized one of
the Futurist ambitions: to leave the museum and extend art into the streets and public spaces, as
Mayakovsky had so famously announced. When an austerity program prompted the fascist regime to
threaten abolishing electric signs in the center of Milan, Marinetti swiftly wrote an open letter to
Mussolini in their defense, arguing that they created a "childish" and "illusory nocturnal jewelry" that
constituted the modern decoration of the metropolis, a viewpoint that had already been implicitly
formulated by Sant'Elia in his designs for the "new city" in 1914. 37 Especially during the 1920s and
1930s many Futurists, and chiefly Fortunato Depero, worked actively in the world of advertising,
designing billboards, graphics, booths and pavilions for commercial fairs, shopwindows, and
theoretical texts. The great example of the collective contribution of the group was supposed to be the
Almanacco dell' Italia veloce (Almanac of quickening Italy), a volume that was announced on several
occasions but never actually issued; a single specimen of it has survived, rich in original graphic
formulations by Balla, Prampolini, and others, and preceded by a theoretical essay by Marinetti that
urges the necessity of advertising that is multimedia and many faceted in its expressiveness. 38 The
urge to combine art and advertising found curious expression in two of Marinetti's late books: one, Il
poema del vestito di latte (The poem of the clothing made of milk; 1937), which is a hymn to the woollike synthetic "lanital," extracted from the chemical caseine, and Il poema di torre viscosa (The poem
of the viscose tower; 1938), which treats the production of cellulose. Both were published by the
National Italian Company for Viscose, and neither is valued very highly today. 39
What these productions Marinetti had essentially come full circle, from the publicity of art to the art of
publicity, always in search of a new lexicon with which to attract the public, always seeking news ways
to transmit and popularize the products [End Page 122] of Futurism. Whereas earlier he had sought to
employ the tools of publicity within the environment of art, now he sought to employ art and artists in
the world of advertising. And yet throughout the long course of his career he displayed the same
exceptional gift for inventing strategies and tactics in order to market the objects that he considered to
be of value. Rarely have the poet and the entrepreneur been so combined in a single figure. Yet as one
critic has observed, the scales were never evenly weighted; Marinetti always remained "more
responsive to the exciting odor of talents waiting to be picked just at the moment of birth than faithful
to the dogmas that he himself had proposed." 40
Claudia Salariis is a noted scholar on the history and literature of Futurism and the avant-garde. Among
other books, she has published Storia del Futurismo (History of Futurism; 1985, 1992), Il Futurismo e
la pubblicità (Futurism and advertising; 1986), Bibliografia del Futurismo (Bibliography of Futurism;
1988), Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, with essays by Maurizio Calvesi and Luce Marinetti (1988).
Marinetti Editore (Marinetti as publisher; 1990), and Artecrazia: l'avanguardia futurista negli anni del
fascismo (Artocracy: the Futurist avant-garde under fascism; 1992.)
Notes
1. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations, ed.
Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Sohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 217-51.
2. The original reads: "comme les simples mortels," "tout semblable à vous, comme vous voyez!"
Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade, 1975), 1:352.
3. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism," in R. W. Flint, ed., Let's
Murder the Moonshine: Selected Writings (Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1991), 48-49. hereafter
abbreviated LMM. The original reads:
Oh! materno fossato, quasi pieno di un'acqua fangosa! Bel fossato d'officina! Io gustai avidamente la
tua melma fortificante, che mi ricordò la santa mammella nera della mia nutrice sudanese...Quando mi
sollevai--cencio sozzo e puzzolente--di sotto la macchina capovolta, mi sentii attraversare il cuore,
deliziosamente, dal ferro arroventato della gioia.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo," in F. T. Marinetti, Teoria e
invenzione futurista, ed. Luciano De Maria (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1991), 9, hereafter
abbreviated TIF.
4. The original reads:
Marinetti aveva capito fino da allora il potere della pubblicità che doveva raggiungere fatti e persone a
tutte le profondità e a tutte le altezze, nessuno escluso della compagine sociale...usarla per i problemi
dello spirito era ritenuta dai benpensanti tale ignominia per cui nessun vocabolario possedeva una
parola infamante per poterla degnamente qualificare.
Aldo Palazzeschi, "Prefazione," TIF, xxi.
5. See, for example, Giuseppe Prezzolini, L'arte di persuadere (Florence: Lunachi, 1907).
6. The original reads:
Per lui tutto è uguale, purché sia della sua ditta. Bravissimo a lanciar l'articolo, non bada se vende roba
fine o grossolana: per lui è tutta roba di prima qualità.
Giuseppe Prezzolini, La coltura italiana (Florence: Società anonima La Voce, 1923), 254.
7. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, La grande Milano tradizionale e futurista. Una sensibilità italiana nata
in Egitto, ed. Luciano De Maria (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1969), 92.
8. The original reads:
Noi siamo pochi domatori in una gabbia di belve ruggenti ma impaurite. Uscirete di qui domati
portando in voi un'ammirazione involontaria che non saprete reprimere.... Siete seimila mediocrità
contro otto artisti dei quali non potete negare il formidabile ingegno!
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Grande Serata Futurista. Firenze--Teatro Verdi--12 Dicembre 1913.
Resoconto sintetico (fisico e spirituale) della battaglia," in Lacerba (15 December 1913): 282.
9. For a historical account of Marinetti's activities as a publisher see Claudia Salaris, Marinetti editore
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), on which I also draw in the discussion to follow (hereafter abbreviated
ME).
10. Cf. ME, 31-53. A reprint of the journal Poesia has recently been edited by Françoise Livi, Poesia
(1905-1909) (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1992). For other discussions of Marinetti's
publishing see: Mario Verdone, Prosa e critica futurista (Milan; Feltrinelli, 1973), 14-17; Pablo
Echaurren, Le edizione futuriste di "Poesia" (Rome: Quaderni di Futilità, 1981); and Giovanni Lista,
Le Livre futuriste (Modena: Panini, 1984).
11. Enquête internationale sur le vers libre et Manifeste du Futurisme par F. T. Marinetti (Milan:
Editions of Poesia, 1909).
12. For a complete bibliography see Claudia Salaris, Bibliografia del futurismo (Rome: Biblioteca del
Vascello/Stampa alternativa, 1988) and idem Storia del futurismo, 2nd rev. ed. (Rome: Editori Riuniti,
1992).
13. The original reads: "ventimila copie," "era diffusa per i quattro quinti tra gli operai." Antonio
Gramsci, letter to Lev Trotsky, September 1922, in Antonio Gramsci, 2000 pagine di Gramsci, ed.
Giansiro Ferrata, vol. 1, Nel tempo della lotta (Milan: Saggiatore, 1964), 633-35; cited in G. Battista
Nazzaro, Introduzione al Futurismo (Naples: Guida editori, 1984), 14, n. 4.
14. The original reads: "Sono convinto che una volta sparita la censura, si potrebbe superare le
massime tirature di Lacerba cioè le 18.000 copie." Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, letter to Mario Carli, 20
January 1919, in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Mario Carli, Lettere futuriste tra arte e politica, ed.
Claudia Salaris (Rome: Officina, 1989), 68.
15. The original reads: "Diecimila copie." Quoted in Siro Ferrone, Aldo Palazzeschi. Mostra
biobibliografica (Florence: Palazzo Strozzi, 1976): 19. The second original reads: "'Lacerba' va a ruba.
Grandi discussioni--e conversioni. Il numero è piaciuto molto e delle 8.000 copie ne rimangono poche."
Giovanni Papini, letter to Aldo Palazzeschi, 24 March 1913, in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Aldo
Palazzeschi, Carteggio, ed. Paolo Prestigiacomo (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1978), 129, hereafter
abbreviated C.
16. The original reads:
Oggi s'è finito di stampare L[acerba] e avrai subito le 3000 copie. Troverai in principio un articolo mio
che ho voluto intitolare Contro il Futurismo. Non ti spaventare. L'ho fatto apposta per attirare
l'attenzione e la curiosità della gente. È una apologia dei Fut[uristi].... Non ti avere a male se ripeto un
paio di volte che non sono futurista. È necessario per la tattica.
Giovanni Papini, letter to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 18 March 1913; Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University, Marinetti Papers; cited in ME, 144.
17. Marinetti, La grande Milano tradizionale e futurista, 284.
18. The original reads:
Ebbi la fortuna di ereditare da mio padre una discreta sostanza, ma non me ne sono mai servito in modo
basso e banale. Mi sono avvalso, anzi della mia posizione indipendente per attuare un mio vasto e
audace progetto di rinovamento intellettuale e artistico in Italia: quello di proteggere, incoraggiare ed
aiutare materialmente i giovani ingegni novatori e ribelli che quotidianamente vengono soffocati
dall'indifferenza, dall'avarizia o dalla miopia degli editori.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Interrogatorio di F. T. Marinetti," in "Il processo e l'assoluzione di
Mafarka il futurista," appendix to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Distruzione. Poema futurista (Milan:
Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1922), 4.
19. F. T. Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, trans. Decio Cinti (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1910).
20. The original reads:
Causa la mia povertà e la necessità che ebbi di conquistarmi un posto con studi antideali, le mie
tendenze letterarie sarebbero morte chissà da quanto, se non avessi incontrato il faro elettrico di che sai.
