And did not the belligerent bourgeoisie actually arrange revolutions in other lands? Then the traditions of 1905 were added to them, by which we nourished ourselves and by which we prepared the second revolution. Is this word suitable when the matter hinges on the collective expropriation of the land and the factories? The armed peace, with its patches of diplomacy, the hollow parliamentary systems, the external and internal politics based on the system of Safety valves and brakes, all this weighed heavily on poetry at a time when the air, charged with accumulated electricity, gave sign of impending great explosions. Many of his images and phrases and expressions have entered literature, and will remain in it for a long time, if not forever.
In using automatism, these artists explored the true concept of their subconscious. In France, the War was pictured as the final completion of the work of the Great Revolution. The struggle against the old vocabulary and syntax of poetry, regardless of all its Bohemian extravagances, was a progressive revolt against a vocabulary that was cramped and selected artificially with the view of being undisturbed by anything extraneous; a revolt against impressionism, which was sipping life through a straw; a revolt against symbolism, which had become false in its heavenly vacuity, against Zinaida Hippius and her kind, and against all the other squeezed lemons and picked chicken bones of the little world of the liberal-mystic intelligentsia.
He handles words and the dictionary like a bold master who works according to his own laws, regardless of whether his artisanship pleases or not. On its best side Futurism is a protest against the haphazard, which forms a powerful literary school of its own, and which has very influential representatives in every field.In Gorlov’s unpublished work, which, in my opinion, traces incorrectly the international origin of Futurism, and which violates a historic perspective and identifies Futurism with proletarian poetry, the achievements of Futurism in art and form are very thoughtfully and weightily summarized. Undoubtedly the “Lef” seeks more than it has found. Mayakovsky came by the shortest route, by that of the rebellious persecuted Bohemia. Nevertheless, the young poet Bezimensky, who is so much obligated to Mayakovsky, gives a really true artistic expression of the Communist point of view; the reason being that Bezimensky was not a poet already formed when he came to Communism, but was spiritually born in Communism.It is possible to argue, and it has been argued more than once, that even the proletarian doctrine and program were made by members of the bourgeois and democratic intelligentsia. A change in the location of troops, ships, or aircraft for tactical or strategic purposes. That is why the whole “piece” has no climax. The working-class does not have to, and cannot break with literary tradition, because the working-class is not in the grip of such tradition. The telephone apparatus is an example of a new style. Literature suffocated and became stupid in the stagnant little world of the lawyer, the student, the amorous lady, the district civil servant, and of all their feelings, their joys and their sorrows. In the same way, Futurism obtained its most brilliant expression, not in America and not in Germany, but in Italy and in Russia.With the exception of architecture, art is based on technique only in its last analysis, that is, only to the extent to which technique is the basis of all cultural superstructures. Other veristic surrealism artists went to the extreme opposite by creating entirely imaginary dream worlds, which were a combination of elements of mysticism and fantasy (Dearborn 217). In Italy, the interventionists (that is, those in favor of intervention in the War) were the “revolutionists”, that is, the Republicans, Free Masons, social Chauvinists and Futurists. More than that, they wore long hair, flirted with a green complexion, and for the ultimate shaming of the bourgeoisie, Theophile Gautier put on a sensational red vest. Its impact on the civilized world was unimaginable. To say that Futurism has freed art of its thousand-year-old bonds of bourgeoisdom is to estimate thousands of years very cheaply. But we have to wait.Khlebnikov’s and Kruchenikh’s wordforms also lie outside poetry. True, extremes meet. But one must have a little historic vision, at least, to understand that between our present day economic and cultural poverty and the time of the fusion of art with life, that is, between the time when life will reach such proportions that it will be entirely formed by art, more than one generation will have come and gone.