Research Note: Italian Futurism

"The Futurist Manifesto first appeared in Le Figaro for 20 February 1909. Its author was an Italian, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who, though making his mark first of all in Paris, had also been active in Milan since 1905 as editor of Poesia, one of the aims of which was the publicizing of the works of the French Symbolists in Italy. (Later, Marinetti was also to claim Zola, Whitman, George Kahn and Veraeren among his predecessors -- in an article characteristically entitled 'We deny our Symbolist Masters, the last Moon-Lovers.') In this, the first of his many Manifestos, Marinetti declared: 'It is from Italy that we broadcast this manifesto of ours to the whole world... because we want to free this country from the stinking gangrene of its professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antique dealers.' Italy had been a junk shop for too long, he insisted; now it was time to burn her libraries, flood her museums and galleries, and tear down her sacred cities."

Judy Ransom. "Italian Futurism," Modernism 1890 - 1930, Pelican guides to European literature,. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976.