E, venuto a contatto con gli editori anche grandi, mi avvidi subito della cattiva mediocrità e del
bottegaismo feroce che li anima: cosicché il tornare, con una opera di poesia disinteressata, all'antica
fucina folle, mi diede sempre un fremito d'entusiasmo e, quel che più conta, un po' di coraggio, di fede
verso l'avvenire.
Paolo Buzzi, letter to Aldo Palazzeschi, 15 March 1914, in appendix to C, 103-04.
21. F. T. Marinetti, Zang Tumb Tuuum (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1914).
22. The original reads: "Noi riserviamo le Edizioni futuriste di 'Poesia' a quelle opere assolutamente
futuriste che per la violenza e l'estremismo del pensiero e per le difficoltà tipografiche non possono
essere pubblicate dagli editori." Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Le parole in libertà di Armando Mazza,"
in Armando Mazza, Firmamento (Milan: Edizioni futuriste di Poesia, 1920), 11.
23. The original reads:
Non appena in mille copie fu stampato il libro, trattandosi di consegnare i consueti omaggi alla stampa
e a qualche amico, Marinetti a tale proposito mi consegnò un grosso scartafaccio che presi a sfogliare
con progessivo sgomento. Si trattava di settecento e più nominativi con relativo indirizzo e ai quali con
tanto di dedica si doveva mandarlo. Le poche e sparute copie rimaste sarebbero state dispensate ad
alcuni librai delle principali città senza un minimo di fretta come fatto di nessuna importanza dopo quel
tutto esaurito che lo aveva preceduto. La nota comprendeva le più svariate persone e i più insospettati
personaggi: uomini politici e di cultura, professori, industriali e professionisti, gentildonne e
gentiluomini, fra cui risultavano quali astri di prima grandezza proprio quelli che si sapeva essere i più
feroci e irriducibili nemici di tale impresa, e che lo avrebbero gettato con infamia e magari bruciato, ma
erano proprio quelli che non lo volevano, secondo la teoria di Marinetti, che dovevano averlo....Mi
opposi risolutamente a un simile progetto e venimmo a patti che in quei settecento e più indirizzi avrei
fatto un'ampia scelta a modo mio e che si ridusse presso a poco alla metà, non solo, ma mi dichiarai
impreparato nel modo più preciso a scrivere centinaia di dediche a persone che non conosceve...."Le
dediche te le detto io," rispose Marinetti.
Aldo Palazzeschi, "Prefazione," in TIF, xxii-xxiii.
24. The original reads:
Il libro futurista non vale più nulla...Chi è mai stato così imbecille da comprare un libro futurista,
quando sa che inviando un semplice biglietto da visita a F. T. Marinetti, Corso Venezia, 61, Milano, se
ne vedrà scaraventar dalla posta un intero pacco, e, più tardi, riceverà regolarmente tutti quegli altri che
l'officina futurista va pubblicando? ...la roba regalata val meno di quella pagata..."
Giovanni Prezzolini, "Marinetti disorganizzatore," in La Voce 7 (30 March 1915): 510-17, here 51112.
25. Libero Altomare, Mario Bètuda, Paolo Buzzi, et al., I Poeti Futuristi (Milan: Futurist Editions of
Poesia, 1912); the original reads: "una prima tiratura reale di 20.000 copie." F. T. Marinetti, letter to
Palazzeschi [June 1912]. C, 70.
26. The original reads: "Sarà diffuso in Europa e in America, con uno slancio più che americano.
Metterò a disposizione di ognuno dei poeti del gruppo due o trecento copie," Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti, letter to Aldo Palazzeschi [June 1912], C, 70.
27. The original reads:
Questo si vende in modo veramente eccezionale.... Pensa che alcuni librai, come per esempio Baldini e
Castoldi, ne hanno ridomandato copie sette volte, il che vuol dire una vendita già avvenuta di circa
duecento copie da ogni principale libraio.... Malgrado che i giornali siano pieni soltanto della guerra, il
volume dei Poeti futuristi contende alla guerra la spazio.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, letter to Aldo Palazzeschi [October 1912], C, 71.
28. "Sintesi futurista della guerra," pamphlet issued by the Direction of the Futurist Movement in Milan
in 1914. The original reads: "più di 20.000 copie." F. T. Marinetti, letter to Luciano Folgore. 5
November [1914], in Luciano Folgore and F. T. Marinetti, Carteggio futurista, ed. Francesco Muzzioli
(Rome: Officina, 1987), 70.
29. The original reads: "s'accompagnava a eccezionali doti organizzative e propagandistiche, in cui,
nietzscheanamente, un cuore afoso coesisteva con una testa fredda." Luciano De Maria, "Marinetti
costruttore," in his La nascita dell'avanguardia (Venice: Marsilio, 1986), 13.
30. Aldo Palazzeschi, L'Incendiario (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1910); Luciano Folgore, Il
canto dei motori (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1912). The original reads: "ottavo migliaio," "Ho
fatto tirare 2.000 copie del tuo volume, quindi ne resteranno. Naturalmente, per gli altri, la tiratura è
almeno di sette o ottomila copie." Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, letter to Luciano Folgore, [April 1912],
in Folgore and Marinetti, Carteggiofuturista, 46.
31. See Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature" (11 May 1912), in
LMM, 92-97; and in Italian, "Manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista," TIF, 46-54. See also his
"Risposta alle obiezioni" (11 August 1912), in TIF, 55-62; and his "Destruction of Syntax-Imagination Without Strings--Words-in-Freedom" (11 May 1913), in Futurist Manifestos, ed. Umberto
Apollonio (New York: Viking, 1973), 95-106; and in Italian, "Distruzione della sintassi-Immaginazione senza fili--parole in libertà," in TIF, 65-80. See also his "Geometrical and Mechanical
Splendor and the Numerical Sensibility" (18 March 1914) in LMM, 103-111, and in Italian, "Lo
splendore geometrico e meccanico e la sensibilità numerica," in TIF, 98-107.
32. The poem first appeared in the journal Cosmopolis in May 1897, but remained little known until
published as an independent volume in 1914. For Marinetti's use of this text see Noëmi BlumenkranzOnimus, La Poésie futuriste italienne (Paris: Klincksieck, 1984), 34-35.
33. Luciano Folgore, Ponti sull'Oceano (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1914); Corrado Govoni,
Rarefazioni e Parole in Libertà (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1915); Paolo Buzzi, L'Elisse e la
Spirale (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1915); Francesco Cangiullo, Piedigrotta (Milan: Futurist
Editions of Poesia, 1916); F. T. Marinetti, Zang Tumb Tuuum; idem, Les mots en liberté futuristes
(Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1919); Umberto Boccioni, Pittura scultura futuriste (Dinamismo
plastico) (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1914); Carlo Carrà, Guerrapittura (Milan: Futurist
Editions of Poesia, 1915); Luigi Russolo, L'Arte dei rumori (Milan, Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1916).
34. Tullio d'Albisola, L'anguria lirica (Milan: Futurist editions of Poesia, 1934); F. T. Marinetti, Parole
in libertà futuriste tattili termiche olfattive (Milan: Futurist Editions of Poesia, 1932); see cover
illustration of this journal.
35. "Arte tipografica," is discussed by Terenzio Grandi, "Futurismo tipografico," extract from L'Arte
tipografica (Turin: R. Scuola, 1916). See also Claudia Salaris, Il futurismo e la pubblicità (Milan:
Lupetti, 1986), hereafter abbreviated as FP; Giovanni Fanelli-Ezio Godoli, Il futurismo e la grafica
(Milan: Comunità, 1988); Claudia Salaris, "Le futurisme et la publicité," in Art et publicité 1890-1990
(Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 1990), 180-90.
36. The original reads:
Le ditte d'altra parte esigevano sempre più la massima chiarezza senza equivoco possibile di
indicazioni sulla specialità o il recapito e ciò induceva di colpo negli avvisi murali la rivoluzione delle
parole in libertà con la sua plastica tipografica a prospettive rilievi piani diversi profondità con una sua
ortografia libera il suo movimento alogico di tempi di verbi fuori dalla sintassi e dalle abitudini
letterarie. Le parole in libertà si videro anche correre luminosamente sui frontoni e sulle terrazze delle
case si arrampicarono dovunque ognuna svestita dal suo periodo pronta a dire tutto perché divenuta
plastica nel suo isolamento e nel suo palpito tempista.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Estetica della pubblicità," in Artecrazia 6 (11 February 1938); cited in
Salaris, FP, 123.
37. The original reads: "Infantile" and "illusoria gioielleria notturna," F. T. Marinetti, "Gli avvisi
luminosi. Lettera aperta a S. E. Mussolini," in L'Impero 5 (12 February 1927); cited in FP, 121.
38. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Programma Almanacco Italia veloce," in Almanacco dell'Italia veloce
(Milan: Edizioni Metropoli, 1930).
39. F. T. Marinetti, Il poema del vestito di latte (Milan: Edition of the Propaganda Office of Snia
Viscosa, 1937); idem, Gli aeropoeti futuristi dedicano al Duce Il Poema di Torre Viscosa (Milan:
Edition of the Propaganda Office of Snia Viscosa, 1938).
40. Luciano Anceschi, "E Marinetti liberò il verso," in Il Resto del Carlino (Bologna), 5 June 1982;
reprinted in Alfabeta/La quinzaine littéraire 8 (May 1986): 5.
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